Nationalization of history is the term used in historiography to describe the process of separation of "one's own" history from the common universal history, by way of perceiving, understanding and treating the past that results with construction of history as history of a nation. If national labeling of the past is not treated with great care, it can result in the retrospective nationalization of history and even assigning nonexistent or exaggerated existing national attributes to historical events and persons. Nationalization of history, which began after a period of globalization of history, was not only one of the causes, but also the result of the process of establishment of modern nations (national revival).
Universal history
Universal history, the result of a universal, cosmopolitan interpretation of historical events and mankind as a whole, coherent unit, preceded the nationalization of history. In the Western world, this motivation to imagine a universal history became influential in the 18th century when numerous philosophers promoted new cosmopolitan ideologies, after the ethno-religious conflicts of the previous century, and the subsequent consolidation of states which attempted to impose themselves over religious particularisms. Colonial experience (many European countries had colonies) exposed society in Europe to numerous different cultures and civilizations. It is also very important to take in consideration that the 18th century was in the Age of Enlightenment when people's activities, both on individual and social level, were determined with desire to follow rational scientific judgment while changing the society, which released them from restraints of customs and arbitrary authorities based on faith, superstition, or revelation and backed up by religion or tradition. All these circumstances provided suitable surroundings for development of universalistic, liberal and rational global perspectives in studies of society and its past and writing historical texts.
In his Essay on customs (1756) Voltaire studied development of civilization in the world with universal perspective, rejecting tradition, Christian and national frames. He was significantly influenced by Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet and his work Discourse on the Universal history (1682) when he was first who seriously attempted to write a history of the world, without limits imposed by nation or religion, emphasizing economical, cultural and political history. Imanuel Kant developed ideas about universally applicable moral imperatives in his work Perpetual Peace (1795) and designed a plan for establishing a cosmopolitan liberal order which would result in perpetual peace. Universalism of the 18th century created an ideology which today could be identified as modern civil society.
The emerging of modern historiography is connected with German universities in the 19th century and the significant influence of Leopold von Ranke who insisted on objectivity and systematic use of historical documents in the form of authentic primary sources; his credo was to perform reconstruction of the past "as it was". Ranke's universal precepts in virtually all his works were, however, applied almost exclusively to the history of states and nations.
Causes of nationalization of history
Though nationalization of history could probably be traced from the earliest phases of creating historical works, it was in the period after the French revolution that creating of historical works started to be strongly influenced by national perspectives, and that perspective gradually became globally dominant with its culmination during the 19th and at the beginning of the 20th century. Nationalism was estimated as the proper perspective to such an extent that nationalization of history remained unnoticed till recently (1980s and 1990s) and was not studied in historiography in a scale that would correspond to its significance.