ABSTRACT
The staple material for the construction of a nationalist discourse is history. The emphasis on particular historical events, the selection or omission of specific historical facts as well as the choice of a particular perspective of interpretation, done with intellectual honesty, are all part and parcel of the articulation of a well-orientated narration. Yet when such narration serves the purpose of justifying a particular cause, it risks becoming an ideology of legitimization. Historically contingent happenings might then be presented as natural and inevitable and used as a model for the present (Dean, et al. 1983). This is often the case for historical accounts on the ‘origins of a nation’, which usually reflects the perspective of the governing regime. The teleological narrative of a national(ist) history tends to be distorted by the preoccupation to justify the legitimacy of a particular configuration of a nation (see Vickers 2002). It is not infrequent in such narratives that vital details that go against the propounded ideological position are obscured, even the description of historical events falsified or distorted in order to reinforce the argument.
