 | The examples and perspective in this articlemay not represent aworldwide view of the subject. You mayimprove this article, discuss the issue on thetalk page, orcreate a new article, as appropriate.(September 2021) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
Historiography is the study of how history is written. One pervasive influence upon the writing of history has beennationalism, a set of beliefs about political legitimacy andcultural 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.[1]
Nationalist history might be defined as history which uses the nation as its main category for historical people, places and actions. The eighteenth and nineteenth century saw the emergence ofnationalist ideologies.[2][3][4]John Breuilly notes how the "historical grounding of nationalism was reinforced by its close ties with the emergence of professional academic historical writing."[5] During theFrench Revolution a national identity was crafted, identifying the common people with theGauls. InGermany historians and humanists, such asJohann Gottfried Herder andJohann 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 thisGerman nation.[6]
A significanthistoriographical 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, theMonumenta Germaniae Historica. The sponsors of theMGH, 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 theMGH's editors.[7]
This model of scholarship focusing on detailed historical and linguistic investigations of the origins of a nation, set by the founders of theMGH, 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[citation needed].
The efforts of these nineteenth century historians provided the intellectual foundations for both justifying the creation of newnation states and the expansion of already existing ones.[8] AsGeorg Iggers notes, these historians were often highly partisan and "went into the archives to find evidence that would support their nationalistic and class preconceptions and thus give them the aura of scientific authority."[9] Paul Lawrence concurs, noting how – even with nationalisms still without states – historians "often sought to provide a historical basis for theclaims to nationhood and political independence of states that did not yet exist."[10]
 | This sectiondoes notcite anysources. Please helpimprove this section byadding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged andremoved.(September 2021) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
The difficulty faced by any national history is the changeable nature ofethnicity. 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 theArmenians as "colonists of thePhrygians", 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 asHellenes", implying that a formerlyPelasgian group over time acquired "Greekness". TheAlamanni are described byAsinius Quadratus as originally a conglomerate of various tribes which acquired a common identity over time. All these processes are summarized under the termethnogenesis.
In ancient times, ethnicities often derived their or their rulers' origin from divine or semi-divine founders of a mythical past (for example, theAnglo-Saxons deriving their dynasties fromWoden; see alsoEuhemerism). In modern times, such mythicalaetiologies 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 theUrartians, theAlbanians claiming as their origin thePelasgians (supposedly includingIllyrians,Epirotes, andAncient Macedonians), theGeorgians claiming as their origin theMushki—all of the mentioned groups being known only from either ancient historiographers or archaeology.
Nationalist ideologies frequently employ results ofarchaeology andancient history aspropaganda, often significantly distorting them to fit their aims, cultivating nationalmythologies andnational mysticism. Frequently this involves the uncritical identification of one's ownethnic group with some ancient or even prehistoric (known only archaeologically) group,[11] whether mainstream scholarship accepts as plausible or reject aspseudoarchaeology 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 includeKurds claiming identity with theMedes,[12]Albanians claiming as their origin thePelasgians,[13]Bulgarians claiming identity with theThracians,Iraqis withSumer,[14]Georgians claiming as their origin theMushki, all of the mentioned groups being known only from either ancient historiographers or archaeology. In extreme cases, nationalists will ignore the process ofethnogenesis altogether and claim ethnic identity of their own group with some scarcely attested ancient ethnicity known to scholarship by the chances of textual transmission or archaeological excavation.
Historically, various hypotheses regarding theUrheimat of theProto-Indo-Europeans has been a popular object of patriotic pride, quite regardless of their respective scholarly values:
With historians such asErnest Gellner,Benedict Anderson, andAnthony D. Smith adopting more critical approaches to nationalism, some began to look at how this ideology hadaffected 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".[16]
Eric Hobsbawm pointed out the central role of the historical profession in the development of nationalism:
Historians are to nationalism what poppy-growers in Pakistan are to the heroin-addicts: we supply the essential raw material for the market. Nations without a past are contradictions in terms. What makes a nation is the past, what justifies one nation against others is the past, and historians are the people who produce it. So my profession, which has always been mixed up in politics, becomes an essential component of nationalism.[17]
Martin Bernal's much debated bookBlack Athena (1987) argues that the historiography onancient Greece has been in part influenced by nationalism and ethnocentrism.[18] He also claimed that influences by non-Greek or non-Indo-European cultures on Ancient Greek were marginalized.[18]
According to the medieval historianPatrick J. Geary:
[The] modern [study of] 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 ofethnic nationalism, and the poison has seeped deep into popular consciousness.[19]
Nationalist historiographies have emerged in a number of countries and some have been subject to in-depth scholarly analysis.
In 2007, Kate Quinn presented an analysis of the Cuban nationalist historiography.[20]
In 2003, Rommel Curaming analyzed the Indonesian nationalistic historiography.[21]
Nationalist historiography in South Korea has been the subject of 2001 study by Kenneth M. Wells.[22]
In 2003, Patrick Jory analyzed the Thai nationalistic historiography.[23]
In 2004, Terence Ranger noted that "Over the past two or three years there has emerged in Zimbabwe a sustained attempt by theMugabe regime to propagate what is called ‘patriotic history’."[24]
