A2. HISTORIOGRAPHY (15th-20th cent.)

Programme objectives:

Study of the birth of historical consciousness of Greek scholars (mainly) during the Enlightenment (1750-1821), through the examination of printed historical books and manuscripts. For this purpose, the programme studies the evolution of traditional chronography from the 15th to the 18th century, the degree to which it is modernized or just reproduced -in order to trace the trends that displaced religious chronography starting from the ''creation of the world'', and replaced it with a secular world history- and records relevant testimonies that show the reception of the new form of chronography by the reading public.
The Programme also studies the formation procedures of Greek national history and historiography (from C. Koumas to C. Paparrigopoulos and S. Zambelios), and more specifically, the transition from a ''history of Greece'' to a ''history of the Greek nation''. It examines the theoretical requirements for the formation of a national consciousness for history (political romanticism, historicism and nationalism), and studies the formulation of the discourse about ''the historical rights of Hellenism'', and the integration of the Macedonian and Byzantine periods into a three-thousand-years history of the Greek nation.
Special emphasis is given to the relation between local and national history through the study of the historiographic production of the history school of the Ionian Islands (18th-19th cent.). The objective here is to understand the peculiarities of this history school, and to interpret the methodological and, mainly, ideological differences that are evident when one compares the historiographers of the Ionian Islands with those of the Greek mainland.
The researchers' interests also include the study of Greek Marxist historiography, in an effort to understand the incisions it effected on the study of the history of new Hellenism, through its opposition to what the dominant national historiography accepts as self-evident truths, as well as the detection of the ''continuity'' relations that exist between the two historiographic ''traditions''. The Programme analyzes the views of Greek Marxists (G. Skliros, G. Kordatos, G. Zevgos, S. Maximos) on the ''objective'' and ''subjective'' conditions of the historical formation of ''classes'' and ''nations'', and studies the ''ambivalent'' relations of Greek Marxist historiography with Byzantium (on the one hand views on ''Byzantine feudalism'', and on the other a search for the ''sources of neohellenic nationality'' in late Byzantium). The main objective here is an understanding of the social-political and ideological dimensions of the conflict of Greek Marxists concerning the historical role of the Greek bourgeoisie. At the same time, the gradual ''maturation'' of national-academic historiography in the 20th century is studied as to how it was influenced by the modern trends of European historiography.
A privileged field for the comparison of the two great historiographic ''paradigms'', the ''national'' and the Marxist, as well as for recording the incisions effected by the appearance of the modern historiographic tendencies of the late 20th century on the study of history of new Hellenism, is unquestionably the study of the historiography of the 1821 Revolution. So the Programme examines the different interpretations of the Struggle for Independence by Greek historians of the 19th and 20th centuries, and attempts to understand their methodological premises through a contrast of their ''narratives''.
Finally, the Programme studies the biographic and portraiture work of New Hellenism (An. Goudas, M. Papadopoulos-Vretos), and attempts to record its production.
Starting from the academic year 2005-2006, the Programme's researchers offer a Postgraduate Seminar for the students of the Postgraduate Programme of the Political Science and History Department of Panteion University (section ''Modern History''). The seminar is conducted with the participation of Dimitris Arvanitakis and Vangelis Karamanolakis.

Programme director: Triantafyllos Sklavenitis, Research Director

Researchers: Ioannis Koubourlis, Guest Research Associate