Comparative portrayals of the British Empire in history textbooks, 1920s–2020s: influences, paradigms and historical frameworks

Abstract

Debates over the content, aims and purpose of school history are salient features in educational landscapes across the world, and in recent years in the UK many such debates have focused on how the history of the British Empire should be taught in schools. With the aim of better understanding how British imperial histories are, and have been, approached in English classrooms, this study compares two samples of history textbooks, one of books published between 1920 and 1939, and the second of books published between 2015 and 2023. Additionally, the study explores changing traditions in English history education more generally, and in particular compares how histories of the British Empire have been narrated under the influence of two pedagogical traditions: the ‘great tradition’, which dominated English history education for most of the twentieth century until the 1970s, and ‘new history’, which came to dominate from the early 1970s onwards, and which was particularly influenced by the establishment of the Schools Council History Project in 1972. A complex range of factors have influenced how histories relating to the British Empire have been narrated in textbooks over the years, but the study particularly considers the extent to which the founding principles of the Schools Council History Project continue to influence how histories are narrated half a century after the establishment of the project, and what implications this might have in the context of empire histories specifically. We also consider how such patterns may influence further developments in textbook portrayals of British imperial history in the future.