Nationalizing The Past: Historians As Nation Builders In Mode

Description:
Although professional historians have traditionally claimed to be 'myth-breakers', national history from the Nineteenth century onwards shows that they have quite a record in 'myth-making'. This tension between myth-making and breaking is actually still with us today. This volume makes a truly comparative and transnational analysis of how some of the most important national historians in Europe have handled the opposing pulls of fact and fiction and which narrative strategies have contributed to the success of national histories. What role did the narrative framing of beginnings, middles and endings of national histories play? How were continuities and discontinuities constructed? How did the discourse of 'the nation' integrate narratives of ethnicity, race, class, religion and gender? This volume also shows how Twentieth century dictatorships have influenced the ways in which the past has been 'nationalized' by historians and asks whether national history as a genre still has a future in the Twenty-first century.

Table of Contents:
Preface Notes on Contributors Introduction; S.Berger& C.Lorenz Narrativizations of the Past: The Theoretical Debate and the Example of the Weimar Republic; J.Eckel Double Trouble: a Comparison of the Politics of National History in Germany and Quebec; C.Lorenz Setting the Scene for National History; J.Leerssen A Strained Relationship: Epistemology and Historiography in Eighteenth and Nineteenth-Century Germany and Britain; A.Epple Wars of Religion in National History Writing at the Beginning of the Twentieth Century: P. J. Blok, Karl Lamprecht, Ernest Lavisse and Henri Pirenne; G.Warland Heretics into National Heroes: Jules Michelet's Joan of Arc and FrantiA!ek Palacku's John Hus; M.Baar History and Politics: Interpretations of Early Modern Conquest and Reformation in Victorian Ireland; M.Caball Narrating the Building of a Small Nation: Divergence and Convergence in the Historiography of the Estonian 'National Awakening', 1868-2005; J.Hackmann Theorizing and Practicing 'Scientific' History in South-Eastern Europe (19th-20th c.): Spyridon Lambros and Nicolae Jorga; E.Gazi Theatre Histories and the Construction of National Identity: The Cases of Norway and Finland; I.Pikkanen Nation, State and Empire: The Historiography of 'High Imperialism' in the British and Russian Empires; A.Mycock& M.Loskoutova Inside-out: the Purposes of Form in Friedrich Meinecke's and Robert Aron's Explanations of National Disaster; H.Frey& S.Jordan Ends of Empire: Decolonising the Nation in British and French Historiography; R.Aldrich& S.Ward Clio and Class Struggle in Socialist Histories of the Nation: A Comparison of Robert Grimm's and Eduard Bernstein's Writings, 1910-1920; T.Welskopp Rewriting National History in Post-War Central Europe: Marxist Syntheses of Austrian and Czechoslovak History as New National Master Narratives; P.KolaA' Nineteenth Century Liberal Master Narratives Revisited: A Comparison of Gyula SzekfA and Benedetto Croce; .v.Klimo After the Deluge: The Impact of the Two World Wars on the Historical Work of Henri Pirenne and Marc Bloch; P.Schottler The Lombard League in nineteenth-century historiography, c.1800-c.1850; D.Laven History of Civilisation: Transnational or Postimperial? Some Iberian Perspectives (1870-1930); X-M.Nunez Rising Like a Phoenix!The Renaissance of National History Writing in Germany and Britain since the 1980s; S.Berger Myth in the Writing of European History; J.Ifversen The Nation, Progress, and European Identity in The Rise of Modern Europe; J.L.Harvey Notes Index

Author Biography:
STEFAN BERGER is Professor of Modern German and Comparative European History at the University of Manchester, UK. He has published widely in the fields of nationalism and national identity studies, labour studies, and the history of historiography. His most recent monograph is Friendly Enemies: Britain and the GDR, 1949-1990 (2010). CHRIS LORENZ is Professor of Theory of History and Historiography at the VU University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands. He has published predominantly on philosophy of history, historiography and on higher education policy. His most recent books are: (ed., with Stefan Berger), The Contested Nation: Ethnicity, Religion, Class and Gender in National Histories (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), and Przekraczanie Granic: Esejez filozofii historii i teorii historiografii [Bordercrossings: Explorations between History and Philosophy] (2009).