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The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism pp 1–15Cite as

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Empire and Imperialism in Education Since 1945: Secondary School History Textbooks

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Modern imperialism not only heavily impacted many people’s life across the globe during the era itself, it still exerts an important influence on the political, social, economic, and cultural domain of present-day societies worldwide. It might hence be obvious that representations of empire and modern imperialism are included in history textbooks for secondary education across the world. The question arises as to how these representations look like and how their outlook can be explained. This is what this contribution examines in history textbooks since 1945 in different countries in the world, both former colonizer and colonized countries, in an international comparative perspective. History textbooks are compared on their content, the perspective they take, the agency they attribute, their tone and judgment, the way they (do not) connect past and present to each other, the extent they relate to academic historiography, their representation of “the other”, the identity...

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Educational Master in History, Faculty of Arts, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium

    Karel Van Nieuwenhuyse

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  1. Karel Van Nieuwenhuyse
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Correspondence to Karel Van Nieuwenhuyse .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Graduate Center for Worker Education, Brooklyn College, New York, NY, USA

    Immanuel Ness

  2. Independent Scholar, Belfast, UK

    Zak Cope

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Van Nieuwenhuyse, K. (2019). Empire and Imperialism in Education Since 1945: Secondary School History Textbooks. In: Ness, I., Cope, Z. (eds) The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91206-6_40-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91206-6_40-1

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  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-91206-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-91206-6

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