Niels F. May & Thomas Maissen, eds. – National History and New Nationalism in the Twenty-First Century: A Global Comparison

Description

National history has once again become a battlefield. In internal political conflicts, which are fought on the terrain of popular culture, museums, schoolbooks, and memorial politics, it has taken on a newly important and contested role. Irrespective of national specifics, the narratives of new nationalism are quite similar everywhere. National history is said to stretch back many centuries, expressesing the historical continuity of a homogeneous people and its timeless character. This people struggles for independence, guided by towering leaders and inspired by the sacrifice of martyrs. Unlike earlier forms of nationalism, the main enemies are no longer neighbouring states, but international and supranational institutions. To use national history as an integrative tool, new nationalists claim that the media and school history curricula should not contest or question the nation and its great historical deeds, as doubts threaten to weaken and dishonour the nation. This book offers a broad international overview of the rhetoric, contents, and contexts of the rise of these renewed national historical narratives, and of how professional historians have reacted to these phenomena. The contributions focus on a wide range of representative nations from around all over the globe.

Table of Contents

Introduction: National History and New Nationalism in the Twenty-First Century: Introductory Remarks – Thomas Maissen

1. National Historical Master Narratives and War Museums in Contemporary Europe: A Comparative Analysis – Stefan Berger
2. Populism and Nationalism in Recent British Historiography – Michael Bentley
3. German National History in the Age of “Aufarbeitung” – Martin Sabrow
4. The Remarkable Persistence of the Ghost of a Nation: Contesting the Nation in Public and Historical Discourse in the Netherlands in the Twenty-First Century – Chris Lorenz
5. Production and Politics of the National Narrative in France – Sébastien Ledoux
6. The Resilience of National Histories: “Two Spains” versus the Periphery? – Xosé M. Núñez Seixas
7. Reflections on Swiss Historiography in Times of New Nationalism – Georg Kreis
8. Nation and the “Retrotopic” Politics of History in Poland – Miloš Řezník
9. “Politics of History” and Authoritarian Regime-Building in Hungary After 1990 – Balázs Trencsényi
10. The Past that Never Left?: Nationalism, Historiography, and the Yugoslav Wars – Florian Bieber
11. The Ottomans and “My People”: The Populist-Nationalist Discourse in Turkey Under the AKP Government – Tanıl Bora
12. Independence, Revolution, War, and the Renaissance of National History in Ukraine – Tanja Penter
13. Between “Europe” and Russian “Sonderweg”, Between “Empire” and “Nation”: Historiography, Politics of History, and Discussion within Society in Russia – Ekaterina Makhotina
14. Res Publica Historicissima: The Politics of History in Israel – Johannes Becke
15. National Pride versus Critical History: American Memory Wars – Konrad H. Jarausch
16. Memory, History, and the Politics of the Hindu Right – Neeladri Bhattacharya
17. Chinese National History: The Manchu-Qing in New Clothes – Hans van Ess
18. New Nationalism in Japan in the Twenty-first Century – Takashi Yoshida

Conclusion: Ronald Grigor Suny