Stefan Berger 
Writing the Nation 
A Global Perspective

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.

Table of Content

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

About the author

STEFAN BERGER Professor of Modern German and Comparative European History, the University of Manchester, UK ELIANA DUTRA DE FREITAS Professor of History, the Federal University of Minas Gerais, Belo Horizonte, Brazil MARK HEARN Post-Doctoral Fellow, the University of Sydney, Australia BIRGIT SCHAEBLER Professor of History and Chair of West Asian History, the University of Erfurt, Germany RADHIKA SESHAN Lecturer in the Department of History, the University of Pune, India ALLAN SMITH Lecturer in History, the University of British Columbia, Canada IBRAHIMA THIOUB Chair of the History Department of the Faculty of Humanities, the Cheikh Anta Diop University in Dakar, Senegal Q. EDWARD WANG Professor and Chair of the History Department at Rowan University, USA