The Quest for the Lost Nation: Writing History in Germany and Japan in the American Century

by Sebastian Conrad, Alan Nothnagle (Translator)

Overview

Highly praised when published in Germany, The Quest for the Lost Nation is a brilliant chronicle of Germany's and Japan's struggles to reclaim a defeated national past. Sebastian Conrad compares the ways German and Japanese scholars revised national history after World War II in the shadows of fascism, surrender, and American occupation. Defeat in 1945 marked the death of the national past in both countries, yet, as Conrad proves, historians did not abandon national perspectives during reconstruction. Quite the opposite—the nation remained hidden at the center of texts as scholars tried to make sense of the past and searched for fragments of the nation they had lost. By situating both countries in the Cold War, Conrad shows that the focus on the nation can be understood only within a transnational context.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780520259447
Publisher:	University of California Press
Publication date:	07/15/2010
Series:	California World History Library , #12
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	400
Product dimensions:	6.40(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Sebastian Conrad is Professor of History at the European University Institute in Florence. Conrad is also the author of Globalisation and Nation in Imperial Germany and has edited, together with Dominic Sachsenmaier, Competing Visions of World Order: Global Moments and Movements, 1880s-1930s.

Table of Contents

Contents
Introduction

1. Mapping Postwar Historiography in Germany and Japan
2. The Origin of the Nation: Bismarck, Meiji Ishin, and the Subject of History
3. The Nation as Victim: Writing the History of National Socialism and Japanese Fascism
4. The Invention of Contemporary History
5. The Temporalization of Space: Germany and Japan between East and West
6. History and Memory: Germany and Japan, 1945–2

Notes
Bibliography
Acknowledgments
Index

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"The Quest for the Lost Nation should be celebrated as the first book of its kind."—Monumenta Nipponica

"An important examination of the context and content of historical scholarship in postwar Germany and Japan."—Central European History

Editorial Reviews

An important examination of the context and content of historical scholarship in postwar Germany and Japan.

Central European History

The Quest for the Lost Nation should be celebrated as the first book of its kind.

Monumenta Nipponica - Franziska Seraphim