Nationalism and Historical Writing

Nationalism and Historical Writing

Paul Lawrence
The Oxford Handbook of the History of Nationalism
Edited by John Breuilly
Print Publication Date: Mar 2013 Subject: History, Historiography

Online Publication Date: May 2013 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199209194.013.0036
Abstract and Keywords
This chapter analyses the links between the development of historical writing (and the
historical profession) and the evolution of nationalism (as both cultural sentiment and po
litical doctrine). While many cultural products other than the written word can provide
populations with a sense of a shared past, written history produced by acknowledged spe
cialists has often been privileged in nationalist discourses, partly due to the success of
the historical profession’s own claims to scientific objectivity and partly due to the close
links between historians and emergent states forged during the nineteenth century. While
the prevalence of teleological national histories gradually declined in areas such as Eu
rope and America during the twentieth century, national histories remained very impor
tant in other parts of the world throughout the period of decolonization. The chapter also
seeks to consider possible reasons for the close links between history writing and nation
alism, exploring the function national histories came to play in providing individual and
group identities during the transition to modernity.
Keywords: Nationalism, history, historiography, historian(s), identity, narrativity, modernity, writing
Introduction
NATIONALISM has always been intimately connected to a sense of the past. Whether de
fined generally as identification with a putative cultural collectivity known as a nation, or
more specifically as the notion that a given ‘nation’ deserves and can rightly seek self-
government, nationalism is invariably bound up with perceptions of the past, and with
claims for the present and future made on the basis of those perceptions. As Ronald Suny
notes, ‘there can be no nation without a sense of its own history’.1
Certainly, a sense of a shared past is a feature of many contemporary definitions of both

nations and nationalism. Anthony Smith, for example, argues that nations always share
‘common myths and memories’, while Steven Grosby describes a nation as an extensive,
bounded territory which, among other attributes, possesses ‘a history that both asserts
and is expressive of temporal continuity’.2 Even among theorists who believe nationalism
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to be a rather more modern phenomenon, a shared sense of the past remains significant.
While perhaps stressing more overtly the way in which history can be distorted or selec
tively remembered, modernists concerned with the ‘invention of tradition’, or the way in
which the political doctrine of nationalism produces nations (rather than the other way
around), still concede the power of historical memory in shaping national sentiment.3
However, while there is general agreement that the remembrance of things past has had
a great deal of influence on the nature and development of national sentiment, it is only
comparatively recently that specific research has been conducted into the mechanics of
how the ‘sense of a shared past’ of a given community relates to nationalism.4 In this
chapter, the nature of the links between historians, the development of the historical pro
fession, history writing and nationalism will be explored. This focus (p. 714) should not be
taken as a claim that it is only professional historians who have been concerned with de
picting the past in national terms. Philosophers, artists, playwrights, composers, and lit
erary figures have all often incorporated historical themes into their work. In early nine
teenth-century France, for example, even wallpaper manufacturers sought to present the
past to the public, producing designs depicting historical events such as the Battle of
Austerlitz in 1805 and the July Revolution of 1830.5 Many cultural products other than
the written word can and do provide populations with a sense of a shared past. However,
written history produced by acknowledged specialists has often been privileged in nation
alist discourses, partly due to the success of the historical profession’s own claims to sci
entific objectivity and partly due to the close links between historians and emergent
states forged during the nineteenth century.
This chapter first outlines and analyses the links between the development of history
writing and the evolution of nationalism (as both cultural sentiment and political doc
trine). It then seeks to consider why there have always been such close links between his
tory writing and the nation, to analyse what it is that makes history so indispensable to
nationalists, and to ask overall whether nationalism requires certain types of history.
Historical Writing and Nationalism before c.

1750
For much of the latter half of the twentieth century, there was a tendency in the field of
nationalism studies to discount the idea that nations and nationalism were socially signifi
cant in the pre-modern period. More recently, however, there has been renewed interest
in the possibility of locating recognizable nations and national sentiment much earlier.
Steven Grosby, for example, has claimed that ‘throughout history man has considered…
environments which are considerably more extensive than those of the family and the
home to be his “own”, hence, integral to his life’, while Anthony Smith argues that, even
in antiquity, ‘ethnic communities expressing a clear cultural unity persisted for long peri
ods in several parts of the world’.6 In these debates, early modern and medieval histori
ans have often been prominent. They have frequently regarded England as the archetypal
‘first nation’, with Adrian Hastings asserting that, from the early fourteenth century, ‘Eng
Page 2 of 19

lishmen felt themselves to be a nation’, and Liah Greenfeld arguing that England became
‘the first nation in the world’ in the late sixteenth century.7
Very often, part of the evidence used to assert these claims of pre-modern nations and na
tionalism have been works of history. Hastings, for example, argues that Bede’s Ecclesias
tical History of the English People (c.730) takes for granted a ‘single nation’. Stefan Berg
er notes that the Duke of Malmesbury’s Deeds of the Kings of the English, written during
the twelfth century, ‘conveys a clear idea of the political and cultural (p. 715) unity of a na
tion called England’.8 On mainland Europe, Regino of Prüm (writing around 900) felt able
to differentiate between ‘different peoples’ on the basis of ‘descent, manners, language
and laws’.9 Later European humanists also adopted the topic of the nation, creating val
ues and symbols oriented towards a spatial entity known as the nation, even where this
did not yet exist, with the Bavarian historian and philosopher Johannes Aventinus assert
ing a recognizable sixteenth-century German nationalism.10 A similar situation can be dis
cerned outside of Europe in parts of the world with settled, literate populations. As Q. Ed
ward Wang notes, ‘in China…we encounter ideas of nation and national enemies as early
as the Han period and again in the Song period’ (960–1279).11
However, while it is possible to locate instances of historians writing forms of national

history in the medieval and early modern periods, there are limits to the significance of
this. In the first place, it is extremely difficult to assess with any certainty the reception
and impact of these early histories. Most would have had a very small circulation. Al
though this is not necessarily indicative of minimal impact if the readership was influen
tial and the histories served as ‘the texts in which an elite defines itself’, their signifi
cance in relation to what the majority thought and felt was likely to have been minor.12
Secondly, those writing these ‘national’ histories may have been working with a rather
different notion of ‘the nation’ to those writing history in the modern period. While Susan
Reynolds has claimed that early writers conceptualized nations as ‘communities with col
lective political rights as well as shared histories and cultures’, John Breuilly has high
lighted differences in usage such that, in his view, ‘there is no significant continuity be
tween pre-modern and modern national identity’.13
Finally, the nature and intent of these histories were very different from those of the more
recent past. Early historians were often working with the concept of historia magistra. In
herited from antiquity, this was the notion that history should serve an exemplary pur
pose, guiding men as to how they should act in the present. Thus, history writing essen
tially attempted to highlight universal, unchanging truths about mankind, rather than
trace developments unique to particular times and places.14
From about 1750 onwards, however, as the national principle gained decisively over its ri
vals—religion, dynastic principle, and feudalism—important changes occurred in both the
practice of writing history and in its social and political significance. If before about 1750
history writing was primarily intended to draw examples from the past as a guide to be
haviour in the present, during the apogee of the nationalist period (c.1750–1945) the ex
emplary gave way to the unique. Rather than cyclical or constant, the human condition
Page 3 of 19

came to be seen as amenable to progress, a trope that was to become particularly signifi
cant to the narrative national histories of the post-1750 period.15
Writing National Histories, c.1750–1945

While it is arguably possible to locate evidence of national sentiment before 1750, there is
general agreement that the period 1750–1945 was particularly significant for the (p. 716)
development of both nations and nationalism. There have been protracted debates about
the origins, nature, and precise extent of the rapid spread of national sentiment that took
place during this period.16 However, a number of points are relatively, although not en
tirely, uncontentious. In the period from around 1750 onwards, ‘the nation’ became the
focus of increasing intellectual debate in Europe. During the nineteenth century, national
sentiment moved from being primarily of cultural significance to one of increasing politi
cal import, evidenced by the general shift from multi-ethnic empires to nation states as
the ‘normal’ form of governance, at least in Europe. While the rise of the nation-state
principle was relatively unproblematic in some cases (such as England), in other in
stances it generated violent conflict. The ideal that culturally defined ‘nations’ should rule
themselves was gradually exported, via European colonialism, to other parts of the world.
By the early twentieth century, national identity (which had been weak, or confined large
ly to elite groups) had become a primary identity for large swathes of the world’s popula
tion.
This period also witnessed the development of the academic historical profession as we
know it today. The first university chairs in history were created in Berlin (1810) and
Paris (1812), and within a decade historical societies had been created to collect and pub
lish historical documents, and historians had founded their own professional journals. The
new professionals of history sought, via an innovative focus on the objective use of
archival material, to portray the past, in Leopold von Ranke’s famous phrase, wie es
eigentlich gewesen (‘as it actually was’). However, it is readily apparent that many of
these new professionals became closely connected to the states in which they lived and
worked, and that ‘material dependence on the state corresponded with strong intellectual
ties to the nation state’.17
Nineteenth-century historians were often highly partisan advocates of the interests of

their own particular nation states, who ‘went into the archives to find evidence that
would support their nationalistic and class preconceptions and thus give them the aura of
scientific authority’.18 This point can readily be illustrated with reference to Germany,
where historians quickly became, in Thomas Nipperdey’s words, the ‘main speakers of
the nation (Festredner der Nation)’.19 Heinrich von Treitschke, for example, one of the
foremost historians of nineteenth-century Germany, had enormous contemporary influ
ence. Following German unification in 1871, he held a seat in the Reichstag and observed
with growing apprehension the decline of the patriotic movement. It was in this context
that he began work on his Deutsche Geschichte im Neunzehnten Jahrhundert (German
History in the Nineteenth Century), published between 1879 and 1894. This work was
Page 4 of 19

never finished but its relevance here lies in the fact that, as well as describing ‘the con
text of the events’, Treitschke’s expressed aim in the work was to arouse in the hearts of
his readers ‘the pleasure of living in the Fatherland’.20
Such an aim was by no means unusual, and the subjective idealization by historians of
their own particular nations was not confined to Germany. In France, too, widely pub
lished historians customarily wrote in lyrical, emotive terms. Jules Michelet, for example,
initially an archivist at the Archives Nationales before being appointed to a (p. 717) chair
at the Collège de France in 1838, believed that the French Revolution had demonstrated
that his ‘glorious motherland’ was destined to become ‘the pilot vessel of humanity’.21
Ernest Lavisse, editor of a huge twenty-seven-volume Histoire de France (published be
tween 1900 and 1911), claimed that ‘the long memory of ancestors, the joy of finding my
soul in their thoughts and their actions, in their history and in their legends’ provided him
with his ‘main reason for living’.22
Nor were such sentiments confined to historians of nations that already possessed a state
structure. Historians also often sought to provide a historical basis for the claims to na
tionhood and political independence of states that did not yet exist. As Berger notes, ‘cre
ating national historical consciousness was widely seen as the most important precondi
tion for engendering true national feeling in the wider population’.23 Historians were
even, on occasion, involved politically in nationalist struggles. František Palacký, for ex
ample, was passionately committed to the idea of a Czech nation, an aim that he pursued
equally vigorously via his historical writing and his political career.24 Many other exam
ples of European historians actively constructing national histories, often from the flimsi
est of evidence, can be unearthed.25
Different traditions of national history writing began to emerge during the nineteenth
century. In France, the significance of the Revolution and the role of ‘the people’ in dis
seminating universal notions of liberty were often stressed. In Germany, the importance
of the state was a prominent trope, while England was often viewed by its historians as
the natural home of democracy and liberty. Within these broad trends there were often
competing versions of national history. In Germany, for example, Treitschke’s work repre
sented a distinctively ‘Prussian’ version of German history, which minimized the contribu
tion of Austria and the smaller German states. In England, the imperial themes addressed
by historians such as John Seeley offered a focus other than liberty and democracy for the
‘story’ of England’s development.26 However, aside from a narrative approach based
heavily on political and military archival sources, what most nineteenth-century histories
had in common was that they sought to highlight the specificity and significance of the
historian’s own nation state. As the historical profession developed during the nineteenth
century, it did so in tandem with new conceptions of the national in the cultural and politi
cal life of Europe. The two processes were intimately intertwined, with nineteenth-centu
ry historians providing the justification for the founding of new nation states, and for the
expansion and consolidation of existing states, while often relying on these very states for
their livelihoods and prestige.
Page 5 of 19

This process was not confined to Europe. During the latter part of the nineteenth century
it is possible to trace the transmission of the new European ideal of history writing (and
the concomitant evolution of national histories) further afield. This transmission is closely
related to European imperialism. In Brazil, for example, Francisco Adolfo de Varnhagen’s
multivolume História Geral do Brasil sought to portray Brazilian independence as a con
tinuation of monarchic rule rather than a break with Portugal, thus justifying the colonial
elite’s right to supremacy.27
Countries whose histories came to be written by non-original, predominantly

(p. 718)
white-settler inhabitants, such as the USA and Australia, had different problems with his
torical time. Unable to locate the origins of their nation in a dim and distant past but keen
to efface the significance of original, non-European inhabitants, early ‘Romantic’ visions
of American history (such as George Bancroft’s History of the United States of America)
portrayed the gradual ‘ripening’ of a wholly new nation, while later historians chose to fo
cus on the uniqueness of a nation based on progress and growth.28 History writing be
came an important part of the process of consolidating national identity and asserting na
tionalist claims, both in Europe and further afield, during the latter half of the nineteenth
century.
Of course, not all historians were writing teleological national histories. Henry Buckle’s
History of Civilization in England, published in two volumes in 1857 and 1861, sought to
consider the history of medieval civilization via a comparison between England, France,
Spain, and Scotland. Equally, Thomas Maitland’s Constitutional History of England shows
a clear awareness of the ‘constructed’ nature of historical knowledge, noting that the
term ‘feudal system’ was coined long after the institutions which comprised it had ceased
to be.29 In addition, throughout the nineteenth century, certain key thinkers were critical
of nationalist interpretations of history. The assertion by Lord Acton (Regius Professor of
Modern History at Cambridge University) that nationalism was both a modern develop
ment and ‘a retrograde step in history’, the spread of which would be marked with ‘mate
rial as well as moral ruin’, is well known.30 Equally, as the social sciences developed in
the early decades of the twentieth century, they also often attacked the historical profes
sion on the basis of its preoccupation with narrative national histories.31
It is tempting to assume therefore that, whereas nineteenth-century historians con

tributed to the development of the nation-state principle via the eulogistic national histo
ries they wrote, the turn of the twentieth century saw increasing criticism of this ap
proach to the subject and the gradual development of higher standards of ‘objectivity’.
Certainly, during the early part of the twentieth century the discipline of history as it de
veloped in Europe did indeed see initiatives that turned away from the prior focus on the
nation state. The French historians Lucien Febvre and Marc Bloch, for example, founders
of the Annales school, aimed to set aside the concept of linear time and the grand narra
tives of national development in favour of a focus on mentalities and regional and/or
supranational history.
Page 6 of 19

In fact, however, national history remained the norm during the first half of the twentieth
century. This was particularly apparent during periods of conflict. On the outbreak of the
First World War, historians mobilized alongside other intellectuals to promote their own
nation’s cause and denigrate the enemy’s national past. In September 1914, for example,
a group of Oxford historians published the justificatory tract Why we are at War, a move
countered by the publication in Germany of Aufruf an die Kulturwelt (Appeal to the Cul
tured World), signed by ninety-three academics, including historians.32 (p. 719) Many his
torians agreed with Friedrich Thimme’s assertion that ‘if one can’t serve the Fatherland
with the sword, then at least it should be done with the pen’.33
Traditions of national history writing were further mobilized during the interwar period
to justify the outcome in all combatant nations and, certainly up until the Second World
War, history writing remained largely focused on ‘the nation’, which was treated as an un
problematic given, and served to bolster national sentiment and pride among readers by
interpreting the past of their nation state as unique and special.
The Persistence of National Histories after the

Second World War
A glance at an historical atlas shows that, while the number and distribution of nation
states in Europe remained relatively stable after the Second World War (at least com
pared to the previous century), there was significant change in most other parts of the
world, as the process of decolonization unleashed new waves of nationalism and created
wholly new state formations. The differing political fortunes of nation states in Europe
and elsewhere were both reflected in and, in some ways, shaped by, historiographical de
velopments.
Within Europe, the relative stability of borders, the long consolidation of the nation-state
principle since 1750, and the role of the Second World War in highlighting (for many his
torians, at least) the dangers inherent in nationalism, meant that 1945 arguably marked
the ‘beginning of the end’ for the type of unreflective national history writing described in
the preceding section. Historiography in Europe gradually began to move away from see
ing the nation as a given, with history’s purpose to trace its development and illuminate
its future trajectory. However, this process has been protracted and is by no means com
plete.
In the immediate post-war period attempts were made to restabilize and reconnect to tra
ditional national narratives, particularly in West Germany and Italy, but the late 1950s on
wards saw a genuine pluralization of historical discourse in Europe and the Americas. In
many countries, the 1960s saw a turning away from the prior, almost exclusive, focus on
political history and the state, towards social and cultural history. It became common to
seek the authentic experience of the ordinary man, and for historians such as those of the
Annales school in France, or the members of the Communist Party Historians’ Group in
Page 7 of 19

the United Kingdom, the development of everyday life and thought became more signifi
cant to the history they wrote than the actions of politicians and key decision makers.34
Equally, from the 1970s onwards it is possible to trace the increasing influence of the so
cial sciences in the historical field. Typified by initiatives such as the Bielefeld school in
Germany, engagement with another discipline helped engender a shift from narrative,
event-oriented history to social science-influenced historiographical approaches, (p. 720)
which both emphasized and problematized social structures and processes of change. Al
so from the 1970s onwards, the growth of postmodernism or what is often known as the
‘linguistic turn’, with its emphasis on the constructed nature of historical knowledge, led
historians increasingly to question the very category of the nation, and the viability of
writing any kind of coherent national history. More recently, the growing popularity of
transnational history, defined as ‘the study of movements and forces that cut across na
tional boundaries’, has also served to make purely national histories seem parochial and
naive.35
However, some qualification is needed. In the first place, of course, even in Western coun
tries with stable states, historians did not entirely eschew national history. For example,
whilst there was a vast expansion in the numbers of university-based historians (tripling
in France and West Germany between the 1960s and the end of the century), most of
these historians were still appointed to posts associated with the study of one particular
country. Thus the national paradigm remained dominant in institutional terms, even while
it was being eroded within the historiography.
Moreover, there are some notable exceptions to the general trends outlined above. The
Cold War was a particular complicating factor. As Karl Erdmann notes, ‘in the 1980s, the
East-West conflict was the most important single factor in structuring international rela
tions, and it had a deep impact on the study and writing of history, too.’36 In East Ger
many, for example, history writing retained a strong national tendency during the Cold
War. Special ‘Institutes for the History of the German People’ were founded at key univer
sities, and a new multivolume German history was published with the intention of narrat
ing the story of the German people from a Marxist-Leninist perspective.37 A variety of
communist regimes preserved a national frame in writing about the struggles of peasants
and workers. Equally, following the disintegration of the USSR in the early 1990s, histori
ans either busied themselves actively constructing national identities (in regions such as
Kazakhstan where an imposed identity had been in place), or in reinforcing notions of na
tionalism as a primordial given (in regions with relatively ethnic homogenous popula
tions, such as Armenia).38
Overall, therefore, while the ‘nation’ was perhaps no longer assumed by many European
and American historians to be a given, primordial entity, while nationalism as a political
doctrine had become intellectually tainted after the Second World War, and while the plu
ralization of the discipline meant that no single approach to interpreting the past domi
nated the field, it is still fair to state that the national paradigm remained significant both
in practical terms, in that most historians still studied a particular country (usually their
Page 8 of 19

own), and in historiographical terms, in that most histories were still very much reflective
of the national frameworks in which they were written.
Moreover, outside of Europe and America, these links remained even clearer. The process
of decolonization resulted in many former colonies gaining independence, via a (p. 721)
range of violent and negotiated transfers of power. In the forty years following the end of
the Second World War, former colonies gained independence across Africa, the Middle
East, and Asia. While by no means all of these new states could map themselves directly
onto a European nation-state model, many at least claimed to do so. History writing was
often crucial in delineating new, ‘national’ identities, on the basis of which claims to inde
pendence were often made.
For example, in India, history writing was an integral part of the process of moving to
wards independence. James Mill’s History of British India (1817) had made a strong case
justifying British rule in India due to the stagnation and inability of Indians to change.
Hence, indigenous history writing as it developed in the early part of the twentieth centu
ry set out both to ‘restore to Indians their lost past, and instil in them a sense of pride in
their own ancient heritage’, and also, explicitly, to prove ‘that India had traditions, espe
cially of government, no less than those of Britain, and therefore was capable of govern
ing itself’.39 In Africa, too, the writing of history was often undertaken with explicitly po
litical aims in mind, as historians ‘aligned their research with anti-colonial struggles from
the very outset’.40 Settler nations also often felt the need retrospectively to construct a
national history in order to consolidate a fledgling national identity. In Australia, for ex
ample, ‘notions of a separate Australianness only began to enter academic discussions
about national history in the inter-war period’.41
Overall, therefore, for much of the period since 1945, national history writing has re
mained significant. It is possible to argue for the evolution of an inquisitive, self-aware
form of national history in certain parts of the world, with a more strident, declamatory,
justificatory historiography in some other regions. Such is the varied nature of historical
writing, however, that it is problematic to make any such sweeping claims. In particular,
as was the case during the nineteenth century, national histories were certainly not al
ways consensual. For example, the academic debate that developed during the latter half
of the twentieth century over the existence of a German Sonderweg (special path), while
still very much contained within the paradigm of national history, proposed radically new
versions of German national history.42 Equally, minority nationalisms in Europe, such as
those of Scotland and Catalonia, sought during the same period to construct their own
national pasts as part of a political challenge to the dominant national narratives of
Britain and Spain.
Historiography certainly diversified over the course of the twentieth century and ‘faith in
the grand narratives focused on the modernization of the Western world as the culmina
tion of a coherent historical process’ has arguably been ‘irredeemably lost’.43 Yet history
writing, albeit often typified by competing national narratives, still served to reinforce na
tionalism in many parts of the globe during the twentieth century, even if the link was not
Page 9 of 19

as significant at the end of the century as at the start. Given this continued association
between nationalism and history writing, the final section of this chapter will inquire
more closely into the specific nature of the link between the two.
The Link between Historiography and Na

(p. 722)
tionalism
It would appear that there are clear links between nationalism, in both its cultural and
political forms, and the writing of history. While different traditions of national history
writing emerged, particularly during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, nation
al histories shared many common tropes. As Suny summarizes, a national history was
normally ‘one of continuity, antiquity of origins, heroism and past greatness, martyrdom
and sacrifice, victimization and overcoming of trauma…a story of the empowerment of
the people, the realization of the ideals of popular sovereignty’.44 These similarities point
to a common function—national histories served to enhance and sustain nationalism in
both its political and cultural forms. However, to recognize this link between history writ
ing and nationalism is one thing, to explain it is quite another. Why should a sense of a
‘national’ past be particularly relevant to an individual’s sense of identity or political affil
iations in the present? In one sense, the answer to this question very much depends on
which interpretation of nationalism is adopted. Different groups of theorists have pro
posed very different explanations for the genesis and functioning of nationalism, and
hence they have all tended to find history writing significant in different ways.
During the first half of the twentieth century, when nationalism first came under sus
tained intellectual scrutiny, historians such as Carlton Hayes and Hans Kohn were very
much concerned with the ‘idea’ of nationalism. Their analyses were based on the asser
tion that, while nations might be old, nationalism was a relatively new intellectual con
cept. Hence, what philosophers, playwrights, politicians, and others wrote in the period
from 1750 was accorded key significance. Hayes, for example, posited a three-stage
process via which the new doctrine of nationalism was disseminated, the first stage of
which was its elaboration ‘by an eminent company of “intellectuals”—philologists, histori
ans, anthropologists, economists, philosophers, and litterateurs’.45 This doctrine was sub
sequently adopted by political elites and then spread downward to the mass of the popu
lation. The significance of history writing in such analyses is apparent, but such idealist
interpretations of nationalism later came under criticism because (in addition to being
Eurocentric) they did not provide a convincing explanation as to why this particular doc
trine rose to prominence or found such popular resonance.
From the 1960s onwards, partly due to the influence of the social sciences on the field,
some writers came to see nationalism primarily as a functional component or product of
‘modernity’, rather than as an abstract idea or doctrine. Theorists such as Karl Deutsch
and Ernest Gellner viewed the rise of both nations and nationalism as intimately bound
up with industrialization. Gellner, for example, argued that a new type of education (‘exo-
socialization’) was required to cope with the task of providing the transferable skills re
Page 10 of 19

quired for modern, industrial societies. This education could no (p. 723) longer be sup
plied at the village level (as it had been during feudal, agrarian periods) because only
states had the necessary resources. Hence, in the industrial age, it became important
that cultural and political boundaries were congruous and this, for Gellner, was the key to
understanding the birth of both nations and nationalism. In the work of ‘classical mod
ernists’, therefore, history writing holds little explicatory significance. Gellner’s focus on
the evolution of state-based education systems in engendering national consciousness
does perhaps leave a role to play for historians, as the suppliers of the raw materials for
school history textbooks, but Gellner himself never mentioned history writing and mod
ernists in general saw cultural factors as subordinate to underlying economic and indus
trial shifts.46
However, this modernist position came under attack from the 1980s onwards by writers
who, while still asserting the modernity of both nations and nationalism, stressed rather
the diverse mechanisms of their construction, invention, or imagination. Scholars such as
Eric Hobsbawm and Benedict Anderson, rather than seeing nationalism as a predestined
product of industrialization, sought to highlight the ways in which nationalism was (both
consciously and unconsciously) manufactured. Hobsbawm, for example, initially investi
gated the way in which ‘traditions which appear or claim to be old are often quite recent
in origin, and sometimes invented’.47 The role of historians in constructing nationalism
‘from above’ was here readily apparent. Although nationalism emerged as a more multi
faceted construction in Hobsbawm’s later work, a coalescence of the needs of elites and
desires and practices of their newly enfranchized populations, the role of history writing
in actively constructing a sense of continuity during periods of rapid social change re
mained significant.
Clearly, though, nationalism is never entirely ‘invented’, or constructed out of thin air.
Even those seeking consciously to manufacture national sentiment can only succeed by
working with pre-existing customs and ideas that have a public resonance. Hence, while
initially striking, the wave of research on the theme of invention and imagination came to
be seen as insufficiently nuanced and unable to explain why nationalism has such emotive
power. A consideration of the deep roots and antecedents of modern nationalism was the
primary focus of ‘ethno-symbolists’ such as John Armstrong and Anthony Smith during
the 1980s and early 1990s. They argued that, contrary to the modernist position, the pre
cursors to modern nations (often termed ethnies, or ethnic groups) had a strong sense of
group identity and past continuity. While not supplied by written history, ethnies were
bound together by what Armstrong referred to as ‘myth-symbol’ complexes, which fea
tured many of the themes (the election of a people, the notion of a homeland, and the re
membrance of a past golden age) of later national histories.48 Yet, while successful in
challenging the dominance of modernist conceptions of nationalism, ethno-symbolism was
never able adequately to answer the ‘how’ and ‘why’ questions attached to the shift from
loose ethnic groups to much more coherent nations and nationalism.
Page 11 of 19

Thus the main approaches to date, while often conceding some significance to history
writing in their interpretations of nationalism, do not give more than fragmentary ac
counts of the nature of the link between history writing and nationalism. (p. 724) A satis
factory answer to the question—how does history writing inform nationalism?—is yet to
be supplied. However, one fruitful way of thinking about this topic might be to focus on
‘identity’, and the role that a sense of the past plays in providing individuals and groups
with both a potent and satisfying sense of community in the present, and a feeling of con
tinuity with both past and future.
The idea that nationalism—cultural and/or political attachment to the nation—provides a

deep sense of purpose and stability that is otherwise denied by the flux of modern life is
not new. Early sociologists such as Émile Durkheim, while writing little explicitly about
nationalism, wrote extensively about the sense of social dislocation (anomie) produced by
the abrupt transition to modernity. Durkheim was also interested in the similarities be
tween religious and national rituals, claiming that ‘it is by uttering the same cry, pro
nouncing the same word, or performing the same gesture in regard to some object that
they [the people] become and feel themselves to be in unison’.49 Thus it might be argued
that, in the transition to industrial society which occurred during the period 1750–1900,
traditional allegiances and identities broke down and the nation arose as a way for in
creasingly secular societies to ‘worship themselves brazenly and openly’.50 Certainly, the
prose of many of the national histories produced during the nineteenth century supports
the idea that they serviced a quasi-religious need for purpose and order in a turbulent era
of declining faith. Michelet, for example, noted explicitly that he turned to writing about
his ‘noble country’ to ‘fill the incommensurable void which Christianity left when it
died’.51
This line of argument gives the start of a general answer to our question. Written history
became important to cultural nationalism because it supplied an authoritative sense of
continuity with an (often imaginary) past, and hence a sense of group identity in the
present, during a period of rapid social change—often precipitated by conflict between
and within states, as well as by socioeconomic developments. The projection of the nation
forward into a glorious, united future, which was a theme of many national histories, also
helps to explain the emotive power generated by nationalist ideology. The usefulness of
this emotive power to politicians and other elites in turn helps to account for the connec
tion that developed between nationalism as cultural sentiment and nationalism as politi
cal doctrine. Thus, as Peter Mandler notes, it was the very ‘narrativity’ of the nation, the
sense of a story unfolding over time, of individuals united by a common fate, that gave na
tional identity a ‘special salience’ over and above other types of identity, which are usual
ly rooted much more strongly in the present.52 This same narrativity, however, also gave
nationalism a degree of abstraction that enabled its flexible deployment by cultural and
political elites.
Although some recent work on identity (often postmodernist in approach) has stressed
the multiplicity of identities in the modern world, and the fragmentary nature of national
identity in particular, it does seem likely that national histories (particularly as developed
Page 12 of 19

during the nineteenth century) were uniquely placed to provide individuals with a sense
of identity, group solidarity, and location in time. This common function may account for
some of the similarities in structure and approach between different national histories. As
Berger notes, national histories ‘operated routinely with (p. 725) models of rise and de
cline, golden ages, lost homelands and national revivals’.53 Debate over foundational mo
ments, the roles of national heroes, and the unique properties of individual nations were
also common to many texts. National histories were often very similar at a structural lev
el, and their popular resonance was at least partly due to the identity-reinforcing function
of their underlying narratives.
In addition, however, it is also likely that national histories were peculiarly successful be
cause they drew on popular imagery surviving from pre-national eras, and perhaps even
the ‘myth-symbol complexes’ identified by Armstrong and Smith. As Berger notes, ‘many
of the tropes of national belonging and identity, which were prominent ingredients of na
tional histories, went back to medieval and early modern times’.54 In this way, national
histories functioned as ‘master narratives’, that is to say, ‘attempts to answer important
questions about cultural identity’.55 Berger sees master narratives as ways of thinking
about and conceptualizing the world that are vital for the successful functioning of soci
eties. Arguably, the national master narrative came to be the most powerful of all, reach
ing back to the distant past and allowing individuals to find a place ‘not only in the world
in which he or she live[d], but also in an uninterrupted chain of being…thus carrying a
promise of immortality’.56
Thus, while this topic is the subject of ongoing, much more detailed research (see note 4),
it appears that the particular salience of national histories to nationalism, especially in
the period from 1750, is twofold. In the first place (drawing on well-established cultural
motifs) they helped to provide individuals with a powerful sense of identity in the present,
supporting the development of ‘cultural nationalism’ during a period of very rapid social
change. This statement holds true whether nationalism is viewed primarily as an intellec
tual doctrine or as a by-product of industrialization. Then, this sense of cultural identity
came to be very useful politically in binding populations to their states. Hence national
histories were very often sponsored and encouraged by political and power elites, often
to the extent of invention or construction. National history arose in response to the need
for new forms of identity in a changing world but then became politically useful, thus
both reflecting and helping to augment nationalism.
Conclusion
The writing of history has always been intertwined with the development of nationalism
in both its cultural and political forms. However, the nature and strength of the links be
tween the two have varied across time and place. Before about 1750, while some ‘nation
al’ histories were written, these remained largely the preserve of a limited, elite reader
ship, and were often of more cultural than political significance. In the period since 1750,
and particularly in nineteenth-century Europe, new forms of academic history writing be
Page 13 of 19

came closely associated with the spread of nationalism as both a significant, mass form of
cultural identification and a pervasive ideology of power (p. 726) politics. While the preva
lence of teleological national histories gradually declined in areas such as Europe and
America during the twentieth century, national histories remained very important in other
parts of the world throughout the period of decolonization.
While by no means defunct, national histories have now become sufficiently unfashion
able within the historical profession for some to raise the possibility of their eventual de
cline. Stuart Woolf, for example, has considered the possibility of a supra-national ‘history
of Europe’, the continuation of a tradition of history writing that was in many ways inter
rupted by the era of the nation state.57 Charles Maier has argued that, with hindsight, the
period c.1860–c.1980 can be viewed as one in which ‘territoriality’—the attribution of sig
nificance to the control of bordered political space’—was a novel and defining character
istic. For Maier, territoriality has begun to lose its significance during the past several
decades, with the result that ‘the once-reassuring congruence between identity space and
decision space has weakened’.58 If this is true, it is at least plausible that national histo
ries will further lose their purchase on group identities. Certainly, among historians at
least, there has been a rise in interest in the possibility of writing genuinely transnational
history.59
However, to paraphrase Mark Twain, it may be that the reports of the death of national
history have been exaggerated. While it is certainly true that this is the general picture to
be gleaned from the perusal of historical journals, it is also important to consider the
function that national narratives (broadly defined) have in supplying both group and indi
vidual identity in the present. If, as Berger has claimed, national histories are cultural
‘master narratives’, strongly woven into the fabric of everyday life and drawing on
metaphors and imagery that have strong public purchase, they are unlikely to be success
fully dismantled just because historians point out their inherent flaws. After all, nine
teenth-century national histories were powerful not because they were true but because
of popular belief in their truth.
While academic historians have increasingly moved away from interpreting the past for
mass public consumption into an arena of specialized and rarefied professional debate,
this does not mean that the popular appetite for national narratives has waned. Indeed,
Jay Winter has argued for what he calls a ‘memory boom’—increased consumption of cul
tural products that confer/confirm identity—at the end of the twentieth century.60 Rather,
it is simply the case that national stories are no longer being provided primarily by pro
fessional historians. Other cultural products such as television narratives of national
pasts, filmic representations of key national events, and novels set in specific historical
contexts have flowed into the vacuum created by the withdrawal of professional histori
ans. The challenge for professional historians today is to represent the new post-national
versions of history they are developing in ways that will engage with the wider public.
Page 14 of 19

Suggested Further Reading

Berger, S. (2005) ‘A Return to the National Paradigm? National History Writing in Ger
many, Italy, France, and Britain from 1945 to the Present’, The Journal of Modern History,
77 (September), 629–78.
Berger, S. and Mycock, A. (eds.) (2006) ‘Europe and its National Histories’, storia della
storiografia, vol. 50, 629–78.
Berger, S., Donovan, M., and Passmore, K. (eds.) (1999) Writing National Histories: West
ern Europe Since 1800, London.
Berger, S. (ed.) (2007) Writing the Nation: A Global Perspective, Basingstoke.
Breuilly, J. (2002) ‘Historians and the Nation’, in Burke, P. (ed.) History and Historians in
the Twentieth Century, Oxford, 55–87.
Iggers, G. (1997) Historiography in the Twentieth Century: From Scientific Objectivity to

the Postmodern Challenge, London.
Lawrence, P. (2005) Nationalism: History and Theory, Harlow.
Smith, A. D. (1992) ‘Nationalism and the Historians’, International Journal of

(p. 730)
Comparative Sociology, XXXIII, nos. 1–2, 58–80.
Torstendahl, R. and Veit-Brause, I. (eds.) (1996) History-Making: The Intellectual and So
cial Formation of a Discipline—Konferenser 37, Stockholm.
Woolf, S. (2003) ‘Europe and its Historians’, Contemporary European History, 12, no. 3,
323–37.
Notes:
(1.) R. G. Suny (2002) ‘Constructing Primordialism: Old Histories for New Nations’, The
Journal of Modern History, 73, no. 4 (December), 862–96, 869.
(2.) A. D. Smith (2000) The Nation in History, Oxford, 3; S. Grosby (2005) Nationalism: A
Very Short Introduction, Oxford, 20.
(3.) E. Hobsbawm and T. Ranger (eds.) (1983) The Invention of Tradition, Cambridge; J.
Breuilly (1993) Nationalism and the State, Manchester.
(4.) An early work on this topic was Anthony Smith’s (1992) ‘Nationalism and the Histori
ans’, International Journal of Comparative Sociology, 33, nos. 1–2, 58–80. A new wave of
scholarship began with the publication of S. Berger, M. Donovan, and K. Passmore (1999)
Writing National Histories: Western Europe since 1800, London. Berger is a key figure in
the field, coordinating a large European Science Foundation research project—‘Represen
Page 15 of 19

tations of the Past: The Writing of National Histories in Europe’—and editing an accompa
nying series of books with Palgrave Macmillan.
(5.) M. Samuels (2004) The Spectacular Past: Popular History and the Novel in Nine
teenth-Century France, Ithaca, NY, and London, 4–5.
(6.) S. Grosby (1995) ‘Territoriality: The Transcendental, Primordial Feature of Modern

Societies’, Nations and Nationalism, 1, no. 2, 143–62, 144; A. D. Smith (1986) The Ethnic
Origins of Nations, London, 69.
(7.) A. Hastings (1997) The Construction of Nationhood: Ethnicity, Religion and National
ism, Cambridge, 15; L. Greenfeld (1992) Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity, Cam
bridge, MA, 6.
(8.) S. Berger (2007) ‘The Power of National Pasts: Writing National History in Nine
teenth- and Twentieth-Century Europe’, in Berger (ed.) Writing the Nation: A Global Per
spective, London, 30.
(9.) S. Reynolds (1997) Kingdoms and Communities in Western Europe, 900–1300, Oxford,
38.
(10.) C. Hirschi (2005) Wettkampf der Nationen: Konstruktionen einer deutschen Ehrge
meinschaft an der Wende vom Mittelalter zur Neuzeit, Göttingen.
(11.) Q. E. Wang (2007) ‘Between Myth and History: The Construction of a National Past
in Modern East Asia’, in Berger (ed.) Writing the Nation, 3.
(12.) R. McKitterick (2004) History and Memory in the Carolingian World, Cambridge, 7.
(13.) See the essays by S. Reynolds and J. Breuilly in L. Scales and O. Zimmer (eds.)
(2005) Power and the Nation in European History, Cambridge, quotes from 54 and 68.
(14.) R. Torstendahl and I. Veit-Brause (eds.) (1996) ‘History-Making: The Intellectual and
Social Formation of a Discipline’, Konferenser 37, Stockholm, 95–113, 98ff.
(15.) R. Koselleck (2004) Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time, New York.
(16.) For a concise summary, see U. Özkirimli (2000) Theories of Nationalism, London.
(17.) L. Raphael (2000) ‘Flexible Response? Strategies of Academic Historians Towards

Larger Markets for National Historiographies and Increasing Scientific Standards’, in R.
Torstendahl (ed.) An Assessment of Twentieth-Century Historiography—Konferenser 49,
Stockholm, 127–47, 127–8. On the development of the historical profession, see G. Iggers
(1997) Historiography in the Twentieth Century, London; and B. Stuchtey and P. Wende
(eds.) (2000) British and German Historiography, 1751–1950, Oxford.
(18.) Iggers, Historiography, 28.
Page 16 of 19

(19.) S. Berger (1997) The Search for Normality: National Identity and Historical Con
sciousness in Germany since 1800, Oxford, 4.
(20.) P. Winzen (1981) ‘Treitschke’s Influence on the Rise of Imperialist and anti-British
Nationalism in Germany’, in P. Kennedy and A. Nicholls (eds.) Nationalist and Racialist
Movements in Britain and Germany before 1914, London, 155.
(21.) J. Michelet (1967) The History of the French Revolution, ed. G. Wright, Chicago, IL.
(22.) Cited in P. Nora (ed.) (1997) ‘L’histoire de France de Lavisse’, in Les lieux de mé
moire, II. La nation, Paris, 322.
(23.) Berger, Writing the Nation, 1.
(24.) R. Plaschka (1974) ‘The Political Significance of Frantisek Palacky’, in W. Laqueur

and G. L. Mosse (eds.) Historians in Politics, London, 91–111.
(25.) For example, on the retrospective construction of ‘Finnishness’, see D. Fewster

(2006) Visions of Past Glory: Nationalism and the Construction of Early Finnish History,
Helsinki. On the importance of historians in relation to Central European nationalism, see
M. Baar (2009) Historians and the Nation in the Nineteenth Century: The Case of East
Central Europe, Oxford.
(26.) G. Iggers (1968) The German Conception of History, Middletown, CT; J. Seeley
(1883) The Expansion of England, London.
(27.) E. de Freitas Dutra (2007) ‘The Mirror of History and Images of the Nation: The In
ventions of a National Identity in Brazil and its Contrasts with Similar Enterprises in Mex
ico and Argentina’, in Berger (ed.) Writing the Nation, 84–102.
(28.) A. Smith (2007) ‘Seven Narratives in North American History’, in Berger (ed.) Writ
ing the Nation, 63–83.
(29.) On this, see P. Burke, ed. (2002) History and Historians in the Twentieth Century,
Oxford, 3.
(30.) Lord Acton (1956) ‘Nationality’, in Essays on Power and Freedom, London, 169.
(31.) See, for example, I. McLaughlin (1926) ‘History and Sociology: A Comparison of
their Methods’, The American Journal of Sociology, 32, no. 3, 379–95.
(32.) K. D. Erdmann (2005) Towards a Global Community of Historians: The International

Historical Congresses and the International Committee of Historical Sciences, 1898–
2000, Oxford, 68–9.
(33.) Cited in P. Lambert (1998) ‘Paving the “peculiar path”: German Nationalism and His
toriography since Ranke’, in G. Cubitt (ed.) Imagining Nations, Manchester, 99.
(34.) For an overview, see J. Burrow (2007) A History of Histories, London, 478–94.
Page 17 of 19

(35.) A. Iriya (2004) ‘Transnational History’, Contemporary European History, 13, no. 2,
211–22, 213. On the influence of the social sciences and the challenge of postmodernism,
see Iggers, Historiography.
(36.) Erdmann, Towards a Global Community, x.
(37.) S. Berger (2005) ‘A Return to the National Paradigm? National History Writing in
Germany, Italy, France, and Britain from 1945 to the Present’, The Journal of Modern His
tory, 77 (September), 629–78, 644.
(38.) Suny, ‘Constructing Primordialism’. See also S. Antohi, B. Trencsényi, and P. Apor
(eds.) (2007) Narratives Unbound: Historical Studies in Post-Communist Eastern Europe,
Budapest.
(39.) R. Seshan (2007) ‘Writing the Nation in India: Communalism and Historiography’, in
Berger (ed.) Writing the Nation, 155–78.
(40.) I. Thioub (2007) ‘Writing National and Transnational History in Africa: The Example
of the Dakar School’, in Berger (ed.) Writing the Nation, 197.
(41.) Thioub, ‘Writing National and Transnational History in Africa’,12.
(42.) D. Blackbourn and G. Eley (1984) The Peculiarities of German History, Oxford.
(43.) Iggers, Historiography, 139.
(44.) Suny, ‘Constructing Primordialism’, 870.
(45.) C. Hayes (1926) Essays on Nationalism, New York, 62. For a more recent, and more
sophisticated, cultural history of the idea of nationalism, see J. Leerssen (2008) National
Thought in Europe: A Cultural History, Amsterdam.
(46.) K. Deutsch (1956) Nationalism and Social Communication, Cambridge, MA; E. Gell
ner (2006) Nations and Nationalism, Oxford.
(47.) Hobsbawm and Ranger, Invention of Tradition, 1.
(48.) J. Armstrong (1982) Nations before Nationalism, Chapel Hill, NC; A. D. Smith (1986)
The Ethnic Origins of Nations, London.
(49.) Cited in M. Guibernau (1996) Nationalisms: The Nation-State and Nationalism in the
Twentieth Century, Cambridge, 84.
(50.) E. Gellner (1984) Nations and Nationalism, New York, 56.
(51.) Cited in C. Crossley (1993) French Historians and Romanticism: Thierry, Guizot, the
Saint-Simonians, Quinet, and Michelet, London and New York, 198.
(52.) P. Mandler (2006) ‘What is “National Identity”? Definitions and Applications in Mod
ern British Historiography?’, Modern Intellectual History, 3, no. 2, 271–97, 280.
Page 18 of 19

(53.) Berger (ed.) Writing the Nation, 9.
(54.) Berger (ed.) Writing the Nation,31.
(55.) S. Berger and A. Mycock (eds.) (2006) ‘Europe and its National Histories’, Storia del
la storiografia, 50, 9.
(56.) Y. Tamir (1995) ‘The Enigma of Nationalism’, World Politics, 47 (April), 418–40, 437.
(57.) S. Woolf (2003) ‘Europe and its Historians’, Contemporary European History, 12, no.
3, 323–37.
(58.) C. S. Maier (2000) ‘Consigning the Twentieth Century to History: Alternative Narra
tives for the Modern Era’, American Historical Review (June), 807–31, 823.
(59.) C. Bayly et al. (2006) ‘AHR Conversation: On Transnational History’, American His
torical Review, 111, no. 5 (December), 1440–64.
(60.) J. Winter (2000) ‘The Generation of Memory: Reflections on the “Memory Boom” in
Contemporary Historical Studies’, Bulletin of the GHI, 27 (fall), 69–92.
Paul Lawrence
Paul Lawrence is Senior Lecturer in History at the Open University.
Page 19 of 19

Nationalism and Historical Writing

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Nationalism and Historical Writing

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Nationalism and Historical Writing

Nationalism and Historical Writing

Print Publication Date: Mar 2013 Subject: History, Historiography

Abstract and Keywords

Keywords: Nationalism, history, historiography, historian(s), identity, narrativity, modernity, writing

Certainly, a sense of a shared past is a feature of many contemporary definitions of both

Subscriber: Claremont University Consortium (Claremont Colleges); date: 28 August 2021

Historical Writing and Nationalism before c.

Subscriber: Claremont University Consortium (Claremont Colleges); date: 28 August 2021

However, while it is possible to locate instances of historians writing forms of national

Subscriber: Claremont University Consortium (Claremont Colleges); date: 28 August 2021

Writing National Histories, c.1750–1945

Nineteenth-century historians were often highly partisan advocates of the interests of

Subscriber: Claremont University Consortium (Claremont Colleges); date: 28 August 2021

Subscriber: Claremont University Consortium (Claremont Colleges); date: 28 August 2021

Countries whose histories came to be written by non-original, predominantly

It is tempting to assume therefore that, whereas nineteenth-century historians con­

Subscriber: Claremont University Consortium (Claremont Colleges); date: 28 August 2021

The Persistence of National Histories after the

Subscriber: Claremont University Consortium (Claremont Colleges); date: 28 August 2021

Subscriber: Claremont University Consortium (Claremont Colleges); date: 28 August 2021

Subscriber: Claremont University Consortium (Claremont Colleges); date: 28 August 2021

The Link between Historiography and Na­

Subscriber: Claremont University Consortium (Claremont Colleges); date: 28 August 2021

Subscriber: Claremont University Consortium (Claremont Colleges); date: 28 August 2021

The idea that nationalism—cultural and/or political attachment to the nation—provides a

Subscriber: Claremont University Consortium (Claremont Colleges); date: 28 August 2021

Subscriber: Claremont University Consortium (Claremont Colleges); date: 28 August 2021

Subscriber: Claremont University Consortium (Claremont Colleges); date: 28 August 2021

Suggested Further Reading

Berger, S. (ed.) (2007) Writing the Nation: A Global Perspective, Basingstoke.

Iggers, G. (1997) Historiography in the Twentieth Century: From Scientific Objectivity to

Lawrence, P. (2005) Nationalism: History and Theory, Harlow.

Smith, A. D. (1992) ‘Nationalism and the Historians’, International Journal of

Comparative Sociology, XXXIII, nos. 1–2, 58–80.

Subscriber: Claremont University Consortium (Claremont Colleges); date: 28 August 2021

(6.) S. Grosby (1995) ‘Territoriality: The Transcendental, Primordial Feature of Modern

(17.) L. Raphael (2000) ‘Flexible Response? Strategies of Academic Historians Towards

(18.) Iggers, Historiography, 28.

Subscriber: Claremont University Consortium (Claremont Colleges); date: 28 August 2021

(23.) Berger, Writing the Nation, 1.

(24.) R. Plaschka (1974) ‘The Political Significance of Frantisek Palacky’, in W. Laqueur

(25.) For example, on the retrospective construction of ‘Finnishness’, see D. Fewster

(32.) K. D. Erdmann (2005) Towards a Global Community of Historians: The International

Subscriber: Claremont University Consortium (Claremont Colleges); date: 28 August 2021

(36.) Erdmann, Towards a Global Community, x.

(41.) Thioub, ‘Writing National and Transnational History in Africa’,12.

(43.) Iggers, Historiography, 139.

(44.) Suny, ‘Constructing Primordialism’, 870.

(47.) Hobsbawm and Ranger, Invention of Tradition, 1.

(50.) E. Gellner (1984) Nations and Nationalism, New York, 56.

Subscriber: Claremont University Consortium (Claremont Colleges); date: 28 August 2021

(53.) Berger (ed.) Writing the Nation, 9.

(54.) Berger (ed.) Writing the Nation,31.

Paul Lawrence is Senior Lecturer in History at the Open University.

Subscriber: Claremont University Consortium (Claremont Colleges); date: 28 August 2021

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