National History

Challenged by social, demographic, women's, and gender history, national histories no longer occupy the monopolist position they once did. In The Practice of History (1967) Geoffrey Elton reacted to the rise of explicitly theoretical social history with a vigorous defense of the objectivity of political history. In fact, the national framework has remained essential to historical writing. The social and women's history of the 1970s and 1980s continued to be written within the confines of nation-states, and much of it, as in Thompson's Making of the English Working Class, dealt with the question of national specificities. The impact of poststructuralism upon historical writing has not substantially altered the situation. Poststructuralism has led to suspicion of essentialist definitions of nation, class, and gender but has caused historians to focus upon the historical, and mutual, construction of identities, including national identities. As yet few historians have taken up the critique of national histories advanced by cultural transfer theorists.

The international political climate also sustains interest in national histories. In the Balkans, contemporary diplomats are as ready as their counterparts at Versailles in 1919 to use historical arguments to justify territorial claims. In eastern Europe postcommunist states are engaged in reassessing their pasts—often presenting the communist period as an aberration in the normal path of national development, just as German, Italian, and French historians explained away Nazism, Fascism, and collaboration. The European Union is also tempted by the use of history for purposes of historical legitimation. The Maastricht Treaty (1992) called upon the commission to "bring the common cultural heritage to the fore."