Nationalist historiography

Historiography is the study of how history is written. One pervasive influence upon the writing of history has been nationalism, a set of beliefs about political legitimacy and cultural identity. Nationalism has provided a significant framework for historical writing in Europe and in those former colonies influenced by Europe since the nineteenth century. Typically official school textbooks are based on the nationalist model and focus on the emergence, trials and successes of the forces of nationalism.

Quotes

• Indo-European linguistics and archaeology have been exploited to support openly ideological agendas for so long that a brief history of the issue quickly becomes entangled with the intellectual history of Europe.
  • Anthony (1995b) 1995b. "Nazi and Eco-Feminist Prehistories: Ideology and Empiricism in Indo- European Archaeology." In Nationalism, Politics and the Practice of Archaeology (82-96). Ed. P. Kohl and C. Fawcett. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.**in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press. ch 13

• As Trigger (1995) notes, the main impact of nationalism has been to influence the questions about the past that archaeologists are prepared to ask (or not to ask) and the amount of evidence that is required to sustain a particular position. This has had positive and negative effects. On the positive side, nationalist archaeology has stimulated asking questions about local cultural and ethnic configurations that would not have occurred to colonially oriented archaeologists. It has brought different assumptions, perspectives, and concerns to the data, exposed colonial predispositions and imperial biases, forced a reevaluation of old dogmas, and provided resistance to racism and colonialism. .... On the negative side, nationalism has encouraged the misinterpretation of archaeological data for political purposes and ignored important aspects of human history.... Kohl and Fawcett (1995a), note that the relationship between nationalism and archaeology seemed so natural and close at so many levels that it remained largely unexamined and subconscious throughout the nineteenth century.
  • in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press. ch 13

• Modern history was born in the nineteenth century, conceived and developed as an instrument of European nationalism. As a tool of nationalist ideology, the history of Europe's nations was a great success, but it has turned our understanding of the past into a toxic waste dump, filled with the poison of ethnic nationalism, and the poison has seeped deep into popular consciousness.
  • Patrick J. Geary, The Myth of Nations: The Medieval Origins of Europe (2003), Princeton University Press, p. 15.

• [H]istorians are to nationalism what poppy-growers in Pakistan are to the heroin-addicts: we supply the essential raw material for the market. Nations without a past are contradictions in terms. What makes a nation is the past, what justifies one nation against others is the past, and historians are the people who produce it. So my profession, which has always been mixed up in politics, becomes an essential component of nationalism.
  • Eric Hobsbawm (February 1992). "Ethnicity and Nationalism in Europe Today". Anthropology Today.

• [R.C. Majumdar restricts the term ‘nationalist historians’ to those Indians who in reconstructing their country’s history aimed at examining or reexamining] some points of national interest or importance...which have been misunderstood or misconceived or wrongly represented. Such an object is not necessarily in conflict with a scientific and critical study, and a nationalist historian is not, therefore, necessarily a propagandist or a charlatan.
  • R.C. Majumdar, ‘Nationalist Historians’, in Philips, ed., Historians of India, Pakistan and Ceylon. quoted from E. Sreedharan - A Textbook of Historiography, 500 B.C. to A.D. 2000.

• The mere fact that the author of this book happens to be a Bengali should not stand in the way of expressing this truth out of a false sense of modesty. It is a truism that parochialism should not influence an author’s judgment. What it really means is that parochial feeling must not lead him either to exaggerate or to minimize the value or importance of the part played by the narrow geographical region to which he might belong. Both are equally wrong. His views and statements should be judged by the normal canons of criticism and must not be discredited off-hand on the gratuitous assumption of partiality for his own people or province. I leave it to the readers to judge for themselves whether the role attributed to Bengal is right or not. I may be wrong, due to ignorance, particularly of the language and literature of other parts of India, or error in judgment, and I shall be the first to admit it if I am convinced by facts and arguments ; but I shall fail in my duty as a historian' if I desist from stating what I believe to be true, simply out of the fear that it will be set down to parochialism. If I have laid an undue stress or emphasis on any point or aspect, I shall welcome a challenge which, if supported by facts and arguments, is bound to advance or correct our knowledge of history, and there- by do a great deal of good. (xviii - xix)
  • R.C. Majumdar History Of The Freedom Movement In India, vol I.

• Jadunath wrote to him on 19 November, 1937:, “National history, like every other history worthy of the name and deserving to endure, must be true as regards the facts and reasonable in the interpretation of them. It will be national not in the sense that it will try to suppress or white-wash everything in our country’s past that is disgraceful, but because it will admit them and at the same time point out that there were other and nobler aspects in the stages of our nation’s evolution which offset the former.. . . In this task the historian must be a judge He will not suppress any defect of the national character, but add to his portraiture those higher qualities which, taken together with the former, help to constitute the entire individual.”
  • Jadunath Sarkar, Quoted in R.C. Majumdar, The History and Culture of the Indian People, Vol. 7, Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, Bombay, 1984,

• All archaeological stories—be they classical, biblical, nationalist, or evolutionary—can be read as narratives of the inevitability of certain lands to be conquered and the right of certain people to rule.
  • (Silberman 1995). 256 Silberman, Neil Asher. 1995. "Promised Lands and Chosen Peoples: The Politics and Poetics of Archaeological Narrative." In Nationalism, Politics and the Practice of Archaeology (249- 262). Ed. P. Kohl and C. Fawcett. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.**in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press. ch 13

• The emotional power of archaeology in Israel, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Cyprus, Turkey, Greece and the regions of the former Yugoslavia, for example, is that they all link the present to a particular golden age.
  • (Silberman 1995, 257). Silberman, Neil Asher. 1995. "Promised Lands and Chosen Peoples: The Politics and Poetics of Archaeological Narrative." In Nationalism, Politics and the Practice of Archaeology (249- 262). Ed. P. Kohl and C. Fawcett. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.**in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press. ch 13

• Nationalism seeks legitimacy from the past and history therefore becomes a sensitive subject.
  • Romila Thapar, Early India: From the Origins to AD 1300 (2003), Penguin Books, p. 19.

External links

Encyclopedic article on Nationalist historiography on Wikipedia