Histories of Nations: How Their Identities Were Forged

Global histories tend to be written from the narrow viewpoint of asingle author and a single perspective, with the inevitable bias that itentails. But in this thought-provoking collection, twenty-eight writersand scholars give engaging, often passionate accounts of their ownnation’s history. The countries have been selected to represent everycontinent and every type of state: large and small; mature democraciesand religious autocracies; states that have existed for thousands of yearsand those born as recently as the twentieth century. Together they containtwo-thirds of the world’s population.In the United States, for example, the myth of the nation’s “historylessness”remains strong, but in China history is seen to play a crucialrole in legitimizing three thousand years of imperial authority. “Historywars” over the content of textbooks rage in countries as diverse asAustralia, Russia, and Japan. Some countries, such as Iran or Egypt, areblessed or cursed with a glorious ancient history that the presentcannot equal; others, such as Germany, must find ways of approachingand reconciling the pain of the recent past.