Historical consciousness in contemporary society. Popular historical culture in the Netherlands, 1945-2000

Abstract

The presence of history in everyday life is so ubiquitous that it hardly raises attention. Professional historians merely assume a general interest in the past, but is this assumption true? How can interest in history be defined? These are problematic questions that many historians have hardly pondered upon. The possibility should be considered that the historical interest of the lay public may differ significantly from the professional perception. Only in recent decades have historians begun to probe this issue. Since the early 1970’s, a limited but growing number of studies devoted to the manner in which non-historians perceive and relate to history have been undertaken. These studies have mainly been pursued in Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Complaints about the lack of scientific attention devoted to the public conception of history have encouraged the composition of a variety of literature about the role of history in popular culture. Dutch scholars started to take an interest in this issue in the 1980's, influenced by several foreign publications. Unfortunately, the literary efforts of Dutch scholars have been brief and fragmentary. There are some detailed and well researched works about the memory of World War II, but what lacks is a comprehensive survey of the theoretical concepts of historical culture linked to broader empirical studies on this subject. The doctoral dissertation which is summarized in this article (Published as: Kees Ribbens, Een eigentijds verleden. Alledaagse historische cultuur in Nederland, 1945-2000 (Hilversum [Verloren] 2002) 381 p.) attempts to bridge this gap by focusing on the concept of popular historical culture as a framework in which the general public (not consisting of professional historians) integrates and processes history into everyday life. This popular historical culture is as diverse as the population concerned.