Urban Historiography as an Adaptation Tool in the Context of Modernization of the Central-European Society (1860-1900)
Abstract
The contribution focuses on the social functions of urban historiography in the Czech Lands and Galicia in the period of 1860-1900. Following new trends in the studies of urban governance, public history and the study of adaptation processes - and on the basis of selected examples of cities and their urban biographies - the contribution examines how urban historiography of the late 19th century functioned as a tool for the adaptation of cities to the modernization of society, especially in relation to the transformation of identities, the rise of civil society, new forms of urban administration and the transformation of the urban environment, but also at the level of individual trajectories of individual cities.
While a large part of urban historiography produced representations that connected the history of a city with more general narratives of modernization and history of respective nations, and thus indirectly legitimized the politics of the new urban elites, in some cases the histories had the ambition to be tools for the education of an active citizenry that would use historical education to more effectively engagement in cities' development. In both cases, the histories formulated ideas of desirable attitudes and roles.
An important role was therefore played by the construction of exemplary figures of urban history, representing the so-called "role models".