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Can an empire be transformed into a nation-state? This paper examines the works of John Robert Seeley and Liang Qichao as projects aimed at adapting the histories of the British and Qing empires to a national theory of political legitimation. By analysing three aspects—national unity, national continuity and historical subjecthood—in their historical narratives, it shows : (1) that history plays a central role in the production of imagined communities; (2) that the principles of the national discourse limited the possibilities of these rewritings of history; and (3) that previous identifiers were adapted to the new theory of national legitimation.