Nationalizing the Past

Historians as Nation Builders in Modern Europe

S. Berger, C. Lorenz, S. Berger, C. Lorenz

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9780230237926
• eBook ISBN:
  9780230292505
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: European History
• Index: History

Historians traditionally claim to be myth-breakers, but national history since the nineteenth century shows quite a record in myth-making. This exciting new volume compares how national historians in Europe have handled the opposing pulls of fact and fiction and shows which narrative strategies have contributed to the success of national histories.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Nationalizing the Past
• Contents
• Preface
• Notes on Contributors
• Introduction
• 1 Narrativizations of the Past: The Theoretical Debate and the Example of the Weimar Republic
• 2 Double Trouble: A Comparison of the Politics of National History in Germany and in Quebec
• 3 Setting the Scene for National History
• 4 A Strained Relationship: Epistemology and Historiography in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Germany and Britain
• 5 Wars of Religion in National History Writing at the Beginning of the Twentieth Century: P. J. Blok, Karl Lamprecht, Ernest Lavisse and Henri Pirenne
• 6 Heretics into National Heroes: Jules Michelet's Joan of Arc and František Palack's John Hus
• 7 History and Politics: Interpretations of Early Modern Conquest and Reformation in Victorian Ireland
• 8 Narrating the Building of a Small Nation: Divergence and Convergence in the Historiography of Estonian 'National Awakening', 1868–2005
• 9 Theorizing and Practising 'Scientific' History in South-Eastern Europe (Nineteenth–Twentieth Century): Spyridon Lambros and Nicolae Jorga
• 10 Theatre Histories and the Construction of National Identity: The Cases of Norway and Finland
• 11 Nation, State and Empire: The Historiography of 'High Imperialism' in the British and Russian Empires
• 12 Ends of Empire: Decolonizing the Nation in British and French Historiography
• 13 Inside-Out: The Purposes of Form in Friedrich Meinecke's and Robert Aron's Explanations of National Disaster
• 14 Clio and Class Struggle in Socialist Histories of the Nation: A Comparison of Robert Grimm's and Eduard Bernstein's Writings, 1910–1920
• 15 Rewriting National History in Post-War Central Europe: Marxist Syntheses of Austrian and Czechoslovak History as New National Master Narratives
• 16 Nineteenth Century Liberal Master Narratives Revisited: A Comparison of Gyula Szekfű and Benedetto Croce
• 17 The Lombard League in Nineteenth-Century Historiography, c.1800–c.1850
• 18 History of Civilization: Transnational or Post-Imperial? Some Iberian Perspectives (1870–1930)
• 19 After the Deluge: The Impact of the Two World Wars on the Historical Work of Henri Pirenne and Marc Bloch
• 20 Rising Like a Phoenix … The Renaissance of National History Writing in Germany and Britain since the 1980s
• 21 Myth in the Writing of European History
• 22 The Nation, Progress and European Identity in The Rise of Modern Europe
• Index