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The role of national archives in constructing national master narratives in Europe

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Abstract

This article analyses the role of national archives for the construction of national master narratives. It starts off by discussing the different origins of national archives, the merits of talking about proto-national archives and the importance of the French revolution for establishing the modern national archive system. It goes on to highlight the difficulties of historians with obtaining access to the archives in the nineteenth century. The importance of archives in authenticating and legitimating the authority of historical work meant that archives became increasingly important for the professionalization of history writing. As history writing saw one of its prime tasks in legitimating the nation-state, archives soon occupied an important position for nation-building projects. They got involved in editing sources regarded as being of national importance, and they played a role in projects of national pedagogy. The article also charts efforts to centralize archives at the national level which resulted in failure almost everywhere. Nevertheless, whilst archives were clearly important for imperial and also subnational projects, it was the national archives that captured the imagination of nation-states in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Despite the importance of national archives, the articles goes on to argue that it is striking that most national master narratives in the modern period were not based on archival work.

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Notes

  1. In English, the archive is usually referred to as Privy State Archive, pointing away from the literal meaning of ‘geheim’ which is ‘secret’.

  2. I am grateful to David Laven for pointing this out to me. Together with his research associate Elsa Damien, he is currently pursuing an Arts and Humanities Research Council-funded project entitled ‘Venice remembered: identity and the uses of history in Risorgimento and Liberal Italy, 1815–1922’, which promises to shed important light on historical cultures in nineteenth century Venice.

  3. On the plunder of archives in Belgium, compare Herrebout (2010); on Eastern Europe, see also Lehr (2007) and Grimsted (2001).

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Acknowledgments

This article was first delivered as a paper at the World Historical Congress in Amsterdam 2010. I am grateful to Richard Vann, who organized the panel on ‘Who Owns History? Sources Past and Present’ for asking me to contribute to the panel. Philipp Müller, Elizabeth Shepherd and two anonymous reviewers of the journal kindly read the article and made a number of valuable suggestions, for which I owe them thanks. I am deeply indebted to Tom Verschaffel for discussing this topic with me on several occasions. Finally, Denise Schneider brought the notes of this article in line with the publisher’s guidelines, for which I also thank her. The remaining shortcomings are, as always, entirely my own.

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    Stefan Berger

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Berger, S. The role of national archives in constructing national master narratives in Europe. Arch Sci 13, 1–22 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10502-012-9188-z

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