Introduction

At a time, when global history seems all the rage in history writing and chairs in global history are mushrooming around the globe, the writing of European history is perhaps in danger of being sidelined as a parochial and Eurocentric exercise. This chapter will review the fate and outlook of European history writing from the Enlightenment to the present day, highlighting its marginalization from the early nineteenth century onwards, as national history sidelined European perspectives and made them a niche interest in the history of history writing in Europe. Arguably things only began to change after the end of World War II, when European history became popular again as an attempt to overcome the hypernationalism that characterized European historiographies in the interwar period. The nascent European Union also was influential in encouraging European perspectives in history writing. How Eurocentric and inward-looking was this renewed emphasis on European history writing? And are we in danger of throwing the baby out with the bath water, if we sideline European perspectives for a second time? What kind of European history writing is appropriate for what Hayden White has termed ‘a practical past’ in contemporary Europe?

European History before the Rise of the Nation State

From European antiquity to the European Middle Ages, European history was constructed in contradistinction to Asian and African history, but, as Peter Burke has pointed out, the term ‘Europe’ was not widely used in the period 500-1500.