Historiography is the study of how history is written. One pervasive influence upon the writing of history has been nationalism, a set of beliefs about political legitimacy and cultural identity. Nationalism has provided a significant framework for historical writing in Europe and in those former colonies influenced by Europe since the nineteenth century. Typically official school textbooks are based on the nationalist model and focus on the emergence, trials and successes of the forces of nationalism.[Umut Özkirimli, Umut. (2005). Contemporary Debates on Nationalism: A Critical Introduction. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. p.180.]
Origins
The eighteenth and nineteenth century saw the emergence of nationalist ideologies.
notes how the "historical grounding of nationalism was reinforced by its close ties with the emergence of professional academic historical writing."
During the French Revolution a national identity was crafted, identifying the common people with the
Gauls. In
Germany historians and humanists, such as Johann Gottfried Herder and Johann Gottlieb Fichte, identified a linguistic and cultural identity of the German nation, which became the basis of a political movement to unite the fragmented states of this German nation.
A significant historiography outcome of this movement of German nationalism was the formation of a "Society for Older German Historical Knowledge", which sponsored the editing of a massive collection of documents of German history, the Monumenta Germaniae Historica. The sponsors of the MGH, as it is commonly known, defined German history very broadly; they edited documents concerning all territories where German-speaking people had once lived or ruled. Thus, documents from Italy to France to the Baltic were grist for the mill of the MGH editors.
This model of scholarship focusing on detailed historical and linguistic investigations of the origins of a nation, set by the founders of the MGH, was imitated throughout Europe. In this framework, historical phenomena were interpreted as they related to the development of the nation-state; the state was projected into the past. National histories are thus expanded to cover everything that has ever happened within the largest extent of the expansion of a nation, turning Mousterian hunter-gatherers into incipient Frenchmen. Conversely, historical developments spanning many current countries may be ignored, or analysed from narrow parochial viewpoints.
The efforts of these nineteenth century historians provided the intellectual foundations for both justifying the creation of new and the expansion of already existing ones.
Time depth and ethnicity
The difficulty faced by any national history is the changeable nature of
ethnicity. That one nation may turn into another nation over time, both by splitting (
colonization) and by merging (
syncretism,
acculturation) is implicitly acknowledged by ancient writers; Herodotus describes the
Armenians as "colonists of the
Phrygians", implying that at the time of writing clearly separate groups originated as a single group. Similarly, Herodotus refers to a time when the "
Athenians were just beginning to be counted as
Hellenes", implying that a formerly
Pelasgian group over time acquired "Greekness". The
Alamanni are described by Asinius Quadratus as originally a conglomerate of various tribes which acquired a common identity over time. All these processes are summarized under the term
ethnogenesis.
In ancient times, ethnicities often derived their or their rulers' origin from divine or semi-divine founders of a mythical past (for example, the Anglo-Saxons deriving their dynasties from Woden; see also Euhemerism). In modern times, such mythical aetiology in nationalist constructions of history were replaced by the frequent attempt to link one's own ethnic group to a source as ancient as possible, often known not from tradition but only from archaeology or philology, such as Armenians claiming as their origin the Urartians, the Albanians claiming as their origin the Pelasgians (supposedly including Illyrians, Ancient Epirus, and Ancient Macedonians), the Georgians claiming as their origin the Mushki—all of the mentioned groups being known only from either ancient historiographers or archaeology.
Nationalism and ancient history
Nationalist ideologies frequently employ results of
archaeology and
ancient history as
propaganda, often significantly distorting them to fit their aims, cultivating national
mythology and national mysticism. Frequently this involves the uncritical identification of one's own
ethnic group with some ancient or even prehistoric (known only archaeologically) group,
whether mainstream scholarship accepts as plausible or reject as pseudoarchaeology the historical derivation of the contemporary group from the ancient one. The decisive point, often assumed implicitly, that it is possible to derive nationalist or ethnic pride from a population that lived millennia ago and, being known only archaeologically or epigraphically, is not remembered in living tradition.
Examples include Kurds claiming identity with the Medes,
Historically, various hypotheses regarding the Urheimat of the Proto-Indo-Europeans has been a popular object of patriotic pride, quite regardless of their respective scholarly values:
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Albanian nationalism: The descent from the Pelasgians (supposedly including Illyrians, Ancient Epirus, and Ancient Macedonians)
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Romanian nationalism: Dacianism or Dacomania
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Greek nationalism: The supposedly Greek origins of the ancient Thracians, Illyrians and of the Minoan civilization.
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Nordic race of an Aryan race (Germanic mysticism, Nazi mysticism, Ahnenerbe)
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Lithuanian Sarmatism: The Lithuanians origins of the Goths, Sarmatians and other Eastern European peoples.
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Pan-Turkism and Neo-Eurasianism postulate mythical origins of humanity or culture in Central Asia, (Sun Language Theory, Arkaim)
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Slavic nationalisms: Polish Sarmatism, Macedonism, Illyrian movement, Thracomania, etc.
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Slovene nationalists and venetic theory
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Armenian nationalism: Armenia, Subartu and Sumer
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Antiquization: claims continuity between ancient Macedonia and modern North Macedonia
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Indian Indigenous Aryanism: believes that the Indo-European peoples originated in South Asia instead of Eastern Europe
Study
With historians such as
Ernest Gellner, Benedict Anderson, and Anthony D. Smith adopting more critical approaches to nationalism, some began to look at how this ideology had affected the writing of history.
Smith, for instance, develops the concept of 'historicism' to describe an emerging belief in the birth, growth, and decay of specific peoples and cultures, which - in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries - became "increasingly attractive as a framework for inquiry into the past and present and ... an explanatory principle in elucidating the meaning of events, past and present".[Smith, A.D. (1991). National Identity. Penguin. p.87.]
Eric Hobsbawm pointed out the central role of the historical profession in the development of nationalism:
Martin Bernal's much debated book Black Athena (1987) argues that the historiography on ancient Greece has been in part influenced by nationalism and ethnocentrism.
According to the medieval historian Patrick J. Geary:
The modern study history was born in the nineteenth century, conceived and developed as an instrument of European nationalism. As a tool of nationalist ideology, the history of Europe's nations was a great success, but it has turned our understanding of the past into a toxic waste dump, filled with the poison of ethnic nationalism, and the poison has seeped deep into popular consciousness.
By country
Nationalist historiographies have emerged in a number of countries and some have been subject to in-depth scholarly analysis.
Cuba
In 2007, Kate Quinn presented an analysis of the Cuban nationalist historiography.
Indonesia
In 2003, Rommel Curaming analyzed the Indonesian nationalistic historiography.
South Korea
Nationalist historiography in South Korea has been the subject of 2001 study by Kenneth M. Wells.
Thailand
In 2003, Patrick Jory analyzed the Thai nationalistic historiography.
Zimbabwe
In 2004, Terence Ranger noted that "Over the past two or three years there has emerged in Zimbabwe a sustained attempt by the
Robert Mugabe regime to propagate what is called ‘patriotic history’."
See also
Further reading
Nationalism in general
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Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, 2nd. ed. London: Verso, 1991.
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Bond, George C. and Angela Gilliam (eds.) Social Construction of the Past: Representation as Power. London: Routledge, 1994.
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Díaz-Andreu, Margarita. A World History of Nineteenth-Century Archaeology. Nationalism, Colonialism and the Past. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2007.
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Díaz-Andreu, Margarita and Champion, Tim (eds.) Nationalism and Archaeology in Europe. London: UCL Press; Boulder, Co.: Westview Press, 1996. (UCL Press); (hb) & 978-0813330518 (pb) (Westview)
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Marc Ferro. The Use and Abuse of History: Or How the Past Is Taught to Children. London:Routledge, 2003,
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Ernest Gellner. Nations and Nationalism. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983.
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Eric Hobsbawm. Nations and Nationalism since 1780. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.
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Hobsbawm, Eric J. and Terence Ranger, ed.. The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992
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Kohl, Philip L. "Nationalism and Archaeology: On the Constructions of Nations and the Reconstructions of the Remote past", Annual Review of Anthropology, 27, (1998): 223–246.
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Smith, Anthony D. The Ethnic Origins of Nations. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1988.
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Suny, Ronald Grigor. "Constructing Primordialism: Old Histories for New Nations", The Journal of Modern History, 73, 4 (Dec, 2001): 862–896.
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Bergunder, Michael Contested Past: Anti-Brahmanical and Hindu nationalist reconstructions of Indian prehistory, Historiographia Linguistica, Volume 31, Number 1, 2004, 59–104.
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G. Fagan (ed.), Archaeological Fantasies: How Pseudoarchaeology Misrepresents the Past and Misleads the Public Routledge (2006), .
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Kohl, Fawcett (eds.), Nationalism, Politics and the Practice of Archaeology, Cambridge University Press (1996),
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Bruce Lincoln, Theorizing Myth: Narrative, Ideology, and Scholarship, University of Chicago Press (2000), .
Specific nationalisms
- Baltic
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Krapauskas, Virgil. Nationalism and Historiography: The Case of Nineteenth-Century Lithuanian Historicism. Boulder, Colo.: East European Monographs, 2000.
- Celtic
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Chapman, Malcolm. The Celts: The Construction of a Myth. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1992.
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Dietler, Michael. "'Our Ancestors the Gauls': Archaeology, Ethnic Nationalism, and the Manipulation of Celtic Identity in Modern Europe". American Anthropologist, N.S. 96 (1994): 584–605.
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James, Simon. The Atlantic Celts: Ancient People or Modern Invention? London: British Museum Press, 1999.
- Chinese
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Duara, Prasenjit. Rescuing History from the Nation: Questioning Narratives of Modern China. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997
- Israeli
- Pakistan
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Raja, Masood Ashraf. Constructing Pakistan: Foundational Texts and the Rise of Muslim National Identity, 1857–1947, Oxford 2010,
- Spanish
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Díaz-Andreu, Margarita 2010. "Nationalism and Archaeology. Spanish Archaeology in the Europe of Nationalities". In Preucel, R. and Mrozowksi, S. (eds.), Contemporary Archaeology in Theory and Practice. London, Blackwell: 432–444.
Recent conferences
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Nationalism, Historiography and the (Re)construction of the Past, University of Birmingham, 10–12 September 2004
External links
