National Formations in Historiography: The Case of American Historical Practice

While modern "scientific history" established under Rankean influence aspired to universal standards of objectivity and evidence, the discipline inevitably developed distinctive national characteristics as it was institutionalized within different political and intellectual contexts. In the United States, the powerful legacy of the Progressive historians—including Frederick Jackson Turner and Charles Beard—shaped a pragmatic, instrumentalist approach focused on the social and political utility of the past. This Progressive agenda fostered recurrent debates over conflict versus consensus in American identity, a flexible receptivity to interdisciplinary methods, and a general distrust of grand theory, all within a framework of American exceptionalism.

Despite these enduring national traits, American historiography regained a significant degree of cosmopolitanism by the late 20th century. Initially positioned on the periphery of European intellectual developments, American scholars were well-suited for comparative history. Post-1945, this was augmented by the growth of area studies, funded by American strategic interests. From the 1960s, intellectual currents like the Annales School, Foucauldian analysis, and British Marxism, combined with domestic debates over race and politics, profoundly enriched and revised American historical writing, culminating in a new transnational and comparative agenda by the 21st century.

Traditional periodization emphasizes a sharp break between the Progressive era and the so-called "consensus" scholarship of the 1950s, which repudiated economic class interpretations. However, this chapter argues that the division between Progressive and consensus historiography has been exaggerated, and that significant continuity persisted after World War II. Major realignments in American historical practice are rare; seismic shifts occurred from the 1890s to WWI and again from the late 1960s to early 1970s. Another potential shift, centered on the internationalization of American history, began in the 1990s, but its full impact remains uncertain.

The post-1945 era can be roughly subdivided, though change was slow and uneven due to field-based "lags." The Progressive interpretation persisted into the early 1950s, followed by a reaction favoring consensus and social-science approaches (mid-1950s to mid-1960s). The New Left then gained prominence, alongside the continuing influence of social science. The new social history rose unevenly in the 1970s and 1980s, initially compatible with social science but later influenced by Marxism and cultural anthropology to focus on agency, class conflict, and collective behavior.

By the 1980s and 1990s, this led to perceptions of fragmentation and specialization, the rise of post-structuralism and multiculturalism, and the growth of cultural history. The "culture wars" of the 1990s placed historiography at the center of debates over national identity. Concurrently, a new trend emerged: overlapping with concerns about social diversity, American historians began a concerted focus on the nation's relationship with the wider world, challenging older approaches with a "new transnational history." A key future task will be reconciling this transnational turn with the field of world history, to which American historians have long contributed.