Table Of ContentK The Engaged Historian L
MAKING SENSE OF HISTORY
Studies in Historical Cultures
General Editor: Stefan Berger
Founding Editor: Jrn Rsen
Bridging the gap between historical theory and the study of historical memory,
this series crosses the boundaries between both academic disciplines and cul-
tural, social, political and historical contexts. In an age of rapid globalization,
which tends to manifest itself on an economic and political level, locating the
cultural practices involved in generating its underlying historical sense is an
increasingly urgent task.
Recent volumes:
Volume 37 Volume 32
The Engaged Historian: Perspectives on the Making Nordic Historiography:
Intersections of Politics, Activism and the Connections, Tensions and Methodology,
Historical Profession 18501970
Edited by Stefan Berger Edited by Pertti Haapala, Marja Jalava
and Simon Larsson
Volume 36
Contemplating Historical Consciousness: Volume 31
Notes from the Field Contesting Deregulation: Debates,
Edited by Anna Clark and Carla L. Peck Practices and Developments in the West
since the 1970s
Volume 35 Edited by Knud Andresen and Stefan
Empathy and History: The Context of Mller
Historical Understanding in Re-enactment,
Hermeneutics and Education Volume 30
Tyson Retz Cultural Borders of Europe: Narratives,
Concepts and Practices in the Present and
Volume 34 the Past
The Ethos of History: Time and Edited by Mats Andrn, Thomas
Responsibility Lindkvist, Ingmar Shrman and
Edited by Stefan Helgesson and Jayne Katharina Vajta
Svenungsson
Volume 29
Volume 33 The Mirror of the Medieval: An
History and Belonging: Representations of Anthropology of the Western Historical
the Past in Contemporary European Politics Imagination
Edited by Stefan Berger and Caner Tekin K. Patrick Fazioli
For a full volume listing, please see the series page on our website:
http://www.berghahnbooks.com/series/making-sense-of-history
T e h
he ngaged isTorian
Perspectives on the Intersections of Politics,
Activism and the Historical Profession
Edited by Stefan Berger
berghahn
N E W Y O R K O X F O R D
www.berghahnbooks.com
First published in 2019 by
Berghahn Books
www.berghahnbooks.com
2019 Stefan Berger
All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages
for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book
may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or
mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information
storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented,
without written permission of the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
A C.I.P. cataloging record is available from the Library of Congress
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Control Number:
2019003775
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978-1-78920-199-4 hardback
ISBN 978-1-78920-200-7 ebook
To Georg G. Iggers (1926–2017),
an engaged historian in the best sense
Contents
Introduction
Historical Writing and Civic Engagement: A Symbiotic
Relationship 1
Stefan Berger
Chapter 1. Engagement: Metahistorical Considerations on a
Disputed Attitude in Historical Studies 33
Jrn Rsen
Chapter 2. The Ideal of Justice and Its Significance for Historians
as Engaged Intellectuals 44
Martin Wiklund
Chapter 3. Committed Writing: History and Narrative
Communication Revisited 63
Kalle Pihlainen
Chapter 4. The Historian-King: Political Leaders, Historical
Consciousness and Wise Government 79
Appendix 1: List of Historically Informed Political Leaders
(19002018) 98
Appendix 2: Writings about Heads of State and
Government as Historians 101
Appendix 3: Historians as Nobel Peace Prize Laureates
and Nominees 106
Antoon De Baets
viii Contents
Chapter 5. Historians with a Cause: Refugees’ Memory and
Historical Practices in Interwar Greece 118
Emilia Salvanou
Chapter 6. The Making of the Zhanguo Ce Clique:
The Politicization of History Knowledge in Wartime China 136
Xin Fan
Chapter 7. The Historicization of World War II in Greece
after the Civil War: Looking Back on the Public Debate
over a Lecture by British Historian C.M. Woodhouse 151
Manos Avgeridis
Chapter 8. Historians as Dissidents: Intellectual ‘Eros’ in Action 163
Nina Witoszek
Chapter 9. The Social Movement History as a Social Movement
in and of Itself 185
Michihiro Okamoto
Chapter 10. Professional Historical Writing and Human Rights
Engagement in the Twenty-First Century: Innovative
Approaches and Their Dilemmas 205
Nina Schneider
Chapter 11. Using the Past: The Brazilian Cinema between
Censorship and Representation 221
Meize Regina de Lucena Lucas
Chapter 12. Historians and the Trauma of the Past:
The Destruction of Security Files on Citizens in Greece, 1989 237
Vangelis Karamanolakis
Chapter 13. Historians and/in the New Media 250
Effi Gazi
Chapter 14. Street History: Coming to Terms with the Past in
Occupy Movements 261
Antonis Liakos
Afterword
The Historian as an Engaged Intellectual: Historical
Writing and Social Criticism – A Personal Retrospective 277
Georg G. Iggers
Index 301
I N T R O D U C T I O N
Historical Writing and
Civic Engagement
A Symbiotic Relationship
Stefan Berger
Professional historians have never been just that. The rise of the historical
profession from the second half of the eighteenth century onwards was
accompanied by the idea of the historian as public intellectual. Yet notions
of professionalization have at times sat awkwardly with the willingness of
historians to be political and social activists. The ghosts of objectivity and
a value-free science haunted a profession that gained phenomenal author-
ity from the belief that their professionalism made them the only ones who
could speak authoritatively about the past.1 Those historians unwilling to
give up their civic engagement and unable to draw a clear line between
their historical profession and their political commitment had to find meth-
odological and theoretical justifications for their engagement. This book
will give a range of examples of how such justifications worked and what
kinds of engagement have been prominent among historians. But the book
will also give several examples of historians who were not professional his-
torians and did not have a job at the university or the academy. Whether
they were politicians, journalists, publicists or earned their money else-
where, many people of diverse backgrounds had either some training as a
historian or wrote history without such training. Sometimes their histories
were far more influential than those of professional historians. Especially
Notes for this section begin on page 22.
