Writing the Nation

This book brings together experts on national history writing from all five continents to discuss the role of history in the making of national identities in a transnational and comparative way. The institutionalization and professionalisation of history writing is analysed in the context of history's increasing nationalization.

Introduction: Towards a Global History of National Historiographies; S. Berger The Power of National Pasts: Writing National History in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Europe; S. Berger Seven Narratives in North American History: Thinking the Nation in Canada, Quebec, and the United States; A. Smith The Mirror of History and Images of the Nation: The invention of a national identity in Brazil and its contrasts with similar enterprises in Mexico and Argentina; E. de Freitas Dutra Writing the Nation in Australia: Australian Historians and Narrative Myths of Nation; M. Hearn Between Myth and History: the Construction of a National Past in Modern East Asia; Q. E. Wang Writing the Nation in India: Communalism and Historiography; R. Seshan Writing the Nation in the Arabic-speaking World; B. Schaebler Writing National and Transnational History in Africa - the Example of the 'Dakar School'; I. Thioub Select Bibliography