Abstract
Writing national histories was presumably the most prominent issue for German and British historiography in the nineteenth century. Even though this statement might be a simplification, generally speaking, it is appropriate: that is, at least when we look only at academic historiography.1 If, however, we turned our attention to so-called amateur history or the histories of academic outsiders, we would definitely find a more diverse result.2 Bearing in mind the limitations of this approach, it still appears to me to be very promising indeed to examine the different concepts of the nation, and to look for invented national traditions that were legitimized by such histories. These questions normally accompany analyses of the professionalization of history as an academic discipline.
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4 A helpful survey of the rapidly expanding research in this field during the last decade is given in S. Weichlein, ‘Nationalismus und Nationalstaat in Deutschland und Europa. Ein Forschungsüberblick’, Neue Politische Literatur 51 (2006), 265–351. Older research on the subject is summarized in D. Langewische, ‘Nation, Nationalismus, Nationalstaat: Forschungsstand und Forschungsperspektiven’, in Neue Politische Literatur 40 (1995), 190–236.
13 B. Smith, ‘Gender and the Practices of Scientific History: The Seminar and Archival Research in the Nineteenth Century’, American Historical Review 100 (1995), 1150–76, and B. Smith, The Gender of History: Men, Women, and Historical Practice (Cambridge, 1998); N. Z. Davis, ‘Gender and Genre: Women As Historical Writers, 1400–1820’, in P. H. Labalme (ed.), Beyond their Sex: Learned Women of the European Past (New York and London, 1984), pp. 153–82; B. Melman, ‘Gender, History and Memory: The Invention of Women’s Past in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries’, History and Memory 5 (1993), 5–41.
31 J. Gillingham shows some striking similarities between the medieval historian William of Malmesbury and David Hume in terms of their themes and approaches. William wrote, e.g., that he wanted ‘to mend the broken chain of our history’. See Gillingham, ‘Civilizing the English? The English histories of William of Malmesbury and David Hume’, Historical Research 74:183 (2001), 17–43, 22. There are also striking differences, however. The most important is the challenge of causality.
37 N. Z. Davies, ‘History’s Two Bodies’, American Historical Review (AHR) 93 (1988), 1–13.
40 J. Osterhammel, ‘Nation und Zivilisation in der britischen Historiographie von Hume bis Macaulay’, Historische Zeitschrift 254 (1992), 281–340; G. Gawlick and L. Kriemendahl, Hume in der deutschen Aufklärung. Umrisse einer Rezeptionsgeschichte (Stuttgart and Bad Cannstatt, 1987).
55 F. von Schiller, ‘Was heißt uns zu welchem Ende studiert man Universalgeschichte?’ (1789), in Nationalausgabe (NA), vol. 17, pp. 359–76.
57 T. Mergel, ‘Überlegungen zu einer Kulturgeschichte der Politik’, Geschichte und Gesellschaft (GG) 28 (2002), 574–606, 578.
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© 2010 Angelika Epple
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Epple, A. (2010). A Strained Relationship: Epistemology and Historiography in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Germany and Britain. In: Berger, S., Lorenz, C. (eds) Nationalizing the Past. Writing the Nation: National Historiographies and the Making of Nation States in 19th and 20th Century Europe. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230292505_5
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