E Wynn Williams: Britain’s Story

     E Wynn Williams Britain’s Story (4th revised edition, August 1940) Edited by J L Gill and R F S Baird for use in Ontario schools.
     Jon would have liked this history text. Published at a time when Canada was resolutely British, this school book appears to be aimed at middle-school pupils. The history is told in clear language, the more morbid and disreputable bits are left out, and a slew of generalised judgments and characterisations are delivered with few supporting details. Thus, pupils learn that Pepys was a great diarist, that Newton was a great scientist, and so on. But they aren’t told of the General Strike in England, nor of the Winnipeg massacre in Canada; it seems that “modern” ideas of labour rights, safety, and so on emerged as sensible people arrived at a consensus.
     The bias is monarchist, imperial, and progressive, with a great deal of implicit praise for the way the British Empire was established, and how the British Commonwealth of Nations grew out of it. The book includes chapters showing ways of life at different periods, and how housing, clothing, food, social life and so on changed over the centuries. The authors take it for granted that there has been pretty steady social and political progress since the Renascence, and wonderful technological progress since the 1700s. The progressivist stance seems quaint now; reading the book offers a way of thinking about history that is itself now of historical interest. Neat little line drawings in the text and on the end papers provide some visual pleasure. **½