Abstract
Narrative is a fundamental form of historical thinking. As such, narrative is a representational framework through which real events can be ordered into simplified temporal sequences unfolding within historical settings, driven by the interaction of historical personages or collective entities such as nations or classes. These insights, however, are yet to be fully incorporated within the field of applied history, which could profit from a closer consideration of narrative as a concrete manifestation of what has been termed genealogical or processual history. Like the historical analogy, which has been the focus of much research, narrative has the potential to fruitfully make connections between past and present events, but also to misapply history for propagandistic purposes. To address these issues, this article presents a methodological model whose usefulness is demonstrated in two case studies, together with guidelines for how a narrative perspective could inspire future applied history research.