1. 5. Creating the past : national history and national myths « What is past is prologue » (Shakespeare, The Tempest) Quote engraved on the National Archives Building, Washington, DC

2. The development of national history What are national founding myths ?

3. The development of national history From epic and chronicle to national history The success of historic novels Europe : the first sweeping national histories. Development of scientific and cultural institutions national history writing in the United States

4. From epic and chronicle to national history Homer’s Illiad and Odyssey (9th century BC) Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War (5th century BC) Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (9th century) Les grandes chroniques de France (13th-15th c) David Hume, The History of England from the Invasion of Julius Caesar to the Revolution in 1688 (1762) J. Macaulay, The History of England from the Accession of James the Second (Macaulay, 1848)

5. Walter Scott and the success of historic novels Waverley (1814) Ivanhoe (1819)

6. Europe : first national histories The History of England from the Invasion of Julius Caesar to the Revolution in 1688 (Hume, completed 1762). History of England from the Accession of James the Second (Macaulay, 1848) Histoire de France, Jules Michelet, 1833-1844 Monumenta Germaniae Historica (1826-1874); History of Germany, Leopold von Ranke 1824-1879. Czech romantic historian : Frantisek Palacki 1830-1870.

7. Institutionalisation of European national histories Heidelberg university becomes state- owned (1803) Humboldt Universität, Berlin, 1810 France : Facultés de Lettres, Ecole des Chartes (1821)

8. National history-writing in the USA Richard Hildreth’s six-volume History of the United States (1849–52), George Bancroft’s History of the United States, from the Discovery of the American Continent (1854-1870s)

9. Institutionalisation of history in the USA American Historical Association, 1884 Art museums 1870s Public libraries : Boston 1895, New York 1911

10. National history writing in the USA : Second wave of historiography Louis Hartz, The Liberal Tradition in America: An Interpretation of American Political Thought since the Revolution, 1955 Daniel Boorstin, The Genius of American Politics (1953), The Americans: The Colonial Experience (1958),The Americans: The National Experience (1965), The Americans: The Democratic Experience (1973)

11. National history writing in the USA : Social history, from the 1960s on Howard Zinn, a People’s history of the United States 1980

12. Founding myths Defining « myth » Founding myths in the United States -- The Pilgrim Fathers –The city upon a hill –The Frontier –Manifest Destiny The life and death of myths

13. The use of national myths Lincoln in Gettysburg Adress: a “new birth of freedom” Frank Capra, Why We Fight (WWII propaganda movie) : Lend Lease act of 1941 as “a new declaration of independence, 1941 style”

14. I have been guided by the standard John Winthrop set before his shipmates on the flagship Arbella three hundred and thirty-one years ago, as they, too, faced the task of building a new government on a perilous frontier. "We must always consider", he said, "that we shall be as a city upon a hill—the eyes of all people are upon us". Today the eyes of all people are truly upon us—and our governments, in every branch, at every level, national, state and local, must be as a city upon a hill — constructed and inhabited by men aware of their great trust and their great responsibilities. For we are setting out upon a voyage in 1961 no less hazardous than that undertaken by the Arbella in 1630. We are committing ourselves to tasks of statecraft no less fantastic than that of governing the Massachusetts Bay Colony, beset as it was then by terror without and disorder within. John Kennedy, 9 January 1961, speech delivered to the General Court of Massachusetts)

15. Jeremiah Johnson, 1972

16. Asterix at the Olympic Games, 1968