Publication Type
Book Chapter
Version
acceptedVersion
Publication Date
12-2017
Abstract
At first glance, historians may not look like the best candidates for facilitating a resolution of the history problem. This is because historians have traditionally used the nation as a primary unit of analysis, helping to naturalize it as a primordial entity. They have also created professional associations and delimited their membership along national borders, consistent with the nationalist logic of self-determination; for example, when Japanese historians write about the history of Japan, they often talk among themselves without consulting with foreign historians who study Japan. This nationally bounded content focus and membership reinforces the logic of nationalism that divides the world into discrete nations. Thus, even though historians are not necessarily supporters of nationalism, they have participated in nation-building as authoritative narrators of national history.
Discipline
Asian History | Asian Studies
Research Areas
Political Science
Publication
Exhibiting the fall of Singapore: Close readings of a global event
Editor
Daniel Schumacher and Stephanie Yeo
First Page
155
Last Page
177
ISBN
9789811164613
Identifier
10.21313/hawaii/9780824856748.003.0007
Publisher
National Museum of Singapore
City or Country
Singapore
Citation
SAITO, Hiro. (2017). The role of historians in East Asia’s history problem. In Exhibiting the fall of Singapore: Close readings of a global event (pp. 155-177). Singapore: National Museum of Singapore.
Available at: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soss_research/2839
Copyright Owner and License
Author
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Additional URL
https://doi.org/10.21313/hawaii/9780824856748.003.0007