The modernization of historiography in 18th-century Belgium

During the second half of the 18th-century Belgian historiography developed from the discipline of 'writing' history and collecting historical information towards the discipline of 'studying' history. The 'old' historian wrote a 'history' in which (by definition) as many data as possible concerning (the past of) a subject (a province, a city, a diocese, an institution) were gathered. The 'new' historian on the other hand wrote a 'dissertation', the topic of which was not so much the past of a certain entity (geographical or historical), but rather a historical and/or historiographical issue. This transformation of historiography concerned a lot of different aspects of this particular intellectual activity, including the position of the reader, who now was supposed to be interested in historical research as such. These shifts coincide and are partly determined by the 'invention' of a Belgian national history (the general history of the Austrian Netherlands), which gradually replaced the particular historiography of the old principalities (such as the country of Flanders and the duchy of Brabant). Henceforth Belgian historians did not have to write a multitude of histories anymore, they now all worked on one larger project, on just one history. Therefore their work consisted of mere contributions, they solved problems and allowed the Belgian history to be written, somewhere in the future.