A relationship of reciprocity? The changing position of teaching and research wiithin the nineteenth-century history professorship.

Studies in the research activities of nineteenth-century history professors have greatly multiplied in recent years. There has been shown that those activities were stimulated by the creation of a solid job market for historians, the formation of academic communities, the rise of archives, and the many professional and friendly relations between historians world-wide. However, there has been relatively little analysis of the part history professors played as teachers. The literature almost ignores one of the most substantial aspects of the nineteenth-century history professorship. Besides conducting research in an increasingly specialized way, nineteenth-century history professors devoted a lot of their time to education activities. They did not only teach their own students. By publishing textbooks and writing more popular works, they did also instruct the pupils from secondary schools and even the whole nation. My project explores how history professors in Belgium combined their research and teaching activities between 1820 and 1914. By means of this investigation, I want to gain insight into how historical knowledge was produced and spread on different levels during the nineteenth century. Moreover, by focusing on the practices of teaching, I want to sketch a much more correct picture of the nineteenth-century history professorship than hitherto has been drawn in the literature.

Keywords:Nineteenth century, History education, Intellectual history, Historiography

Disciplines:History