Abstract
In this chapter Berger presents an overview of the development of the historical discipline from its beginnings in the eighteenth century up to the twenty-first century. He emphasises the significance and development of national histories in the historiography, because this has been the dominant form of history writing ever since. Moreover, the author traces the institutional evolutions of the historical discipline. Academies around Europe and universities in Göttingen or Berlin had been important places for the professionalisation of this discipline. While the modern writing of national histories began during the Enlightenment and Romanticism and developed through history, two current major trends indicated by Berger are on one hand the renationalization of history and on the other hand the critical forms of national historiography.