oa Wereldgeschiedenis van Nederland en Vlaanderen

World history of the Netherlands and Flanders: about the (im)possibility of an open, global, and non-nationalist history for a wider audience

Following the success of the Histoire mondiale de la France, 2018 saw the publication of the World history of the Netherlands and World history of Flanders. After the French example both volumes have three goals: to bring history to a wider audience; to give a global reading to the national past; and to offer a non-nationalist and non-teleological perspective. Eminently readable, both books succeed in their first goal. The second ambition is fulfilled by the World history of the Netherlands, but in the World history of Flanders the global dimension is underdeveloped. The verdict on their third aim is double-edged. Both volumes explicitly claim to be open-ended and reject traditional nationalist tropes, but several Dutch and – to a lesser extent – Flemish chapters have a subtext of banal nationalism. The genre of public history seems to be particularly susceptible to this type of teleology.