Setting the Standards Institutions, Networks and Communities of National Historiography

Institutions, networks and communities "standardized" the historical discipline and profession in the nineteenth and twentieth century, in both the old and the new European nation states. This collection of essays focuses on the growth of the infrastructure of historiography: the archives, the journals, the biographical dictionaries and the historical museums. It presents the places where historians met one another: sometimes in a formal context, sometimes informally; sometimes in a strictly organised entity, sometimes in looser associations; sometimes with a clear scientific purpose, sometimes for more light-hearted reasons. Finally, it presents the diversity of the writers of history: the university professors working in the hauts lieux of the new historiography, but also less obvious groups such as the clergy, the nobility, women and the exiled historians who continually evoked the past of their abandoned and lost countries.

ILARIA PORCIANI is a professor of Modern and Contemporary History and the History of Historiography at the University of Bologna, Italy. She has published on the history of culture, of the university, of historiography, of nationalism and of education, taking a gender approach. Her book La festa della nazione (1997) was awarded the Acqui Storia Prize. She has been editor-in-chief of Il Mestiere di Storico and is a member of the editorial boards of Passato e Presente and the Journal of Modern European History. Since 2010 she has co-ordinated the Bologna unit of EuNaMus, the Framework 7 European Project on the history of European museums.

JO TOLLEBEEK is a full professor of Cultural History from 1750 at the University of Leuven, Belgium. He has published work on university history, the history of historiography and the history of the humanities in the nineteenth and twentieth century including Writing the Inquisition in Europe and America (2004); Men of Character. The Emergence of the Modern Humanities (2011) and Henri Pirenne, Historian. A Life in Pictures (2011, with Sarah Keymeulen). He headed the Belgian lieux de mémoire project: België, een parcours van herinnering (2008).

List of Tables
List of Figures
Notes on the Contributors
Introduction
Institutions, Networks and Communities in a European Perspective; J.Tollebeek & I.Porciani
PART I
'Something More than a Storage Warehouse'. The Creation of National Archives; T.Verschaffel
Monumental Undertakings. Source Publications for the Nation; D.Saxer
Scholarly Communication with a Political Impetus. National Historical Journals; C.M.Jørgensen
The Dictionary Is Dead, Long Live the Dictionary! Biographical Collections in National Contexts; M.Verga
Exegi Monumentum. The Great Syntheses of National History; J.Tollebeek
Nations on Display. History Museums in Europe; I.Porciani
PART II
In the Provinces. Local and Regional Learned Societies; J.Chaline
Wishful Thinking. Academic Competitions in National History; M.Baár
'A Daily Working Group Together in One House'. Research Institutes and the National Academies of Sciences in East Central Europe; F.Hadler & A.Pók
Serving the Profession. National Associations of Historians; G.Lingelbach & M.Vössing
Places of Innovation and Exchange. The Extra-University Research Institutions for Historical Research; E.Picard & G.Lingelbach
Militancy and Pluralism. Party and Church Institutes of Contemporary History in Western Europe since 1945; L.Raphael
Wider Connections. International Networks among European Historians; J.E.Myhre
PART III
A New Community of Scholars. The University Professors at Work; M.Moretti
A Truculent Revenge. The Clergy and the Writing of National History; I.Herrmann & F.Metzger
Bulwark of Traditions. The European Nobility and National Historiography in the Nineteenth Century; G.B.Clemens
Popular Writers. Women Historians, the Academic Community and National History Writing; M.O'Dowd
Striving for Visibility. Nationalists in Multinational Empires and States; E.Bruckmüller, N.Evans & L.R.Aulinas
Living in the Past. Historians in Exile; M.Mandelícková & I.Goddeeris
Concluding Remarks: Historians and the Web; I.Porciani & J.Tollebeek
Selected Bibliographies
Index of Persons