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RESEARCH PRODUCT

Losing Monarchs: The Legacy of German and English National Historiography

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During the nineteenth century, Leopold von Ranke, Johann Gustav Droysen, Alfred von Arneth, and other German-speaking historians established an alleged ‘scientific’ approach to history, based on the so-called historiographic method. They interpreted history as determined by ‘great’ ideas, such as nation, state, and religion. Similarly, the British Whig interpretation of history—represented, for example, by Henry Hallam and Thomas Macaulay—conceptualized history as a continuously ascending process, in which Great Britain established a civilised modern empire spanning territories on all continents. This chapter shows how monarchs became lost—that is, not considered noteworthy—when their rule did not fit into the process of nation-state construction within the interpretations of German historism (Historismus) and British Whig historiography.