Seven Narratives in North American History: Thinking the Nation in Canada, Quebec and the United States

Abstract

The product of a complex interaction between a constantly shifting array of conceptual frameworks and the changing constellation of fact and event they responded to and configured, national history in North America developed through a sequence of narrative structures the general pattern of which was at once broadly shared and uniquely its own. Never entirely dominant, always in some measure the object of challenge and contestation, these narrative structures nonetheless grounded and framed the bulk of the work done in the period of their prominence and centrality. Shaped initially by amateurs, belletrists and journalists, and after the 1880s, by professional, usually university-based, historians, they at once reflected and influenced opinion, mobilised support and enthusiasm for the nation, naturalised its existence, legitimated its claims, and assisted it to its place as the principal focus of citizen loyalty and allegiance. Clear in their broad assertions and import, performing their essential duties even after professional specialisation and sometimes excessive detailing encroached, projecting precisely the kind of descriptive and explanatory power demanded by the age in which they were produced, they did work of a consistently important nation-building, understanding-enhancing, and information-yielding sort.