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Some identities are better than others or how historians contribute to their making or their demise (a thread that I did not have the time to write the other day but is smth I wanted to add to this piece by @byzantinepower ) https://im1776.com/2021/01/15/defending-the-indefensible/
Let me start with the very basics: how national identities were forged, i.e. 19th c nationalism (warmly recommend F.M. Turner's European Intellectual History for this. I selected only some points). Pls do not complain that this is not the whole story bcs I know. 
As we were all taught in school the main idea of nationalism back in the 19c as well as now is that a nation is a group of ppl who share lang, history, culture⊠and as such should be governed by their own government. i.e. should have their own state.
This very idea at the beginning of the 19th c opposed the main principle of Congress of Vienna (1815) that upheld that monarchies not ethnicities are the basic political unit.
Nationalists used diff arguments for the case of nationhood:
-national states will function better (economically, polit) than multiculti dynasties
-nations are similar to individuals and they should decide on their own about their own future
-national states will function better (economically, polit) than multiculti dynasties
-nations are similar to individuals and they should decide on their own about their own future
-nations are distinct creations of God as distinct species in nature are
-some like Polish assigned the special status to their nation in the divine order: Poland was like a suffering Christ among other nations.
-some like Polish assigned the special status to their nation in the divine order: Poland was like a suffering Christ among other nations.
But what were the factors that gave birth to these ideas? Here are some:
1.Nationalism emerges in Europe at the same time when intellectual classes lose their religious belief. Despite all the quarrels among Christians Christianity had the universalistic vision of human nature.
1.Nationalism emerges in Europe at the same time when intellectual classes lose their religious belief. Despite all the quarrels among Christians Christianity had the universalistic vision of human nature.
For nationalists the eternity of nations was concealed under this universalistic approach
2.Many factors contributed to the switch from Christian universalism to nation: from demise of Latin as the universal lang of intellectual commun to print culture (journals, magazines, books, newspapersâŠ) that brought the sense of fixity of particular languages across time
3 So, intellectuals started composing dictionaries, lexicons, grammars, textbooks of lang all of which were supposed to strengthen the sense of joint community that spans across centuries. The turn in philology that started treating all lang as worth of studying played its part.
4. Here we come to the 19th c historians: national histories they wrote served to establish the story of the past of one particular ethnic group. The story would emphasize some crucial points of formation of the group, their enemies, victoriesâŠ
The belonging to this group was supposed to replace or be merged with religious allegiance.
http://5.In the second half on the 19c all of this was implemented in educational system. âSchools became vast engines of national acculturation. The school teacher became the secular equivalent of the priest.â
Now to my point. What can we conclude from this about todayâs histories that are written to show that our national identities have been entirely manufactured in the 19c; moreover, histories that are to show that nothing like the sense of ethnic community existed before that?
Their aims even though hidden under âscientific goalsâ seem to be no less ideologically motivated than national histories of the 19c. The identities that were forged in the 19c are now politically unacceptable for various implicit and explicit reasons
Those reasons range from the bloodshed wars of the 20c century to the neoliberal agenda...
So, a contemp historian has the goal to erase such identities completely. If that includes manufacturing non-existence of ethnicity prior to the 19c so be it.
In doing so a historian who writes and teaches at the university and contributes to policy making (of what goes into the school curriculum etc) is working toward annihilating a particular undesirable identity at its roots.
Itâs on us to decide if this is something we like or not but it is important that we see such histories for what they are: ideological projects. In the same way we can now see 19c histories for what they were.
To end with the quote @SlobodanIsFree : "Politics eats science for breakfast", doubly so social sciences.
