Jingoism and myth making: An early 20th century school history of the British Empire

     John M. Wood and Aileen G. Garland. The Story of England and the Empire (1951) A textbook for middle schools, adapted by Garland for Canada. This is a revised edition, containing hints that the first edition was published sometime in the 1920s or 30s. It’s a fascinating example of school history as propaganda and myth making. The message radiates from the title on out: Britain is the most important country in the world, it has created the greatest Empire the world has ever seen, the rest of the world still depends on British values and ideals to lead it into the uplands of a bright, happy future; etc. Not to mention British manufactures, which lead the world in quality.
     It’s also a Great Man history. Almost all the important actors are men (Elizabeth I is the major exception), usually characterised as one of the greatest soldiers/kings/etc; wise, strong, just; etc. Or weak, lazy and feeble; unable to command obedience; etc. The best rulers are described as gentle and just, making good laws, and making sure the people obeyed them. Clearly, you are supposed to be grateful for having such wise, strong, gentle, and just people in charge of your life.
     What’s even more interesting is what’s missing: there are almost no specific details or stories that would illustrate what life was like. It’s almost entirely about politics and economics. Vague words like prosperity, peace, happiness, etc, abound. The writer (Mackenzie) admires power, and has no sense of what middle school children (aged 10-14) would like to know about. I’m not surprised that from the late 1950s on the “enterprise method” became popular in Canada for teaching history. It set pupils the task of finding out about the everyday lives of their ancestors, and representing them in models, pictures, and stories.
     The tone and attitude of this book persisted for at least another generation, and fomented a sentimental and stupid nostalgia for the great days of empire, which has had a malign effect on British politics, most obviously in the Brexit vote. I think the fantasy of a Great Britain motivates a minority, but it was enough to bring the Leave vote over the 50% mark.
     School history has always been a contentious issue. Its primary purpose is to tell the nation’s story so that children will develop a proper sense of citizenship. This inevitably results in exaggeration of the nation’s international role and influence, and more or less obvious myth making and jingoism. For example, although the history I was taught in Austria in the 1950s wasn’t quite as jingoistic as this book exemplifies, it was focused on Austria’s past role in geopolitics, which was considerable. It was after all the murder of the Austrian Crown Prince that triggered the first World War, an event that itself testifies to the fantasy that some Great Man who leads a Great Power can make a decisive difference.
     What popular histories have tended to ignore or downplay is the fact that we can choose only from the (always limited) options available to us. Whatever influence we do have rarely produces new options for ourselves. It’s left to those who come after us to choose from the options we have  inadvertently created. That's usually some variation on cleaning up a bloody mess. Historians who tell the story more objectively tend to be ignored as mere academics.
     This textbook is interesting and IMO important data for anyone who wants to understand how popular sentiment affects the options available to our leaders, leaders who are themselves of course influenced by the same sentiments that we have developed in school, and which the press and entertainment amplify, simplify, and distort. As history, the book is awful. As sociological data, it’s priceless.