Mass education and the British Empire

Abstract

AbstractThis article explores recent scholarship on the history of education in the British Empire, with a particular focus on the imperial origins of mass education. Though universal and compulsory education only became a global phenomenon after World War II, the beginnings of mass education can be found in the colonial era. The article examines the rise of a missionary and humanitarian discourse in the early 19th century that powerfully advocated for expanded educational opportunities for working‐class Britons and colonized subjects alike, the rise of mass education in Britain and the settlement colonies in the late 19th century that often‐excluded nonwhite subjects, and the successive policies of adapted education and schemes for educational development that arose in the interwar period. The article stresses that indigenous peoples throughout the British Empire were active agents in this process, and calls for additional research to better understand the widespread acceptance of mass education across the British Empire.