From Rome to Europe? The association of european historians 1980-1992

On 28th August 1985, during the sixteenth Congress of the International Committee of Historical Sciences in Stuttgart, a group of 419 historians from 12 European countries founded the “Association of European Historians” (AEH), chaired by the Italian scholar Amrando Saitta. These historians were concerned about the prevailing national dimension of historical research and teaching in Europe still in the 1980s. While global and postcolonial approaches started to take shape, the AEH aimed at introducing a “new” narrative for a collective history of Europe to replace the outdated sums of individual national histories. From its members’ perspective, historians had the civil responsibility to foster a common European identity and support the coping of nationalism, to give flesh and blood to politics, national and supranational institutions. This volume traces a cross-section of the history of the historical profession in Europe during a decisive decade for the European integration process. It analyses how, and to what extent, the Association collaborated with the European Communities (EC), also in comparison with other scholarly networks and historiographical tendencies of the period, within the macro-theme of the relationship between EC institutions and historians. Rather than criticising the weaknesses of the EC's initiatives through the lens of nation-states, it challenges the centralised top-down view of European culture that is imposed on a passive audience. Instead, this study highlights the various representations of Europe and evaluates the true mean of the institutional concept of "unity in diversity". By analysing the diverse voices involved in promoting Europeanness, as well as the contacts between scholars across the Iron Curtain, the AEH case study provides a valuable point of view for understanding the Europeanness building through historiography and the differences between institutional and noninstitutional approaches during the 1980s.