ABSTRACT
Ever since history became an academic discipline, writing national history has been the most honorable task of a historian’s career. However, for today’s historians, writing national history has lost the high reputation it held for roughly 150 years. Of course, there are still ambitious projects such as series editions of European national histories. However, they do not see themselves as traditional national history, but either as histories that analyze the making of nations or as histories that place the history of a certain nation within an international (Herbert 2010) or even transnational setting (Trentmann 2008; Grant et al. 2007; Tyrell 2007a). They are mitigated versions of strong national history. Traditional national history has had its day. Why?
