Globalization and History Wars

The production of a global history has not been concomitant with globalization. Neither the latter nor the former are products of smooth, linear and peaceful courses. Just as the history of globalization should include the stories of the reluctance and resistance toward the integration of the markets, communication networks and cultural spaces, so should global history include episodes that go against the grain, such as the cultural wars over memory, history and legacies.  The idea that this paper proposes is that the experience of the history wars that have been broken out in many countries around the world since the 1990s provides us with a vehicle for examining how history is deeply intertwined with popular culture and collective action. The battle over history opens new research frontiers for learning how history and historical culture can be reconceptualized as social and cultural practices in contemporary societies. Recently, Greece experienced a fierce and very public debate over the introduction of a sixth-grade history textbook that revised how students were taught about key events and developments in the history of the Greek nation. The core of the debate centred on whether the nation-state and its ideology should be defended against globalization and the spirit of cosmopolitanism. This idea that there is a battle between globalization and cosmopolitanism, on the one hand, and the nation-state and history, on the other, is the common denominator of all (left and right) opposition to the book. “History” and “globalization” were set in contrast in a matrix where pastness, particularity, and nationality are pitted against presentism, modernism and cosmopolitanism. This paper refers to (and draws on) the author’s experience as an obersver and participant in the lengthy and very heated battle over Greek history.