Mission and reality

One thing is clear, EUROCLIO is a leftist organisation with a crusading mission to spread critical thinking, democratic values, multi-ethnicity, cross-cultural knowledge and tolerance. To what extent is this a realistic goal and how is it justifible?
States like to maintain a broad control on the themes of history teaching, because from their perspective all citizens should at least know the history of the state. Since this is still the era of the nation-state, states use national history to play the leading role in the states history. Time to redefine Nation, State and the role of history in society.

Nation can be defined as a group of people, organised in seperate communities that feel attached to each other through the idea of a corresponding experience of history, symbolified by flag, language and culture. A National soccer team however, can include people who have just migrated from another part of the world. This person will not have the shared experience of history, and will probably behave within different cultural framework. He is however accepted within the nation. So the definition of nation is very flexible, and maybe it is better if we just define the nation: those who derive their identity from the idea of the nation.

State can be defined as a large organising group of people that try to govern. The Government, product of their collaboration, is the sole reason of the state. State, according to Max Weber, has two very important monopolies: violence and taxes. Through the dominance of the state, the state exists. If the state did not control violence and taxes, there is no state. Then there is anarchy. A state can function without a clearcut identity marker, such as the nation. It does however, by doing so, launching competitive identity-markers. This is clearly visible in the former Sovjet Union. Communism should have erased the notion of nationhood and nationalism, but it didnt really achieve this, as pride and identity could now be linked to this new state/monster.

Where should nation and state border? In most cases they can stand next to one another in an harmonious fashion, as the main identity marker is the nation and the state governs fully aware and acknowledging the nation. But in the increasingly multicultural countries of Europe, nation becomes an obstacle for the state´s effort to rule all the peoples equally. Also in Israel there is a conflict as only the Jewish nation is obliged to fight for the state.

Striving for full-blown democracy requires the state to be blind for nations and nations to be blind, while governing. As EUROCLIO attempts to spread this mission, governments are using their ministries of Education to emphasise national history of the state, as this justifies the existance of the state.

So how about the European national history for the new European state?