ABSTRACT
This chapter attempts to assay the role of national history in different types of nationalism, particularly that of individuating nations. National history can be a record of a nation's experience, which supposedly makes of it a community, or a record of its actions, which implies its political existence as a corporate body. It is generally said that a common history and tradition, a common sense of the past, is one of the essential ingredients of successful nationalism. If that were true, the new United States would have been in a bad fix, for she had very little history of her own. The most important role for history is to help individuate nations. A nation is identified through the relationships of its members, in particular, their communicative relationships made possible by a common language culture. History appears to function as a test of the reality of putative nations.
