The Comparative History of National Historiographies in Europe: Some Methodological Reflections and Preliminary Results

Abstract

The nationalisation of European culture and thought in the 19th century included the nationalisation of history writing (Leersen, 2006; Hroch, 2005). Throughout much of the 19th and first half of the 20th century national history was the dominant show in town — never the only one, but for many the most important one. Increasingly, as the 19th century progressed, the history lectures and seminars at universities were dominated by national history, which was perceived by many historians as the highest form of history writing. National historical narratives underpinned a wide variety of nationalisms throughout Europe and were influential in justifying nation state formation, revolution, civil war, war, genocide and ethnic cleansing. The deep impact of historical national narratives on European culture is clear. It is therefore particularly important to investigate these narratives in a genuinely comparative and transnational way, a process that has been under way for a number of years now. Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, a range of monographs and edited collections have sought to explore the theme (e.g. Lönnroth et al., 1994; Duchhardt and Kunz, 1997; Berger et al., 1999; Conrad and Conrad, 2002; Lingelbach, 2003; Raphael, 2003; Eriksonas, 2004).¹ What I would like to do in this chapter is to discuss some of the methodological assumptions and some of the preliminary results which underpin and come out of these studies.