The Nationalisation of the Past

As with all other products of historical development, also nations are subject to change. Just as we think of the Egyptian pyramids as a monumental absurdity, since belief in the afterlife of the deceased buried in them has extinguished, so also does a nation only make sense within a certain context. The present book deals with the issue of the construction of a narrative image of the nation, aimed at the more successful modernisation of various segments of society. In the process of the construction of the Slovene nation, the author namely sees confirmation of the correctness of Ernest Gellner’s thesis of the nation as a product of modernisation processes and the role of nationalists in the formation of nations. As many dimensions of the development of nations are international, the author deals with questions regarding the shaping of the narrative image of the nation and the national past and heritage also through the examples of other nations.