Citizenship among the historians

Abstract

Around the time of the establishment of Citizenship Studies, historians had a straightforward picture of what it was, and how it developed. Citizenship had been invented in Ancient Greece, where philosophers like Aristotle had outlined its main features, which remained basically unchanged until the twentieth century. Citizenship was a male prerogative, closely related to political participation and for a long time only available to Europeans. Only in post-colonial regimes could the rest of the world develop its own forms of citizenship. This picture is hard to square with the contents of Citizenship Studies, and historians have indeed moved on, as the discussion of three major books demonstrates. Such changes have, however, not come about as a result of the impact of the journal among historians, because that has been very limited so far. The paper speculates about other explanations of this parallel development.