The Decline of Nationalistic History in the West, 1900-1970

Abstract

'The historian,' notes E. H. Carr, 'is.. . a social phenomenon, both the product and the conscious or unconscious spokesman of the society to which he belongs; it is in this capacity that he approaches the facts of the historical past.'2 This being the case, it is natural that, as the ideas and standards of one generation are modified by those of the next, so the outlook of its historians also changes. What was extolled by writers of previous ages, for example our country's Germanic institutions, is ignored today; equally, what our forebears left untouched, such as economic and social history, we now focus much attention upon. Such glaring and widespread changes of attitude cannot be explained by the penchant for 'revisionism' in which this particular discipline excels, or by reference to the individual historians: knowledge of their respective backgrounds, and particularly of contemporary social and political ideas, is also vital. To quote Carr again; 'Before you study the historian, study his historical and social environment.' It is the intention of this paper to examine one of the most interesting developments in twentieth-century historiography, the decline of nationalistic history writing in the Western world, and to consider how far this has been related to that changing environment. The first problem of such an enquiry, which is of its nature so vast, is to define one's limits: what sort of historians should be covered, and what does one mean by nationalistic history? Basically, my concern will be with the professional academic historians, although the writings of others will be

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