I

Nations and the Writing of History

• "Nations are made of people but held together by history" [p1]
o “Nation-states, when they form, imagine a past.”
o “Nations, to make sense of themselves, need some kind of agreed-upon past.”
o “Modern historical writing arose with the nation state. So did modern liberalism.
. . . If American historians [since the 1960s] didn’t always succeed in affirming a
common history during these tumultuous years—and they didn’t—they
nevertheless engaged in the struggle, offering appraisals and critiques of
national aims and ends.” [p2]
• : you can’t (rightly) write a history that ignores the nation-state / a nationally defined
history—that’d fly “in the face of people” who lived in a nation-state. His worry:
[historical] study of the nation state is on the decline; the future is ‘cosmopolitan, not
provincial’.
• ‘European nationalism has been defanged’
• Meanwhile, nationalism ravages certain [conflict zones like] Bosnia and Rwanda
• 3 decades after Degler, Brexit and Trump (running on nationalism); Fukuyuma publ’ new
book that retreats from earlier claims that nationalism is retreating
II Nations and Nationalism
• It’s possible to imagine a future without nations, since some present challenges (e.g.
climate change) are not national but planetary [global] in nature.
• But meanwhile, our [contemporary] world is nation-based [and must be studied in those
terms]
nation: concept with long history
• Based on Latin natus (birth).
• Sometimes odd use, like European settlers referring to the “Five Nations” of Indian
tribes in US as one nation.
• Then, 18th century: nation begins to be tied to notions of power and sovereignty
nationalism: concept with short history