The Shaping of Popular Consent: A Comparative Study of the Sovie ...

This has led to a sort of historiographical exclusivity; historians of different nations working separately from each other, ploughing deeper into their field of expertise, considering their specialist area to be the quintessential fountain of knowledge, and often brushing aside (or being unable to answer) holistic questions with the stock answer that “it’s not my field”. As a corollary there has developed what one might describe as a League of Subjects where trends dictate which national history (and which area of it) is in ascendancy and which is in decline. Sometimes this kind of division is the only practical solution to the logistical problems facing schools, departments and scholars. After all, if a historian is to become and maintain a position as a well-regarded specialist he/she cannot be expected to know everything about everything. Moreover, to help expedite academic study, libraries need to be catalogued in some comprehensive and cogent manner. Furthermore, one cannot argue against the need for specialists in any given field to be able to consolidate and refine their work by means of specialist research, conferences, postgraduate supervision and to a lesser extent, undergraduate special subjects.

Nevertheless, might we not conclude that the cold war worldview has perpetuated an understanding of history (not to mention the modern world) based on national uniqueness? Perhaps then, just as historians should bridge together social and political history (in line with what we might call the Suny doctrine), they should also attempt to bridge together what may ostensibly appear to be exclusive national histories. By fully exploiting both a comparing and contrasting epistemological methodology, historians will have a better chance to understand culture as what E.B. Tylor conceived as a group’s total body of behaviour inclusive of how and what people think, comprehend and believe,⁶⁹ in addition to grasping the more direct socio-economic, demographic and statistical aspects of history (to which Suny makes reference). Moreover, it may help us test the notion that a “group” must usually mean a national or border-specific group. Benedict Anderson’s important study, Imagined Communities, has become one of the standard texts on the topic of nations and nationalism, and gave meaning to the concept of nation-ness. In his theory, Anderson defines the nation as an imagined political community.