Historiography and nationalism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historiography_and_nationalism

Historiography and nationalism

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Historiography is the study of how history is written. One pervasive influence upon the writing of history
has been nationalism, a set of beliefs about political legitimacy and "cultural identity". Nationalism has
provided a significant framework for historical writing in Europe and in those former colonies influenced by
Europe since the nineteenth century. According to the medievalist historian Patrick 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 of ethnic nationalism, and the poison
has seeped deep into popular consciousness.[1]

Contents
1 Origins of national histories
2 Time depth and ethnicity
3 Nationalism and ancient history
4 Study of nationalist historiographies
5 See also
6 Notes
7 References
8 Further reading
8.1 Nationalism in general
8.2 Specific Nationalisms
8.3 Recent conferences
9 External links

Origins of national histories

Although the emergence of the nation into political consciousness is often placed in the nineteenth century,
attempts by political leaders to craft new national identities, with their dynasty at the center, have been
identified as early as the late Roman Empire. The Barbarian rulers of the successor states crafted these new
identities on the basis of descent of the ruler from ancient noble families, a shared descent of a single people
with common language, custom, and religious identity, and a definition in law of the rights and
responsibilities of members of the new nation.[2]
The eighteenth and nineteenth century saw the resurgence of national ideologies. During the French
revolution a national identity was crafted, identifying the common people with the Gauls. In Germany
historians and humanists, such as Johann Gottfried Herder and Johann 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 this German nation.[3]
A significant historiographical outcome of this movement of German nationalism was the formation of a
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"Society for Older German Historical Knowledge," which sponsored the editing of a massive collection of
documents of German history, the Monumenta Germaniae Historica. The sponsors of the MGH, 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 the MGH's editors.[4]
This model of scholarship focusing on detailed historical and linguistic investigations of the origins of a
nation, set by the founders of the MGH, 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 analyzed from
narrow parochial viewpoints.

Time depth and ethnicity

The difficulty faced by any national history is the changeable nature of ethnicity. That one nation may turn
into another nation over time, both by splitting (colonisation) and by merging (syncretism, acculturation) is
implicitly acknowledged by ancient writers; Herodotus describes the Armenians as "colonists of the
Phrygians", 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 as Hellenes",
implying that a formerly Pelasgian group over time acquired "Greekness". The Alamanni are described by
Asinius Quadratus as originally a conglomerate of various tribes which acquired a common identity over
time. All these processes are summarized under the term ethnogenesis.
In ancient times, ethnicities often derived their or their rulers' origin from divine or semi-divine founders of a
mythical past (for example, the Anglo-Saxons deriving their dynasties from Woden; see also Euhemerism).
In modern times, such mythical aetiologies 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 the Urartians,
the Albanians claiming as their origin the Illyrians, the Georgians claiming as their origin the Mushki, or
Hindu nationalists claiming as the origin of their religion the Indus Valley Civilization (see Indigenous Aryans
(India)) all of the mentioned groups being known only from either ancient historiographers or
archaeology.

Nationalism and ancient history

Nationalist ideologies frequently employ results of archaeology and ancient history as propaganda, often
significantly distorting them to fit their aims, cultivating national mythologies and national mysticism.
Frequently this involves the uncritical identification of one's own ethnic group with some ancient or even
prehistoric (known only archaeologically) group,[1] (http://www.umass.edu/wsp/methodology/delusions
/antiquity.html) whether mainstream scholarship accepts as plausible or reject as pseudoarchaeology 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 include Albanians claiming as their origin the Illyrians,[5] Bulgarians claiming identity with the
Thracians, Iraqi propaganda invoking Sumer or Babylonia,[6] Georgians claiming as their origin the Mushki,
Hindu nationalists claiming as their origin the Indus Valley Civilization all of the mentioned groups being
known only from either ancient historiographers or archaeology. In extreme cases, nationalists will ignore
the process of ethnogenesis altogether and claim ethnic identity of their own group with some scarcely
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attested ancient ethnicity known to scholarship by the chances of textual transmission or archaeological
excavation.
Historically, various hypotheses regarding the Urheimat of the Proto-Indo-Europeans has been a popular
object of patriotic pride, quite regardless of their respective scholarly values:
Albanian Nationalism: Protochronism, descent from the Illyrians and Pelasgians
Northern European origins of an Aryan race (Germanic mysticism, Nazi mysticism, Ahnenerbe)
"Indigenous Aryans" and Archaeoastronomy and Vedic chronology in Hindu nationalism (see also Out
of India theory)
Pan-Turkism and Neo-Eurasianism postulate mythical origins of humanity or culture in Central Asia,
(Sun Language Theory, Arkaim)
Dacomania or Protochronism is the corresponding concept in Romanian nationalism.
Slavic nationalism: Sarmatism, Bosnian pyramids, Macedonism, Illyrian movement
Armenian nationalism: Armenia, Subartu and Sumer
Pakistani nationalism : Indus valley civilization

Study of nationalist historiographies

Nationalism was so much taken for granted as the "proper" way to organize states and view history that
nationalization of history was essentially invisible to historians until fairly recently (the 1980s or 1990s).
Then scholars such as Ernest Gellner, Benedict Anderson, and Anthony D. Smith made attempts to step back
from nationalism and view it critically. Historians began to ask themselves how this ideology had affected
the writing of history.
Speaking to an audience of anthropologists, the historian E. J. 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.[7]
Martin Bernal's much debated book Black Athena (1987) argues that the historiography on Ancient Greece
has been in part influenced by nationalism and ethnocentrism.[8] He also claimed that influences by
non-Greek or non-Indo-European cultures on Ancient Greek were marginalized.[8]

See also
Assyria-Germany

Historical revisionism

National mysticism

connection

(negationism)

Nationalism

Ethnic nationalism

Historiography

Nazi archaeology

Ethnogenesis

Irredentism

Primordialism

Gothicismus

Korean nationalist

Pseudoarchaeology

Historical revisionism

historiography

Romantic nationalism

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Notes
1. ^ Patrick J. Geary, The Myth of Nations (http://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN0691114811), (Princeton:
Princeton Univ. Pr., 2002), p. 15. (http://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN0691114811&id=A26sv2eEwAC&pg=RA1-PA15&lpg=RA1-PA15&sig=fAFIa9yMJIcNKP7A-I_k7sXKRNU)
2. ^ Patrick J. Geary, The Myth of Nations, (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Pr., 2002), pp. 6062, 108-9.
3. ^ Patrick J. Geary, The Myth of Nations, (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Pr., 2002), pp. 21-25.
4. ^ Patrick J. Geary, The Myth of Nations, (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Pr., 2002), pp. 26-29.
5. ^ Stephanie Schwandner-Sievers and Bernd Jrgen Fischer. Albanian Identities. 2002, page 73-4
6. ^ Harkhu, Umangh (2005), "Does History Repeat Itself? The Ideology Of Saddam Hussein And The
Mesopotamian Era" (http://academic.sun.ac.za/mil/scientia_militaria/internet%20vol%2033%281%29
/combined.pdf), Scientia Militaria / South African Journal of Military Studies 33 (1): 4771, ISSN 1022-8136
(https://www.worldcat.org/issn/1022-8136)
7. ^ Hobsbawm, E. J. 1992. "Ethnicity and Nationalism in Europe Today Anthropology Today 8(1): 3-8.
8. ^ a b C.f. Arvidsson 2006:50-51

References
Arvidsson, Stefan (2006), Aryan Idols: Indo-European Mythology as Ideology and Science, translated
by Sonia Wichmann, Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-02860-7

Further reading
Nationalism in general
Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism,
2nd. ed. London: Verso, 1991. ISBN 0-86091-546-8
Bond, George C. and Angela Gilliam (eds.) Social Construction of the Past: Representation as
Power. London: Routledge, 1994. ISBN 0-415-15224-0
Daz-Andreu, Margarita. A World History of Nineteenth-Century Archaeology. Nationalism,
Colonialism and the Past. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2007. ISBN 978-0-19-921717-5
Daz-Andreu, Margarita and Champion, Tim (eds.) Nationalism and Archaeology in Europe. London:
UCL Press; Boulder, Co.: Westview Press, 1996. ISBN 1-85728-289-2 (UCL Press); ISBN
0-8133-3051-3 (hb) & 978-0813330518 (pb) (Westview)
Ferro, Marc. The Use and Abuse of History: Or How the Past Is Taught to Children.
London:Routledge, 2003, ISBN 0-415-28592-5
Geary, Patrick J. The Myth of Nations: The Medieval Origins of Europe. Princeton and Oxford:
Princeton University Press, 2002 ISBN 0-691-11481-1
Gellner, Ernest. Nations and Nationalism. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983. ISBN
0-8014-9263-7
Hobsbawm, Eric. Nations and Nationalism since 1780. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.
ISBN 0-521-43961-2

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Hobsbawm, Eric J. and Terence Ranger, ed.. The Invention of Tradition. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1992 ISBN 0-521-43773-3
Kohl, Philip L. "Nationalism and Archaeology: On the Constructions of Nations and the
Reconstructions of the Remote past", Annual Review of Anthropology, 27, (1998): 223-246.
Smith, Anthony D. The Ethnic Origins of Nations. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1988. ISBN
0-631-16169-4
Suny, Ronald Grigor. "Constructing Primordialism: Old Histories for New Nations", The Journal of
Modern History, 73, 4 (Dec, 2001): 862-896.
Bergunder, Michael Contested Past: Anti-Brahmanical and Hindu nationalist reconstructions of
Indian prehistory, Historiographia Linguistica, Volume 31, Number 1, 2004, 59-104.
G. Fagan (ed.), Archaeological Fantasies: How Pseudoarchaeology Misrepresents the Past and
Misleads the Public Routledge (2006), ISBN 0-415-30593-4.
Kohl, Fawcett (eds.), Nationalism, Politics and the Practice of Archaeology, Cambridge University
Press (1996), ISBN 0-521-55839-5
Bruce Lincoln, Theorizing Myth: Narrative, Ideology, and Scholarship, University Of Chicago Press
(2000), ISBN 0-226-48202-2.

Specific Nationalisms
Baltic
Krapauskas, Virgil. Nationalism and Historiography: The Case of Nineteenth-Century Lithuanian
Historicism. Boulder, Colo.: East European Monographs, 2000. ISBN 0-88033-457-6
Celtic
Chapman, Malcolm. The Celts: The Construction of a Myth. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1992.
ISBN 0-312-07938-9
Dietler, Michael. "'Our Ancestors the Gauls': Archaeology, Ethnic Nationalism, and the Manipulation
of Celtic Identity in Modern Europe". American Anthropologist, N.S. 96 (1994): 584-605.
James, Simon. The Atlantic Celts: Ancient People or Modern Invention? London: British Museum
Press, 1999. ISBN 0-7141-2165-7
Chinese
Duara, Prasenjit. Rescuing History from the Nation: Questioning Narratives of Modern China.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997 ISBN 0-226-16722-4
Israeli
Abu El-Haj, Nadia. Facts on the Ground: Archaeological Practice and Territorial Self-Fashioning in
Israeli Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001. ISBN 978-0226001951
Uri Ram, The Future of the Past in Israel - A Sociology of Knowledge Approach
(http://www.press.umich.edu/pdf/9780472115419-ch8.pdf), in Benny Morris, Making Israel, the

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University of Michigan Press, 2007.

Pakistan
Raja, Masood Ashraf. Constructing Pakistan: Foundational Texts and the Rise of Muslim National
Identity, 18571947, Oxford 2010, ISBN 978-0-19-547811-2
Spanish
Daz-Andreu, Margarita 2010. "Nationalism and Archaeology. Spanish Archaeology in the Europe of
Nationalities". In Preucel, R. and Mrozowksi, S. (eds.), Contemporary Archaeology in Theory and
Practice. London, Blackwell: 432-444.

Recent conferences
Nationalism, Historiography and the (Re)construction of the Past, University of Birmingham, 1012
September 2004

External links
Antiquity Frenzy (http://www.umass.edu/wsp/methodology/delusions/antiquity.html)
The Hall of Maat (http://www.hallofmaat.com/)
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Historiography_and_nationalism&
oldid=589969221"
Categories: Historical revisionism (negationism) Historiography National mysticism Nationalism
Pseudoarchaeology Pseudohistory

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