Nationalizing the Past pp 426-451 | Cite as
Rising Like a Phoenix … The Renaissance of National History Writing in Germany and Britain since the 1980s
Abstract
It has become a bit of a commonplace that the Second World War marked a major break in the history of nationalism in Europe. Published opinion, which includes many historians, seems to agree that the devastation of war had a sobering effect on the nations of Europe. Nationalism acquired a bad press and was replaced, during the Cold War, by ideas of socialist internationalism in Communist Eastern Europe and the common European market in Western Europe. It looked as though the classical age of national master narratives was over. However, as I have argued elsewhere, it would be premature to see those national master narratives as having been in terminal decline since 1945.2 As the histories of class had lost much of their identitarian clout by the 1980s, it left the door wide open for the reemergence of nation as prime identitarian focus for history writing, and indeed we find major debates on national history in virtually every West European country.
Keywords
National Identity British Isle National Consciousness National History Master NarrativePreview
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Reference
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