ABSTRACT
This book examines comparatively how the writing of history by individuals and groups, historians, politicians and journalists has been used to "legitimate" the nation-state agianst socialist, communist and catholic internationalism in the modern era. Covering the whole of Western Europe, the book includes discussion of:
* history as legitimation in post-revolutionary France
* unity and confederation in the Italian Risorgimento
* German historians as critics of Prussian conservatism
* right-wing history writing in France between the wars
* British historiography from Macauley to Trevelyan
* the search for national identity in the reunified Germany.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part I|46 pages
Comparative perspectives
chapter 2|15 pages
Nationalism and historiography, 1789–1996
chapter 3|17 pages
Literature, liberty and life of the nation
part II|35 pages
The age of bourgeois revolution
part III|40 pages
The age of the masses
chapter 8|14 pages
‘Prussians in a good sense’
chapter 9|12 pages
The search for a ‘national’ history
part IV|37 pages
Liberal democracy and antifascism (1918–45)
chapter 11|13 pages
From antifascist to Volkshistoriker
part V|41 pages
Fascist historiography and the nation-state
chapter 14|13 pages
German historiography under National Socialism
part VI|33 pages
The Cold War years
chapter 16|12 pages
Rebuilding France
chapter 17|13 pages
Dividing the past, defining the present
part VII|42 pages
Contemporary trends
part VIII|26 pages
Conclusion
