Book contents
- The Cambridge Companion to Nineteenth-Century Thought
- The Cambridge Companion to Nineteenth-Century Thought
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Notes on Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Chronology
- 1 Introduction
- 2 State and Individual in Political Thought
- 3 Remaking Theology: Orthodoxies and Their Critics
- 4 Philosophy in the Wake of Hegel*
- 5 The Origins of the Social Sciences
- 6 Historical Methods in Europe and America
- 7 Capitalism and Its Critics
- 8 Individuality, the Self and Concepts of Mind
- 9 Social Darwinism
- 10 Feminist Thought
- 11 Race and Empire in the Nineteenth Century
- 12 Patterns of Literary Transformation
- Further Reading
- Index
- Cambridge Companions to …
6 - Historical Methods in Europe and America
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 June 2019
- The Cambridge Companion to Nineteenth-Century Thought
- The Cambridge Companion to Nineteenth-Century Thought
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Notes on Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Chronology
- 1 Introduction
- 2 State and Individual in Political Thought
- 3 Remaking Theology: Orthodoxies and Their Critics
- 4 Philosophy in the Wake of Hegel*
- 5 The Origins of the Social Sciences
- 6 Historical Methods in Europe and America
- 7 Capitalism and Its Critics
- 8 Individuality, the Self and Concepts of Mind
- 9 Social Darwinism
- 10 Feminist Thought
- 11 Race and Empire in the Nineteenth Century
- 12 Patterns of Literary Transformation
- Further Reading
- Index
- Cambridge Companions to …
Summary
In the West, the bloody and costly Napoleonic Wars (1803–15) were followed by economic depression, political reform, famine in Ireland, civil war and imperial assertion. But the immediate global political consequence was the creation of the ‘nation state’ at the Congress of Vienna (1815–16), where Europe was carved up into countries that mirrored the languages, religions and traditions of the people who would rule them. The newly created governments were eager to justify their legitimacy as nations by employing historians to celebrate their ‘imagined community’.
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- The Cambridge Companion to Nineteenth-Century Thought , pp. 95 - 122Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2019