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

Rationale and literature review

This focused textbook study is part of a large-scale collaborative project, ‘A Portrait of the Teaching of the British Empire, Migration and Belonging in English Secondary Schools’ (PortraitEMB, 2023). The PortraitEMB project’s overall aim is to provide a research-informed evidence base that will guide and inform teaching and learning about this complex and often contested history. This smaller study seeks to build on existing research conducted in the UK context, and to contribute to wider international textbook research relating to portrayals of empire and colonialism (for example, Araújo and Rodríguez Maeso, 2012; Cajani, 2013; Carretero et al., 2002; Cave, 2002; Crawford, 2013; Cruz, 2007; Holmén, 2011; Joshi, 2010; Kan and Vickers, 2002; Kim et al., 2013; Lantheaume, 2013; Oo, 2012; Van Nieuwenhuyse and Valentim, 2018).

Although it would be imprudent to claim that textbook content precisely mirrors what teachers teach and students learn, textbooks have played a significant role in history teaching and learning in classrooms across the country for more than a century (Marsden, 2001), and thus analysis of school history textbooks provides important insights into how young people are likely to have encountered narratives and portrayals of the British Empire over time. Furthermore, because textbooks are ‘widely vetted’ (Willinsky, 1998: 125) at various stages by, for example, authors, publishers and teachers, they are likely to reflect the attitudes of a range of educational thinkers (Willinsky, 1998). Analysis of history textbooks also illuminates the pedagogical and epistemological assumptions that inform teaching and learning in any given era (Grever and Van der Vlies, 2017).

A number of previous studies have focused on how the British Empire has been portrayed in school textbooks over time. For practical reasons, including access to out-of-print textbooks, a lack of availability of publishing and sales data indicating which titles were most widely used, and the time required for in-depth analysis of textually dense books, most of these earlier studies have compared small numbers of books covering limited time periods. Much of the existing research on this topic has examined how empire histories were narrated in schoolbooks before the First World War (for example, Castle, 1996; Chancellor, 1970; Yeandle, 2015). Other studies have looked at more recent textbooks only, such as Abadia and Collins (2018), and Grindel (2013), both of which explored history books aimed at Key Stage 3 students (typically aged 11–14), as we did, although in the case of Abadia and Collins, these were self-study guides rather than class textbooks. Grindel (2013) compared a textbook published before the 1988 National Curriculum with books published between 2006 and 2011, finding that significantly more attention was paid to histories of the British Empire and migration (Grindel, 2013) in the later books. Abadia and Collins (2018: 66, emphasis in the original) found that in the books they analysed there was ‘a tendency to simplify rather than problematize by presenting colonial subject positions and imperial historical perspectives as binary opposite, such as good or bad, right or wrong’, an observation which is relevant to our findings about balance sheet framings (see below). Few existing studies compare pre-Second World War textbooks with contemporary books, although one which does, and which provides key background to our research, is Van der Vlies (2022). That author conducted a study of four samples of textbooks from both England and the Netherlands, also beginning with books published after the First World War, and concluding with more recent books published between 1988 and 2010. Aside from this key area of overlap, her research is distinct from ours in that she did not focus on histories of European empires in general, but on narrative ‘echoes’ of one key historical event for each of her two national contexts.

The methodological approaches employed for this study were informed by key academic frameworks established by international researchers (for example, Carrier, 2018; Foster, 2011; Fuchs, 2011; Klerides, 2010; Morgan and Henning, 2013; Müller, 2018; Pingel, 2010; Repoussi and Tutiaux-Guillon, 2010; Sleeter and Grant, 1991; Vera and Fuchs, 2018). They were also based on aspects of previous research conducted by the authors (for example, Foster, 1999, 2005; Foster and Burgess, 2013; Foster and Crawford, 2006; Foster and Karayianni, 2018; McDermid, 2020). Like many other textbook studies (Bock, 2018), our research used discourse analysis methods, as ‘Textbook knowledge … must be decoded (analysed) in terms of its semantic structure, function and form in order to be defined in terms of sociocultural knowledge’ (Fuchs, 2011, cited in Bock, 2018: 61). Like Abadia and Collins (2018) in their analysis of study guides, and also using insights from Klerides (2010), we looked particularly at who is given and denied agency in narrations of empire histories, whose perspectives are centred, and whose are marginalised: ‘Who is active and with whom do they interact, who is passive, who is visible and who is not?’ (Fuchs and Henne, 2018: 29). We also considered the role of the author in presenting authoritative versions of ‘the facts’, and which other voices are present.

Textbook samples

The study analyses two sets of history textbooks published during the periods 1920–39 and 2015–23, respectively. We refer to the textbooks in the first set as ‘traditional textbooks’, as in Klerides (2010: 41), and to the second as ‘contemporary textbooks’. We chose the first of these two periods as it covers the final years of the British Empire’s existence as a thriving and dominant institution. This was also a period, following the First World War, when there was already widespread international debate about how history should be narrated in school textbooks, as the war had ‘led contemporary politicians and intellectuals, especially in Europe, to reflect on education’s role in the promotion of conflict’ (Roldán Vera, 2018: 105; see also Van der Vlies, 2022).

Around the time of the emergence of new history in the 1970s, histories of the British Empire were not extensively taught in English classrooms. Stanard (2018: 17) notes that the post-war period ‘witnessed a decentering of historical research away from empire, strictly speaking, toward study of the nations and peoples of the now formerly colonised world’; following the period of decolonisation after the Second World War, historical understandings of imperialism had to be reappraised, and, as Van der Vlies (2022) notes, history textbooks typically take some time to catch up with new developments in history and historiography, including ‘the transformation undergone by the historiography of the British Empire since the 1980s’ (Grindel, 2013: 34; see also, for example, Howe, 2020). For these reasons, and also because the current period represents a time of increasing interest in how empire histories are taught, our second sample includes books that are in print and available from publishers at the time of writing (2024). The second period is shorter than the first because most textbooks currently available from publishers were produced after the most recent changes to the National Curriculum for history in 2014. In contrast, there were no extensive changes to English school curricula between 1919 and 1939, meaning that there were no periods of sudden, widespread change in the textbooks published during this period. In fact, as various authors have noted, many popular titles were repeatedly reprinted over several decades (for example, MacKenzie, 1984), with books published in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s still in use in London schools in the 1960s (Hatch, 1962).

The traditional textbooks were selected from the Historical Textbooks Collection at the UCL Institute of Education (UCL Special Collections), which holds approximately 88,000 textbooks published from the 1890s onwards, representing all aspects of the curriculum and all age ranges. To identify a credible textbook sample for close analysis, four selection criteria were established:

1. that they were written for the history classroom

2. that they were broadly aimed at students in secondary education (aged about 11–16)

3. that they had a significant content focus on the British Empire

4. that we could find evidence of widespread classroom use.

For the fourth criterion, as publication data and sales figures are not widely available for textbooks from this period, the WorldCat online library catalogue was used to determine which textbooks were popular based on the number of editions or reprints that were produced. Using these four criteria, an initial sample of 40 textbooks was identified, and this was further narrowed down based on relevant content to the 11 textbooks listed in Appendix A.

Selecting a sample of contemporary textbooks was more straightforward, as the contemporary textbook publishing landscape in England is dominated by only four major publishers. We wanted to analyse books that are currently used in English classrooms, so we identified one book each from the core Key Stage 3 history textbook series published by, and currently available from, the four largest educational publishers: Collins, Hodder, Oxford University Press and Pearson. We analysed the books aimed at Year 8 students, as, in most cases, these cover periods from either the sixteenth or eighteenth centuries until around 1900, and include more topics related to British imperialism than either the Year 7 or Year 9 books from the same series. One disadvantage is that not all these Year 8 books cover the origins of the British Empire, and none of them cover the post-1945 decolonisation period, although these periods are covered in the remaining two books in our sample, one of which covers more material as it used for a full three-year Key Stage 3 course (Textbook N, 2019), and one of which focuses specifically on British imperialism (Textbook Q, 2023). The contemporary textbooks referred to are listed in Appendix B.

Research questions

The study was guided by the following three central research questions.

• How were histories of the British Empire portrayed in textbooks in the era of the ‘great tradition’ compared to how they are narrated in contemporary books?

• To what extent do current portrayals reflect the ongoing influence of ‘new history’, and to what extent do more traditional patterns endure?

• In relation to textbook portrayals of the British Empire, what are some issues that arise in relation to dominant approaches, and how might trends in textbook portrayals of the British Empire change and develop in the future?

Analytical approach

To address these questions, the research progressed through several stages. First, a detailed literature review was undertaken focused on changing approaches to history education since 1919. Particular attention was paid to understanding the educational landscape prior to the 1970s, when the so-called ‘great tradition’ was dominant, and to the emergence of ‘new history’, and the impact of the Schools Council History Project in particular, from the early 1970s onwards. Core characteristics of these two traditions were identified through a rigorous analysis of key primary and secondary literature and curriculum documentation. Samples of textbooks from each era were then selected for analysis. Initially the two authors collaboratively identified key sections and chapters in the samples which explicitly focused on the British Empire. Each author then independently read the agreed sections/chapters from each book, making observational notes on multiple-page data-collection sheets. In the fourth phase, the authors agreed a common qualitative analytical framework focusing on: (1) content (for example, what topics, individuals and events were deemed important? How were historical topics classified and arranged?); (2) perspectives (for example, who were the key agents and protagonists in the master narrative? What viewpoints were marginalised or excluded?); (3) pedagogy (for example, what pedagogical assumptions dominated? What were students being asked to do, and why?); and (4) epistemology (for example, how was the nature of history and the historical past presented? Was the past presented as a singular narrative, or were different interpretations of the past portrayed?).

The results of this comparative analysis revealed a series of dominant themes and concepts which were used to address the research questions identified above. The discussion focuses on four key thematic areas of comparison, which were found to be notable not only in terms of changing portrayals of British Empire histories, but also interesting in terms of the pedagogical assumptions underlying these portrayals: (1) history as a body of knowledge versus history as a form of knowledge; (2) the use of historical sources; (3) historical interpretation and balance sheet approaches; and (4) Anglocentric narratives, forging a positive national identity. Reflections on the results of this detailed comparative analysis also provided a basis to explore the final research question, which focuses on core issues, and on potential future developments based on an analysis of the perspectives and content coverage of the most recent textbook in our sample.

History education in the era of the ‘great tradition’

Although some exceptions existed (see for example, Aldrich, 1984; Aldrich and Dean, 1991; Edwards, 2017), for around two-thirds of the twentieth century, history education in England was broadly dominated by what Slater (1989) terms the ‘inherited consensus’ of the ‘great tradition’, which was characterised by a number of distinctive features (Crawford, 1996; Dickinson, 2000; Foster, 2023; Haydn, 2004; Husbands et al., 2003; Phillips, 1998; Sylvester, 1994). First, almost without exception, school history syllabuses focused on a chronological parade through British (or, more specifically, English) history from the Roman invasion of 43 CE onwards. Beyond a focus on Britain’s empire, limited attention was accorded to European or world events. Following the devastation of first one and then a second world war, emphasis was placed on providing a celebratory narrative of Britain’s past, with the history classroom and textbook narratives aiming to engender patriotism, civic pride and a sense of belonging to a powerful national (or imperial) ‘imagined community’ (Anderson, 2016). Of particular importance in the context of our research, celebrating the achievements of the British Empire at a time when it ruled over 450 million people and its territorial possessions covered one-quarter of the world’s surface was a staple of the history curriculum.

A key feature of history education in this era was the dominance of an uncontested canon of key events in British history. Typically, instruction focused on constitutional, military and political events, with scant coverage of social, cultural or economic developments. The fusion of patriotic history education with the aims of moral and civic education (Haydn, 2004; Yeandle, 2015) often resulted in teachers encouraging young people to honour and imitate the attributes of national ‘heroes’ such as Wilberforce, Rhodes, Livingstone or Clive. School history tended to frame history according to ‘the Whig interpretation of a largely progressive development of democracy, welfare and improvement’ (Husbands et al., 2003: 8), and neither history classrooms nor history textbooks were regarded as sites to consider critical or alternative interpretations of past events, or the perspectives of, for example, other nations, colonised peoples, working people or women.

Another key characteristic of history education during this era related to issues of pedagogy and epistemology. Generally, the teacher dominated instruction in history, and their role was to ‘deliver’ the content of a core ‘body’ of factual knowledge (often via lecture, blackboard notations or reading from textbooks). History was generally regarded as a ‘received subject’, demanding little or no active engagement from students (Cannadine et al., 2011; Sylvester, 1994), who were commonly expected to memorise core information, often catalogued in history textbooks, and then to reproduce this knowledge in the form of tests or essays. Often, therefore, dull and limited pedagogical approaches were supported by textbooks which presented history as a continuous narrative of facts, sometimes interspersed with lists of questions testing readers’ recall and understanding (Cannadine et al. 2011; Haydn, 2004; Marsden, 2001), and sometimes with no activities for students at all. The idea of young people being encouraged to consider the nature of history, or to acquire any epistemological sense of how historical narratives were constructed, would have been alien to students and teachers in the era of the great tradition.

‘New history’ and the Schools Council History Project (SCHP)

This great tradition remained dominant for several decades after the Second World War (for example, Aldrich and Dean, 1991; Booth, 1969; Dickinson, 2000; Husbands et al., 2003; MacKenzie, 1984; Phillips, 1998; Sylvester, 1994), despite significant societal and educational change in post-war Britain, including, and of particular relevance to our research, the decline of the British Empire. Eventually, however, the development of what became known as ‘new history’ during the 1970s and 1980s emerged to challenge these established conventions. The changes were not immediate or cataclysmic, but over time they marked a significant paradigm shift in English history education.

One important catalyst for change was a widespread concern that history’s place in the curriculum was facing existential threat, as encapsulated by Mary Price’s (1968: 344) famous warning that ‘in a great many schools it is excruciatingly, dangerously, dull, and what is more of little apparent relevance’. This stark warning came during a period of profound change in English education (Aldrich, 2002), key aspects of which included the raising of the school leaving age to 16 in 1973 and the rapid rise of comprehensive schools, which made up fewer than 10 per cent of English secondary schools in 1964, but 80 per cent by 1980 (Cannadine et al., 2011). In this context, many history teachers sought a reappraisal of the subject to ensure that it was more relevant, accessible and appealing to students of all abilities.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, therefore, educators urged a radical rethink of the subject’s nature, purpose and practice. Much of the curriculum innovation that challenged core assumptions in English schools from the 1960s onwards was driven by the Schools Council, established in 1963, and, in the realm of history education, the Schools Council History Project (SCHP) was a key element of a widespread reappraisal of the ideas of the great tradition. The SCHP, which was to have a profound and lasting impact on the subject (Cannadine et al., 2011; Woolley, 2020), was originally developed between 1972 and 1976 under the direction of David Sylvester at the University of Leeds. The project was primarily motivated by a desire to make history more relevant, interesting and meaningful to young people, as articulated in its inaugural document, A New Look at History (Schools History Project, 1976). In a radical departure from past perspectives, A New Look at History outlined core purposes for the study of history in school, all of which remain central to the current iteration of the SCHP, the Schools History Project (Schools History Project, 2024). According to some of the key principles, historical study should help young people understand the contemporary world, consider their own identities in relation to people from different times and places, understand processes of change and continuity, and think critically about human affairs (Schools History Project, 1976).

Influenced by the work of Bruner (1960) and Hirst (1974), advocates for change focused on history’s disciplinary qualities, and argued that young people should be taught to view history not as a ‘body of knowledge’ to be memorised, but as a ‘form of knowledge’ to be explored, understood and actively critiqued (Wineburg, 2001). Thus, a distinctive feature of new history was its radical and innovative focus on the epistemological and pedagogical development of the subject. The long-standing belief that students should only learn a fixed canon of key events and individuals in British history was abandoned by many teachers, and increasingly history classrooms became spaces where teachers and students considered and debated different interpretations of past events. The architects of new history also broke new educational ground by advocating that students engage in historical enquiries supported by an intelligent appreciation of historical evidence. Thus, teachers who endorsed the principles of new history invited students to critically consider a range of primary and secondary sources, such as photographs, newspaper extracts, maps, political cartoons, documents and historical accounts, using them to develop arguments and reach conclusions. By the 1990s, the idea of structuring units of work around a series of dominant enquiry questions had become increasingly popular in classrooms, and it was a notable feature of many history textbooks (see, for example, Shepard et al., 1993).

Along with the profound educational changes that took place in England during the 1960s and 1970s, it is important to consider the emergence of new history within the rapidly changing sociocultural context of the time. Phillips (1998: 14), referring to increasing immigration to Britain after the Second World War, argued that ‘increasing cultural diversity caused urban schools to re-evaluate the orientation of their history syllabuses’. Certainly, significant change was afoot in the history profession, with the focus increasingly moving away from political history and towards more social, inclusive and critical histories (Aldrich and Dean, 1991; Cannadine et al., 2011; Dickinson, 2000; Husbands et al., 2003; Retz, 2022). These key developments undoubtedly also had an impact on the knowledge and conceptual orientation of history teachers entering the profession during this period (Retz, 2022).

The SCHP became increasingly popular with teachers, as growing numbers embraced the central tenets of new history, and it has continued to have a profound impact on history education (Cannadine et al., 2011; Haydn, 2004; Husbands et al., 2003; Retz, 2022; Woolley, 2020). New history significantly influenced the development of the GCSE (General Certificate of Secondary Education) history examination specifications from 1986 onwards, as well as England’s inaugural National Curriculum for history in 1991, although this was not without controversy (see below). All subsequent versions of the National Curriculum (for example, DfE, 1995, 2013; DfEE, 1999; DfES, 1991; QCA, 2007) have also stated that as well as learning core content, it is important for students to acquire key disciplinary understandings.

By the mid-1980s, it was evident that core aspects of new history had become mainstream in schools in England, although it would be misleading to suggest that vast swathes of teachers across the country totally eschewed ‘traditional’ history education and comprehensively embraced all aspects of the new model. Most typically, history teachers would draw on both traditions, holding the two in ‘creative tension’ (Haydn, 2004; Husbands et al., 2003; Woolley, 2020). There were also those who pointedly rejected the principles of new history (for a more detailed discussion, see, for example, Van der Vlies, 2022). Disputes between advocates of traditional and new history became particularly fierce at the end of the 1980s, with controversy accompanying the introduction of the first National Curriculum (Crawford, 1996; Foster, 1998; Phillips 1998; Woolley, 2020). Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who had previously been Education Secretary between 1970 and 1974, was particularly eager to exert control over the teaching of history. She made her ‘traditionalist’ position abundantly clear in a direct attack on ‘progressive’ new history, famously declaring herself ‘appalled’ by suggestions that history education should ‘put the emphasis on interpretation and enquiry as against content and knowledge’ (Thatcher, 1993: 596). She also demanded that more attention be paid to British history and chronological study (Thatcher, 1993). Ultimately, as many commentators have argued (Haydn, 2004; Husbands et al., 2003; Woolley, 2020), the first National Curriculum in history was a compromise between the two traditions. On the one hand, traditionalists were appeased by its central chronological focus on British history, while, on the other hand, new history advocates celebrated the central requirement that students be taught to understand and evaluate historical evidence, and to consider differing interpretations and diverse perspectives.

While Thatcherite conservatism dominated the sociopolitical landscape in England between 1979 and 1997, 13 years of New Labour rule between 1997 and 2010 gave somewhat more space to more progressive and outward-looking voices. For example, heavily influenced by the Ajegbo Report (DfES, 2007), the 2007 revised National Curriculum for history introduced a new requirement to focus on ‘cultural, ethnic and religious diversity’, and to pay ‘more attention to topics such as the impact through time of the movement and settlement of diverse peoples to, from, and within the British Isles’ (DfES, 2007: 3). The beginning of the twenty-first century was also marked by increased attention to issues of citizenship, human rights, cultural identities, postcolonialism and the legacy of Empire, and a re-assessment of Britain’s place in the modern world (for example, Stanard, 2018).

After 2010, during another 14 consecutive years of Conservative rule (2010–24), the educational agenda once again became more influenced by reactionary and traditional elements, although in 2013, the Education Secretary, Michael Gove, was unable to fully introduce planned reforms to the history curriculum that he had hoped would focus more narrowly on British achievements and foster a sense of ‘national pride’ (Yeandle, 2015: 5; see also Grindel, 2013), following widespread resistance from history teachers and academics (Evans, 2013). More recently, radical social movements such as Black Lives Matter have contributed to widespread public awareness, interest and debate over how histories of British colonialism in particular should be approached both within and outside school classrooms, and this, along with key developments in postcolonial historiography (see, for example, Howe, 2020), has also been significant in mitigating the power of more conservative voices.

Textbook analysis and discussion

These changing traditions, along with the wider societal factors, are reflected in various ways in the textbooks that have been produced for use in schools, and their influence on how histories of the British Empire have been narrated to children raise some particularly interesting and important issues. We first discuss the most general features of our two sets of textbooks, which relate to epistemology and pedagogy, including how students are asked to use sources and interpretations, before considering some of the more specific features associated with changing pedagogical traditions, and the potential significance of these in terms of how histories of the British Empire have been presented to students.

Anglocentric narratives: forging a positive national identity

Consideration of the apparent ‘benefits’ of British imperial rule leads to another key area of comparison between traditional and contemporary textbooks, which relates to Anglocentric narratives and the idea of building a positive sense of national identity among readers. As the textbooks in the first sample were written for children who, it was assumed, would grow up to be imperial subjects, while those in the second were not, it is unsurprising that the traditional textbooks generally present more unproblematic celebratory accounts of the apparent achievements of British imperial rule. For many traditional textbook authors, the imposition of Western customs on colonised peoples, and the elimination of their own local practices, is presented uncritically as something positive. Knowledge is assumed to flow in one direction only – it is considered desirable for colonised peoples to ‘learn’ to become more Western, but there is no mention of Europeans learning anything from non-Europeans. Textbook F (1932: 12) states that some colonised peoples ‘have learned to live in ways which are much like our own, while others are only just beginning to learn about cities, railways, motors and the cinema, and many hundreds of thousands of them have never heard of these things’. This associates progress/modernity with lifestyles ‘like our own’ (that is, British), while others can only ‘learn’ to live in modern ways (from ‘us’), and should aspire to do so. Such knowledge may be presented as originating in Britain, Europe or the West more generally, and in one notable case, it is attributed specifically to ‘the white man’:

Missionaries and teachers labour unceasingly to help the Africans to learn all that the white man can tell them, while doctors and nurses serve hospitals where those suffering from disease can come to be treated. None of this would have been possible if those countries had not been opened up by the white man, and so it may be claimed that the Empire’s civilizing work in Africa has been, on the whole, a blessing to mankind.

(Textbook J, 1934: 243)

Traditional textbooks frequently extend statements about what the British ‘brought’ to other parts of the world to more abstract concepts such as ‘peace’ and ‘justice’, which are often extremely misleading, not only in terms of the assumption that these could only have been achieved under British imperial rule, but also in the suggestion that they were achieved under imperial rule at all. Textbook J (1934) frames such an account in economic terms, citing the potential to extract minerals as one of the main universal benefits of British imperialism:

Tin and copper are mined on a great scale, and numberless other things are produced that could never have been obtained before the peace and justice that the Empire gives to all its citizens were brought to the natives of Africa by the labours of the British officials who have devoted their lives to the colonial service.

(Textbook J, 1934: 243)

The author’s claim that the Empire brought peace and justice to Africa is demonstrably false (see, for example, Benton, 2024; Elkins, 2022), but potentially highly appealing to British readers of the time, as it implies that without British power there can be nothing but chaos and ‘injustice’. Textbook K (1939: 54) similarly suggests that ‘Under British rule, wars and famines were soon forgotten among the teeming millions of Indians.’

While this type of uncritical patriotic narrative focusing on ‘our’ achievements is not present in the same way in most of the contemporary textbooks, similar accounts are again still often present as ‘one side’ in balance sheet framings, as discussed above. In Textbook L (2015: 90), for example, an Indian child from 1900 is pictured stating that ‘the British make sure that the children of Indian soldiers are given good education in schools’. Although this is presented as one perspective, rather than as part of an authoritative ‘factual’ narrative, the underlying assumption is still that the British ‘brought education to India’, as though there would have been no education otherwise. Textbook M (2018) also presents a list of ‘achievements’ of the British Empire in India, although in this case with some qualification in terms of how these apparent benefits mainly benefited the British themselves. In this case, the information is presented as an authoritative narrative in the authors’ voice, rather than as fictionalised accounts from different people impacted by the Empire, so students are not asked to critically engage with the authors’ account, and thus this apparently ‘balanced’ account can be accepted as true and complete. For example, they write, ‘In the 19th century, the British built over 24,000 miles of railway track in India to increase trade. … Whilst industry provided jobs for local Indians, their wages were low and they had to endure very poor working conditions’ (Textbook M, 2018: 148). In this apparently neutral and balanced account, although it is clear that the railways were not the unqualified positive development they are often presented as in earlier textbooks, Britain is still the key agent and ‘provider’, while Indians are presented as having had no choice but to accept badly paid work. Such accounts also rely on the type of assumptions discussed by Satia (2020: 277) in relation to balance sheet framings, ‘the idea that, absent the British presence, there would be no railroads or dams or any sort of “progress”’.

Related to this, many traditional textbook authors emphasise what they present as British ‘good intentions’, implying that anything negative that happened as a result of British rule was simply due to the British authorities not knowing about it, or not yet having realised it was a problem. Textbook E (1927) attributes the Irish famine of the 1840s exclusively to the failure of potato crops, and suggests that the British government’s only relevant action was to try to improve the situation through legislative changes: ‘the potato crop failed, and there was a terrible famine. … It was the Irish Famine that spurred on Sir Robert Peel to repeal the Corn Laws the year afterwards (1846)’ (Textbook E, 1927: 221–2). Textbook P makes a rather similar claim almost one hundred years later, suggesting that, early on, the British authorities were simply unaware of the famine, and that as soon as they became aware, they stepped in to help:

News spread to England that the Irish people were dying in their thousands … In the summer of 1846, the British government bought large quantities of American maize to feed Ireland’s population … In 1847, Parliament voted through the Soup Kitchen Act, which provided soup kitchens to feed 3 million of Ireland’s population.

(Textbook P, 2022: 61)

Textbook P (2022: 61) does concede that ‘these measures were too little and too late’, but, like Textbook E in 1927, this account does not consider how British actions exacerbated the problem. This allows English readers to feel reassured that their government always acts, and always has acted, in the best interests of the people it governs.

The idea of the British as ‘protectors’ of those they ‘came to govern’ (this type of passive construction which removes direct agency from the imperialists is common in pre-Second World War books) is pervasive in traditional textbooks, with authors often using extremely disparaging terms to refer to those who were apparently in need of such protection. Textbook B (1921: 202–3) states that in the early nineteenth century ‘it became an accepted principle that the politically and socially backward dependencies of our Empire must be administered in the interests of their inhabitants’. As is typical in these older books, the adjective ‘backward’ is applied here as though it were a universal objective fact, rather than a subjective Western perspective, and Textbook B seems to imply that because this was (apparently) an ‘accepted principle’, this is then what happened in practice – there is no indication here that this was not always (or even usually) true, meaning that any cruelties that did occur could be cited as unfortunate exceptions to a generally benevolent rule. Those in the position of apparently needing to be protected are assumed to be incapable of looking after themselves or organising their own societies, despite having done so for hundreds or thousands of years before the arrival of the British. They are also assumed to be unable to speak for themselves: Textbook C (1924: 341–2), also referring to an apparent change in British attitudes to Empire in the nineteenth century, suggests that British people were learning to regard themselves as ‘friends and protectors of the primitive peoples, who had hitherto had no spokesmen’.

This emphasis on British ‘good intentions’ is specifically used to obscure British responsibility for colonial violence and genocide. A common approach in traditional textbooks involves presenting such violence as an unfortunate fact of nature, as Textbook B (1921: 96) does in relation to the devastation of Aboriginal populations in Australia: ‘Though on the whole they have met with fair treatment from settlers, and though Christian missionaries have tried to fit them for modern conditions of life, their numbers have gradually dwindled till very few exist today.’ History is thus assumed to be a linear process of modernisation – modernity simply happens, and if certain groups of people are not ‘fit’ to cope with it, they will unfortunately die out. Accordingly, the arrival of Europeans is not an active and violent process of invasion and land appropriation, but simply the inevitable arrival of ‘modernity’. The British are framed as benevolently trying to ‘help’ people adapt to this apparently naturally occurring modernity (Indigenous people are given no agency of their own in this), rather than as actively causing the existential threat. If Indigenous people persistently ‘fail to adapt’, this is implied to be because their supposedly primitive natures are incompatible with modernity (or, alternatively, because they are not working hard enough). Notably, Textbook B does not give details of what the author considers such ‘fair treatment’ to be, and clearly he does not consider that British people arriving on foreign shores and taking over Indigenous land is in itself ‘unfair’.

The common idea that British colonisers should be understood as protectors of ‘weaker’ groups, rather than as a threat, still appears in some contemporary textbooks, and it is particularly notable in Textbook P (2022: 13), where the authors write that despite the appointment in 1838 of an ‘Aboriginal Protector to Australia’, ‘it has been estimated that between 1788 and 1900, Australia’s First Nation population decreased by 90%’. This framing removes all responsibility for the genocide of this population from the British, who are presented as doing nothing but attempt to protect the First Nation population; just like the author of Textbook B (1921), they suggest that despite these efforts, this population apparently simply ‘decreased’ by itself. The idea that population decline was somehow natural and had nothing to do with the actions of colonists echoes patterns from the traditional textbooks such as Textbook B (see above). Similarly, in a section on North America, the authors suggest that Indigenous dispossession occurred as a result of US independence from Britain, rather than because of the actions of British colonisers. Here again, Britain is framed as a protector of Indigenous peoples:

Britain had forbidden the colonists to settle in the interior of the continent and gave official protection to the Native Americans who lived there. However, when Britain lost its American colonies in 1783, it also gave up any hope of honouring its treaties with the indigenous people(s).

(Textbook P, 2022: 72)

There is no discussion of the fact that Indigenous peoples only needed ‘protection’ at all because of British colonisation, or of any Indigenous resistance to being dispossessed of their lands. Thus, Indigenous people are presented as entirely passive and completely helpless without British ‘official protection’, and it is also clearly, and extremely misleadingly, implied that Britain had intrinsically benevolent intentions towards Indigenous peoples.

Conversely, Textbook N (2019) demonstrates how the ‘protection’ of First Peoples referred to in Textbook P was conditional, and was based on implicit threats of violence:

When the Aborigines tried to resist British colonisation, they faced terrible violence. In the 1820s, there were brutal wars between the British and the Aborigines on the island of Tasmania. The governor of Tasmania, George Arthur, ordered this poster to be nailed to trees. It was meant to show the Aborigines that they were protected by the British, but the reality was very different. Many Tasmanian Aborigines were shot on sight, including women and children.

(Textbook N, 2019: 165)

The poster is clearly threatening – it shows an Aboriginal person being executed after apparently attacking a settler, as well as a settler being executed after attacking an Aboriginal person, so it is entirely understandable that local Indigenous people did not understand this as a reassurance that they would be protected. Meanwhile, Textbook Q (2023: 51) explains how ‘Aboriginal Protection Acts’ were used to remove First Peoples to segregated reserves, and to forcibly remove children from their parents.

Overall, then, although the types of overtly celebratory patriotic narratives typical of traditional textbooks are not present in the same ways in contemporary textbooks, certain echoes of these previous assumptions are still present, as seen in the above ideas about good intentions and benevolence.

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Conflicts of interest statement

The authors declare no conflicts of interest with this work. All efforts to sufficiently anonymise the authors during peer review of this article have been made. The authors declare no further conflicts with this article.