Citizenship, nation, empire investigates the extent to which popular
imperialism influenced the teaching of history between 1870 and 1930. It
is the first book-length study to trace the substantial impact of
educational psychology on the teaching of history, probing its impact on
textbooks, literacy primers and teacher-training manuals.
Educationists identified 'enlightened patriotism' to be the core
objective of historical education. This was neither tub-thumping
jingoism, nor state-prescribed national-identity teaching, but rather a
carefully crafted curriculum for all children which fused civic as well
as imperial ambitions.
The book details contemporary debates about the purpose of history
teaching and the influence of late-Victorian and Edwardian educational
culture, and goes on to examine how pedagogical developments shaped the
content of early-years reading books and textbooks through analysis of
key themes including race, seafaring, gender and national identity.
Special attention is paid to the significance of mass schooling in the
formation of turn-of-the-twentieth-century cultures of hero worship, and
the legacy of such developments for the 1920s.
This volume will be of interest to those studying or researching aspects
of English domestic imperial culture, especially those concerned with
questions of childhood and schooling, citizenship, educational
publishing and Anglo-British relations. Given that vitriolic debates
about the politics of history teaching have endured into the
twenty-first century, Citizenship, nation, empire is a timely study of
the formative influences that shaped the history curriculum in English
schools.
