ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with history writing and how the Enlightenment and Romantic movements affected an understanding of the past. In contrast to the reason, order, symmetry and harmony that are associated with the Enlightenment, Romantic notions of nationalism and heroism impacted on the writing of history in the modern period. The chapter explores the significance of freethinking, emotionalism, spiritualism and a profound engagement with nature to the growth in the nineteenth century of Romanticism. Also a product of the Scottish Enlightenment, Adam Smith both constructed a blueprint for capitalist economics and described how societies changed and developed. The Enlightenment eventually emancipated women, blacks and religious minorities such as the Jews, and let loose historical writing in the Romantic tradition which focused on national sentiment, the role of the hero, a focus on the universal attributes of human beings and their soluble differences. Perhaps the most enduring element of Romantic and nationalist histories, however, was the role of the hero.
