Historical Writing, Ethnicity, and National Identity: Medieval Europe and Byzantium in Comparison

Abstract

This chapter analyzes the wider reverberations of debates about the premodern origins of modern nationalism. It looks at the different ways in which issues of origin and identity were articulated in Western historical writing up to the beginning of the thirteenth century, and Byzantine historiography of the same period. It argues that debate about premodern ethnic and national identity has a specific valency, with its roots in Western modernity. The concepts and questions used in the discussion of premodern ethnicity and national identity are therefore rooted in a Eurocentric framework, so as to avoid misrepresenting ‘ethnic’ and ‘national’ modes of identification when used in premodern Eurasia. These problems are not solely those of interpretation, but are also rooted in the way that the sources for premodern European history are organized and encountered by modern historians.