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