National Narratives and Reenacting the Past
Today in public history class, my classmates and I discussed the topic of historical reenactment. In the United States and Canada, a lot of historical reenactment is focused on the military, portraying battles from specific wars in their history. In my view, this focus on military history, part of a broader trend in popular history, reflects these countries' national historical narratives. Most if not all countries have national historical narratives, stories about the past that are meant to strengthen their national identity. These stories are inherently problematic in that they generally sanitize a country’s history and present at best overly simplistic narratives of the past. In the United States, the country claiming its independence from Britain through victory in the Revolutionary War is part of this national narrative and is a popular subject for reenactment. Sometimes the connection between national identity, politics and historical reenactment is made explic...