The reason why cowboys were portayed like a solitary, strapping white men lies on the fact that that cowboy was a late romantic creation. Essentially, the represented the ideal of freedom.
The way that the Enlightenment's theories of government viewed the role of government was that government was meant to serve the people, not the other way around.
One way is that medieval Europe had knights to protect people and followed the code of chivalry and medieval Japan had samurai
