“Many a boy would rather burn his fingers setting off his own Fourth of July fireworks than merely stand by and watch his father set them off.” Written for the American textbook World History in 1942, this metaphor described anti-colonial nationalists in Egypt following the First World War. It also encapsulates the argument of many American textbook authors regarding twentieth-century nationalist struggles for independence against European powers. The fireworks represented fully autonomous self-government, something inherently desirable to a child but extremely hazardous. The authors infantilized the anti-colonial nationalist movement as a foolish boy who could not understand the danger independence posed and recklessly pursued something for which he was unprepared. The father, representative of the major European colonial powers, was the best caretaker of the explosives. In case students did not fully understand the metaphor, the text continued on to explicitly say, “Many a nation would rather be badly governed by its own native chiefs than well governed by alien officials.”Footnote 1
An examination of more than forty textbooks produced between 1930 and 1965 for American World History and US History courses reveals a marked shift in representations of empire and anti-colonial nationalism that in turn suggest changing American attitudes regarding decolonization in the mid-twentieth century.Footnote 2 Decolonization in this context refers to the collapse of European empires following the Second World War.Footnote 3 Emboldened by the economic and political weakness of Britain and France following World War II, nationalist groups in Asia and Africa increasingly demanded full independence and an end to colonialism. Decolonization was often the cause of long and bitter conflicts, as was the case in Algeria, Vietnam, Kenya, India, Pakistan, and a host of other newly independent nations. The world as it appears in the twenty-first century, centered on the nation-state, emerged following this lengthy and intensely contested process. Along with the Cold War, decolonization was one of the pivotal events of the second half of the twentieth century. Educational materials, and textbooks in particular, were part of the process of educating Americans about the role of the United States in a decolonizing world.
In general, textbooks change slowly over time, serving “as instruments of propaganda attempting to reinforce ideologically constructed national identities and to appease social and political agendas in the present.”Footnote 4 However, in times of significant historical change, textbook evolution more closely resembles punctuated equilibrium with a faster pace of adaptation than normal. The storylines that emerged in the surveyed textbooks suggest two major chronological periods when discussing decolonization in the mid-twentieth century. First, from the 1930s to the early 1940s, textbook authors strongly defended the imperial record, particularly of Britain, and claimed that America itself engaged in imperial activity, though a fundamentally benevolent form of imperialism centered on a civilizing mission. The second period began gradually with the end of the Second World War and the subsequent granting of Filipino independence, as textbook authors explicating anti-colonial nationalism and decolonization adapted to these outside events by the end of the 1940s. Texts produced following World War II tended to argue that the United States was far ahead of its time as an enlightened colonial power. Coverage of the decolonizing world focused primarily on Asia and increasingly conceptualized nationalism as part of a project of global Westernization.
Throughout the mid-twentieth century, textbooks that linked nationalism with Western culture constructed a powerful discourse for students regarding decolonization. From this perspective, anti-colonial nationalism was premature and ill considered but was nonetheless part of the global diffusion of Western ideas and practices. Thus, the end of empire was not a defeat for Western culture but rather a signifier of its success.
Textbooks and the Significance of the World History Course
School textbooks, as scholar of education Philip Altbach points out, “are among the most important components of any educational system. … They are the least expensive, most reliable means of transmitting knowledge and providing coherence to the curriculum.”Footnote 5 Textbooks provided the discursive framework in which most instruction took place. Despite criticism that emerged periodically throughout the twentieth century in the United States, textbooks remained a powerful educational tool because, as one scholar put it, “the textbook defines the curriculum.”Footnote 6 The textbooks studied here do not offer a comprehensive survey of American narratives of and/or attitudes toward decolonization between 1930 and 1965, but they do reveal significant trends in textbook portrayals of these critical topics. And although educational materials cannot speak definitively about American sentiment at any given time, or on any given topic, they can, and do, offer a glimpse at storylines that were encouraged, if not necessarily absorbed, about decolonization as it was promoted and perceived in America in the mid-twentieth century. Historians of education Stuart J. Foster and Keith Crawford argue that textbooks serve as powerful and steady outlets for political messages, with the potential to “imbue in the young a shared set of values, a national ethos, and an incontrovertible sense of political orthodoxy.”Footnote 7
There have been several bitter controversies over textbook content in the United States during the twentieth century, but these controversies generally focus on issues of inclusion within US society and only rarely center on American perceptions of non-Western peoples. Historian Joseph Moreau asserts that conflicts over who should be included in textbooks are as old as the use of textbooks themselves.Footnote 8 In her important 1979 work, America Revised, journalist Frances FitzGerald argued that twentieth-century texts remained largely unchanged until major controversies emerged in the 1960s regarding the inclusion of minority groups in American history textbooks.Footnote 9 The 1960s were a particularly tumultuous time for the textbook industry, as widely publicized studies emerged illuminating entrenched biases against minorities and women.Footnote 10 Textbooks reviewed for this study, published by a variety of historical and educational professionals across the country, produced a narrative of America's global role as that of a fundamentally benevolent world power.
Historians of education have only intermittently focused on non-American content in the secondary school curriculum.Footnote 11 Unsurprisingly, attention has focused more on American History courses, particularly the impact of the Cold War on American education.Footnote 12 This line of inquiry argues that postwar anti-communist sentiments were the dominant theme in American educational materials. The importance of the course in US History, the most common history class taken in secondary schools across the country, is relatively well studied.Footnote 13
But while the US History course earns by far the most scholarly attention, a greater focus on textbook representations of international content provides illuminating insight into postwar American views on world affairs. By the 1930s, a new course, World History, became the second most important history course for secondary schools across the country.Footnote 14 By 1934, over half a million students were taking the World History course in secondary schools every year, “marking the breakthrough of world history as the leading course in ‘foreign’ (read non-American) history.”Footnote 15 The dramatic global engagement of the United States during and after the Second World War convinced many educators of the need to increase international content in the curriculum, making the course in World History even more popular. Education scholar William Cartwright calculated that over 70 percent of students in the 1940s took the course in World History in the tenth grade.Footnote 16 Historian William Pulliam estimated that, by 1961, the World History course was taught in 87 percent of all four-year high schools.Footnote 17 This course was one of the principal curricular mechanisms by which non-US content was provided to American secondary students for the remainder of the twentieth century.
The textbooks studied for this survey often framed history as the story of the triumphant march of Western ideals, especially of democracy. The non-Western world only appeared in the World History course in the context of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as Europeans explored and colonized those regions. At the end of the work it was standard practice to include at least one chapter on contemporary events, often including content on anti-colonial nationalist movements in Asia and Africa.Footnote 18 Textbooks with multiple editions revised and edited the more recent content to stay up-to-date, meaning that, even for well-established titles, at least some content had to be updated to incorporate recent events. So, despite a comparative lack of treatment for Asia and Africa, the content on colonialism and recent events provides a revealing window into evolving American attitudes about the decolonizing world, particularly following the Second World War.
The “Wonderful Expansion of European Peoples”: 1930–1945
The hardship of the Great Depression allowed history textbooks to espouse a more critical stance toward American society than earlier in the twentieth century. Historian of education Gerard Giordano argues that the 1930s was a period of “unprecedented unity,” where liberal critics of education reached their highest levels of popularity.Footnote 19 Educators criticized the inherent inequalities of American society in new textbooks designed for the time period. When it came to describing imperialism and anti-colonial nationalism, however, authors from the 1930s through the Second World War were often conservative, generally supporting imperialism and accepting racialized views of nonwhite peoples. The discourses about nationalism and imperialism they created were important in laying the groundwork for how American textbooks described the process of decolonization following the Second World War.
Though the United States created and built a vast empire over time, considerable literature presents Americans as uncomfortable acknowledging their status as an imperial power.Footnote 20 The textbooks surveyed, by contrast, provide evidence that students in the 1930s and early 1940s could easily have been exposed to direct assertions of American imperialism simply by reading their textbooks. Of the sixteen textbooks published between 1930 and 1945 used in this study, seven directly stated that America possessed an empire similar to other European powers. Of the remaining nine texts, two placed content on American overseas possessions in chapters that also covered European imperialism, and an additional two textbooks chose to focus exclusively on non-American content, providing little reference to Americans at all.
The manner in which textbook authors described American imperialism varied considerably. For instance, Jesse Wrench's 1931 The March of Civilization framed a chapter, entitled “The United States Grows Imperialistic,” around America's acquisition of overseas possessions at the turn of the twentieth century.Footnote 21 Albert McKinley, Arthur Howland, and Matthew Dann's 1931 World History To-Day listed the United States as one of the most active nations in “modern” imperialism.Footnote 22 Julia Emery said in a 1942 textbook that “the Spanish-American War made the United States a colonial power. … The incidents and accidents of war made us not only a colonial power but a world power.”Footnote 23
The 1932 text World History by Carlton Hayes, Parker Moon, and John Wayland offered an in-depth description of the meaning of American imperialism. They made a forceful case that expansionist impulses had been a key part of American history and led directly to imperialism. “In taking control of unruly or incapable countries the United States was doing what European powers were doing in other parts of the globe. Just as Great Britain was expanding her empire, and France hers, so the United States, on a smaller scale, was acquiring what might be called an empire.”Footnote 24 The scale might have been different, but US actions were directly correlated to other major imperial powers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, especially a shared civilizing mission.
But what, exactly, made peoples “unruly or incapable” of self-rule? Since the authors of World History contended that the US behaved similarly to European powers, it is instructive to look at how they treated other empires.Footnote 25 As they described European imperialism, they devoted an entire section of the book to an exploration of the “White Man's burden,” a phrase made famous by Rudyard Kipling. They said that “the European white man has taught, and if need be, has compelled, his yellow and brown and black brothers to adopt the ways of Europeans. … Truly it is a burden, and a heavy one, to lead hundreds of millions of strangers into the paths of European civilization and progress.”Footnote 26 The authors justified imperialism by citing both the racial and civilizational superiority of Europeans and white settler societies like the United States. Textbook descriptions of American imperialism in the 1930s were fully in line with the justifying rhetoric of the interwar program of late colonialism, characterized by limited political reform and development programs.Footnote 27 This rhetoric was most fully realized in depictions of American activity in the Philippines.
Although the US had possessions in Guam, Puerto Rico, American Samoa, the Virgin Islands, Hawai'i, and Alaska, the focus of content about American imperialism centered on the Philippines, an emphasis that was notable at the time. Studying this issue in 1934, University of Iowa scholar J. E. Perpiñan asserted that “there are pervading imperialistic tendencies in the treatment of the materials which deal with the Philippine Islands and their people. … They [the textbooks] seem to sustain the imperialistic tendencies and American nationalistic pride at the sacrifice of truthful presentation of the Filipino viewpoint.”Footnote 28 A principal rationalization for American imperialism in the Philippines was that the Filipinos were too primitive to govern themselves. This attitude was an important component of the justification for American empire and was often attended with racialized language that disparaged Filipinos.Footnote 29 Filipinos could eventually be given self-government, but only after demonstrating their “capacity” for it.Footnote 30
With rhetoric supporting “enlightened” American rule and the belief that Filipinos were incapable of governing themselves, textbook authors utilized a number of techniques to justify American imperialism. Ruth Gavian and William Hamm's 1945 textbook The American Story offered several significant explanations of US actions in the Philippines. For one, they argued that the annexation of the islands was necessary to prevent other imperial powers from doing the same, an argument reminiscent of historian William Appleman Williams's concept of “imperial anti-colonialism,” that American imperialism was often justified using anti-colonial principles.Footnote 31 The text claimed that “Americans who love their own freedom are troubled by this chapter of our history” but pointed out that “if we had given the Philippines their independence, it is certain they would soon have been taken over by either Germany or Japan.”Footnote 32 In this account, American imperialism was anachronistically justified because it curtailed the expansion of aggressive fascist powers.Footnote 33
The American Story also extolled the virtues of what sociologist Julian Go refers to as American “tutelary colonialism,” the idea that imperialist activities could be justified if the governing power transformed the colonized, paving the way for American-style democracy.Footnote 34 The American Story lauded American rule in the Philippines, saying that “under American rule highways, railroads, and telephone and telegraph systems were built. Many fine public buildings were erected. Thousands of free public schools were opened. The number of people unable to read and write dropped from 85 per cent to 37 per cent.”Footnote 35 The establishment of schools in the Philippines was critical in justifying American possession of the Philippines.Footnote 36 The American Story contended that “between 1901 and 1935 the Philippine Islands made more progress than had been made in the previous three centuries.”Footnote 37 This interpretation of events portrayed American colonialism as a kinder, gentler form of imperialism. This myth, ignoring both the bloody destruction of a native movement for self-determination as well as the (re)construction of a racialized hierarchy within the Philippines, profoundly shaped the representation of colonial peoples and territories. The American Story ultimately argued that the United States raised the Philippines to the level where they were “capable” of democracy and self-government, thus achieving the very purpose of civilizing colonialism.Footnote 38
Textbooks in the survey from the 1930s and early 1940s made a strong connection between US and European activity in constructing and maintaining empires.Footnote 39 In 1934, Hutton Webster and Edgar Wesley referred to European colonialism as the “wonderful expansion of European peoples and European civilization.”Footnote 40 The British Empire garnered the most attention.Footnote 41 R. O. Hughes, a teacher in the Pittsburgh Public Schools, was particularly effusive about the British Empire in his textbook The Making of Today's World (1936), saying, “Though one may find fault with some British policies, almost every part of the British Empire, except perhaps Ireland, has benefited greatly from British rule. Great Britain has succeeded well in adapting her policies to varying conditions. She permits almost every imaginable kind of government.”Footnote 42 To Hughes, the great strength of the British Empire was its versatility, adapting forms of government to the needs of non-European peoples.
India was one of the most extensively covered colonial territories in world history textbooks during the 1930s and early 1940s. Indians were regarded as a backward and ignorant people best left to European governance. Webster stated that “it has been impossible for even the most democratic of modern nations to grant self-government to their rude and backward subjects. Where the level of civilization is higher, as in Egypt and India, the prevailing illiteracy of the inhabitants forms a great obstacle in the way of democracy.”Footnote 43
India, though thought to possess a higher degree of civilization than, say, Africa, was still regarded as incapable of self-government. By far, the most common criticism of India was the diversity of the Indian people. “Most of the natives were not ready for self-government, and the educated minority was divided into racial and religious factions.”Footnote 44 Internal divisions were thought to be problematic because they fomented unrest and prevented true unity within India. Prewar textbooks tended to portray divisions within Indian society as one of the major reasons why Indians were not yet ready for self-government. This stereotyped and negative understanding of Indian society as irrevocably ignorant and divided, a representation made popular in America with the 1927 publication of Katherine Mayo's Mother India, persisted in American secondary schools for decades.Footnote 45
British rule in India frequently garnered praise in texts of the 1930s and early 1940s. The authors of the 1945 textbook Story of Nations argued that
under British control, India's social conditions are gradually improving. Certain developments within India as a result of British control seem to be of unquestionable value. Illiteracy is slowly decreasing. … The British have made numerous reforms. Laws were passed prohibiting child marriages and giving widows the right to remarry. The practice of seclusion of women is gradually being abandoned. Hospitals are being built and sanitary conditions are being improved.Footnote 46
Other authors praised the benefits of British infrastructure, forms of government, and systematic rule given to India as a result of imperialism.Footnote 47 Even if the British were not always successful, they were at least trying to alleviate what American textbook authors perceived to be the many problems of Indian society, in a similar manner to the way textbooks described US rule over the Philippines.
Anti-colonial nationalists, therefore, represented a bit of a puzzle for American textbook authors. How could authors explain why nationalists “would prefer to have independence, their own customs and traditions, and their low standard of living than adopt European ways of living”?Footnote 48 Hughes, a staunch defender of British imperialism, thought little of the anti-colonial nationalists. He described M. K. Gandhi as a “bald-headed, shriveled-up little man, weighing less than 100 pounds and wearing something that looks like a sheet,” and wondered “how any such person could have any influence outside the insane asylum.”Footnote 49 Anti-colonial nationalists either
think that they are good enough to govern all India themselves or else they do not appreciate the frightful difficulties of trying to uplift the industrial and social life of a people, 90 per cent of whom cannot even yet read or write, and whose varying racial and religious prejudices might easily flame into civil war.Footnote 50
Hughes did not see any discrepancy in praising the two centuries of British rule while simultaneously pointing out the problems of illiteracy, poverty, and what he deemed economic backwardness. Problems within Indian society were the fault of Indians themselves and could not be blamed on the enlightened rule of the British. Crucially, Hughes asserted that, as a result of these difficulties, Indian peoples were not yet ready for full independence and were certainly incapable of maintaining democratic forms of government. The Indian “unfitness for rule” was clearly based on a racially charged essentialist world view.
Hughes was much more outspoken and virulent in his language than other authors, but many of his presuppositions were shared in surveyed textbooks of the 1930s and early 1940s. Writers noted the increasing strength of nationalism, even in the face of the many benefits of imperialism, with some sense of disbelief. Webster provided perhaps the soberest assessment of the situation, saying that as a result of their many internal divisions, “the steps by which India could obtain democracy and nationalism upon European or American models would have to be slow.”Footnote 51 Webster argued for a gradual extension of self-government to Western-educated Indians, eventually culminating in independence sometime in the distant future. Indian independence was only thought possible if they fully adopted Western political and cultural traditions.
In general, then, textbook authors of the 1930s and early 1940s struggled to explain the power of anti-colonial nationalism. Especially since many of them viewed the United States as an empire in its own right, they frequently defended imperialism as an inherently positive force in global affairs and derided nationalists as illogical in their desire for independence.
“Independence Is No Guarantee of Democracy”: 1945–1965
The Second World War was a watershed moment for American views of the world. Following the war, American policymakers made strong commitments across the world with an unprecedented program of global engagement.Footnote 52 The emergence of America as a superpower following World War II coincided with an intense period of decolonization from 1945 to 1975. Decolonization presented opportunities and challenges for American policymakers, opening new avenues for American capital but also heightening the possibility of communist expansion.Footnote 53 The Second World War also spurred on reformist impulses that applied both at home and abroad and critically altered American attitudes toward the nations of the Third World.Footnote 54 Gradually, textbooks began to reflect upon these international concerns and to respond to the growing forces of anti-colonial nationalism across the world.
Historian Gary Nash and his coauthors contend that the Cold War and the rise of the United States “called for a truly global history rather than a polished-up version of Western Civilization, but no such change occurred.”Footnote 55 While it is true, as Nash and his colleagues argue, that the World History course continued to focus on Western Europe and North America, there were interpretive changes in textbooks on such crucial topics as imperialism, nationalism, and the process of decolonization. The general framework of the course remained the same and would remain static for decades to come, but authors shaped their historical narratives to make sense of what they perceived to be an increasingly complex international scene. As the authors of Story of Nations (1945) argued, “World History is no longer concerned with Europe alone. Lives in Europe, in Asia, in Africa, in Australia, and in all the Americas have become inextricably interlaced. The interdependence of all peoples in all nations is now obvious.”Footnote 56 In the process, textbooks created powerful interpretations of the postwar world that were disseminated in classrooms throughout the country.
The granting of independence to the Philippines in 1946 was a significant event that most subsequently published world and American history textbooks in the survey noted, and it quickened the pace of change in depictions of imperialism and the rising forces of global anti-colonialism.Footnote 57 In his textbook Story of Our Land and People (1949), Connecticut history instructor Glenn Moon said that during World War II
the Filipinos were splendidly loyal to us, doing much to help our soldiers and to defeat a Japanese army that they hated. Not as a reward but as a right which they fully deserved, and for which they were ready as a people, the Filipinos were granted their independence after the defeat of Japan.Footnote 58
Moon argued that the US had successfully raised the Filipino people to the level of civilization necessary to sustain an independent and democratic government. The US acknowledged this readiness by granting the islands their political independence. Filipino independence became a model for other textbook representations of decolonization. Rather than a threat to American hegemony or the West, decolonization in the Philippines was depicted as the apotheosis of tutelary colonialism and a signifier of America's fulfillment of the civilizing mission.
Following the independence of the Philippines, textbooks studied in this survey treated the US as an “enlightened” power that was far ahead of its time in granting independence.Footnote 59 The 1947 textbook From Colony to World Power: A History of the United States argued that “the United States gave an especially fine example to the world of enlightened colonial administration,” which ultimately paved the way for Filipino independence.Footnote 60 The text proceeded to mention achievements at reducing illiteracy, promoting agriculture, improving public health measures, and demonstrating effective administration.Footnote 61 While highlighting American accomplishments in the Philippines, including granting independence, the narrative ignored the continued presence of American military bases in the Philippines as well as the increasing use of informal mechanisms of control that the United States developed globally in the postwar period.Footnote 62 It also ignored the fact that the United States continued to maintain control over other territories, such as Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, Hawai'i, and Alaska (though these last two did become states in 1959). Omissions such as these allowed textbooks to portray American policy in a favorable light and opened avenues for textbook authors to be somewhat more critical of European imperialism and, in a limited fashion, more sympathetic toward national independence movements.
When describing non-European or North American topics, there was an increasing emphasis on the influence of Westernization throughout the world. To the authors of the textbook The World's History (1947), this was important because “there was not a corner of the world left which had not felt the Western influence, and most of the world had felt it deeply. For all practical purposes ‘the West’ included the whole world.”Footnote 63 This interpretation was sometimes explicitly given to teachers in instructional guides for the course. The New York Bureau of Secondary Curriculum Development advised teachers of the World History course in 1959 to include a section on “The Spread of European Civilization,” which would “help pupils understand … how and why European ideas and products spread to all parts of the earth after the Industrial Revolution.”Footnote 64 Political and economic imperialism spread European culture across the globe.
In the twentieth century, the most powerful manifestation of the spread of European civilization came from the relationship between imperialism and nationalism. Imperialism, according to the authors of the 1955 textbook A History of the World, “opened up many of the underdeveloped areas of the world to Western civilization and produced changes in the lives of both the conqueror and the conquered.”Footnote 65 The authors of The World's History claimed that “most countries did not voluntarily Westernize; they were conquered and Western Civilization was thrust upon them. Imperialism, the conquest of one people by another, was the second important way in which Western Civilization spread.”Footnote 66 Princeton University historian C. E. Black similarly argued in 1960 that “modern imperialism Europeanized a large part of the globe. European history thus became world history, for the fate and fortunes of many European states were bound up with their interests thousands of miles from home [emphasis in original].”Footnote 67 Under such conditions, “it was only natural that the theory of self-determination should enter these countries which were still held under political bonds to other powers.”Footnote 68 Nationalist desires were, from this perspective, simply a reaction to the Western ideals that arrived in the colonial world through the process of imperialism. This conceptualization of anti-colonial nationalism fit well with the overall framework of the World History course, providing a convenient explanation for the end of empire in the postwar period.
Though textbook authors increasingly viewed nationalism as part of the diffusion of European culture, colonial peoples were rarely depicted as having agency in this process. The text The World's History in 1947 said that after World War II, nationalism “flared up more intensely than ever” in India.Footnote 69 Surveyed textbooks in the postwar era through the 1960s often linked nationalism to imagery such as a fire, wave, surge, or even contagion, but hardly ever to people acting on their own or their country's behalf. A History of the World (1955) said quite plainly that nationalism “was contagious” and that following the Second World War “countries that had been colonies were infected with it.”Footnote 70 Use of such language indicated the power and strength of nationalism in these countries but also marginalized anti-colonial nationalist agency in the process. Nationalists had simply absorbed Western ideas and values and were not true engines of historical progress but rather the benefactors of Western culture. T. Walter Wallbank articulated this idea in his 1951 textbook Man's Story, arguing that “colonial peoples were ‘fighting fire with fire.’ They had not been able to free themselves from the domination of Westerners until they had learned to imitate with some success the Westerner's skill with modern weapons and modern methods of political and economic organization.”Footnote 71
In effect, anti-imperial activity resulted from an infection with Western ideals that spurred on independence movements prematurely, before complete Westernization had taken place. Could it be that nationalism had become too powerful too fast, capturing the imaginations of subject peoples before they were fully ready for self-government? If this were the case, then anti-colonial nationalist movements and the granting of independence were highly problematic. While nationalist movements might be understandable (and perhaps inevitable), difficulties involved in the process of decolonization were axiomatically the fault of the formerly colonized rather than the colonizers. Black argued that
Most of the leaders of the newly independent states of Asia and Africa were inspired by Western ideals of liberty and freedom. They attempted to model their governments on the democracies of the West. And their constitutions reflected their hopes. But independence is no guarantee of democracy. Indeed, democracy is a very complex form of government. It requires literacy, self-control, initiative, and self-sacrifice.Footnote 72
Black deemed these last attributes so difficult that, in most newly independent countries, “the conditions necessary for real self-government, as we know it, simply did not exist.”Footnote 73
This narrative completely devalued non-Western cultural practices and forms of social organization, allowing American and world history textbook authors to place the lion's share of the blame for the violence and dislocation caused by decolonization on colonial societies rather than on the former imperial powers.
British India, which experienced decolonization in the form of a bloody and bitterly contested partition to create the new states of India and Pakistan in 1947, illustrated this trend.Footnote 74 As in the 1930s, the Indian nationalist movement received a great deal of attention in postwar textbooks, most of it negative. Perceived divisions within Indian society were the central problem textbooks pointed out. In a section entitled “Disunited India Wins Independence,” the textbook The World's History mentioned that the people of India “spoke over two hundred languages and belonged to eight religions,” in addition to divisions of caste and the political variety of the princely states.Footnote 75 The religious division between Hindus and Muslims garnered a great deal of attention. In fact, the British would have liked to have granted independence sooner, but the Indians “could not agree on their future status” because “they were divided sharply along religious lines.”Footnote 76 There was also concern about the ability of an independent state to sustain a democratic form of government, arguing that “the lack of unity in India makes the introduction of political reforms of a democratic, or even of a nationalist, character particularly difficult.”Footnote 77 It was this disagreement, rather than the autocratic nature of British rule in India or the poor planning of the British withdrawal, that received the blame for the violence of partition in 1947. When referring to the high levels of violence in Indian decolonization, one textbook said “‘I told you so.’ This is what some Britishers must have felt like saying when they saw Hindus and Moslems massacring each other in India in 1947. … It was after the British withdrawal from India that the mutual massacres incited by fanatics occurred.”Footnote 78
Though the postwar textbooks surveyed for this study generally blamed the problems of decolonization on the colonized rather than the colonizers, an increasing amount of criticism of European imperialism emerged following the Second World War. Alice Magenis and John Appel, authors of the 1955 textbook A History of the World, pointed out that “in many cases the motives for empire-building have been selfish and the people living in the colonies have frequently been exploited for the benefit of the mother country.”Footnote 79 Later in the book, this limited criticism was attenuated when the authors suggested that the British always strove to do what was best for colonial peoples. The authors also made the case that independence was a poor choice, asserting that “colonial leaders said in effect, ‘We would rather rule ourselves badly than be ruled well by a foreign power.’”Footnote 80 So while on balance their interpretation reflected older ways of conceptualizing national independence movements, their questioning of imperialism was a new trend in postwar textbooks. Limited critiques of European empires, followed by intense criticism of nationalist movements or newly independent states, became a standard in American and world history textbooks.
If nationalism represented the spread of Western values, in the 1950s and 1960s the greatest danger to Westernization was the threat of communism. The Cold War increasingly influenced the ways in which textbook authors thought of the newly independent world. Black wrote that
the issues between the West and East were further confused by activities of the Communists, who stirred up discontent and denounced Western “imperialism,” while at the same time extending Communist imperialism in Asia. The danger that in the confusion following the war all Asia would fall into anarchy and then into their hands was very grave.Footnote 81
Black portrayed all communist activity as an attempt to establish a “new” imperialism far more insidious than the mostly benevolent European forms of colonization. Black was also worried about the Middle East, where “demands for a social revolution combine with blind nationalism to produce a very unstable situation” in which “communists have found fertile soil for their new imperialism under the cloak of ‘anti-colonialism.’”Footnote 82
The key to combating communism in the newly independent world, according to the 1962 text World History: The Story of Man's Achievements, was promoting “national self-discipline, intelligence, training in the use of democratic processes, and provision for an adequate police force” so that each newly independent territory could “establish a strong, peaceful republic.”Footnote 83 The United States was an ally in this process, especially in preventing communists from infecting newly independent countries. Magenis and Appel (1955) asserted that the “flames of nationalism” reached Vietnam as they did in much of the rest of the colonial world. But according to the authors, communists set up Ho Chi Minh's organization as a rival, and inauthentic, nationalist movement.Footnote 84 Magenis and Appel therefore treated Ho Chi Minh and his nationalist organization as mere pawns in the global Cold War. The US, regarded as a champion of decolonizing peoples, made the hard but rational decision to send France aid in this struggle even as it “urged France to grant complete independence to the three states of Indo-China.”Footnote 85 This treatment of the Vietnam conflict in the 1950s displayed the tension between the United States as a friend to colonial peoples, an ally to European nations, and a fierce opponent of international communism. The United States only supported continued French rule because of the threat of communism, which was to the authors far worse than European colonialism.
One frightening possibility of the new wave of anti-colonial nationalism was the Soviet Union's ability to use hatred of European colonialism to further its own agenda. According to the authors of Five Centuries in America, it was “part of the Communist method to take advantage of poverty and ignorance in order to stir up discontent and anti-Western feeling.”Footnote 86 The ideal solution was for the United States to provide material aid and technical assistance to newly independent countries in order to prevent communists from gaining a foothold in these territories. The authors argued that former colonies “have to be taught newer, easier, and more efficient ways of farming, building, and manufacturing.”Footnote 87 The United States, then, needed to “teach” the newly independent countries how to properly develop their economies and resources. This would ensure that they more fully adopted Western civilization, increase their standard of living, and prevent the spread of Soviet-controlled communism. Five Centuries in America thus conflated decolonization with the Cold War and utilized the discourse of modernization theory to call for a strongly paternalistic American foreign policy. The United States continued to be portrayed as an enlightened decolonizer, even as it struggled against international communism.
The focus on the Cold War curriculum was certainly a prevalent theme in American and world history textbooks throughout the 1950s and 1960s, but it affected textbook representations of decolonization and anti-colonial nationalism intermittently and unevenly over time.Footnote 88 In the world and American history textbooks surveyed in this study, authors devoted more space to analyzing the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe than in the 1930s and 1940s. But because textbooks did not take Africans and Asians seriously as independent historical actors, they were generally thought of as pawns in the greater game of the Cold War.
The Bandung Conference in 1955—where numerous African and Asian nations met to discuss neutrality in the Cold War—and the Suez Crisis in 1956—where Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser unilaterally nationalized the Suez Canal, only to be invaded by Israel, Britain, and France—provide significant examples of this phenomena. In their 1960 work History of a Free People, Henry Bragdon and Samuel McCutchen argued that Bandung might have led many African and Asian nations closer to communism, but ultimately said that “to the relief of the West, at least as many African and Asian statesmen proved as fearful of future Communist aggression as they were of former Western imperialism. The Bandung Conference therefore proved indecisive in the Cold War.”Footnote 89 The same authors maintained a similar stance when discussing the Suez Crisis of 1956. Although the crisis was “embarrassing to the United States” because they had to vote with the Soviet Union in the United Nations against French, British, and Israeli aggression, ultimately “the suppression of Hungary, which took place at the same time, persuaded the Western powers to close ranks against Russia.”Footnote 90 To Bragdon and McCutchen, events in Europe were far more important than in the newly independent world. Cold War considerations were sometimes of only secondary importance in textbook narratives of the decolonizing world.
By the 1960s, the World History course came under increasing criticism from educators across the country for its Eurocentrism and its negative treatment of non-Western peoples, especially in Africa and Asia.Footnote 91 Some professional historians began to rethink what a World History course could do and attempted to create educational materials that would more accurately reflect a global perspective. Of these, Leften Stavrianos is perhaps the most famous.Footnote 92 Stavrianos and a group of his colleagues at Northwestern University designed a new textbook that reconceptualized the course in World History.Footnote 93 Historian Gilbert Allardyce sees Stavrianos as a significant forerunner to the global studies movement of the late twentieth century and an integral force in the creation of the World History Association. Stavrianos's work in textbook publishing and curriculum was important in the 1960s in challenging some of the preconceived biases entrenched in the World History course.
In the textbook A Global History of Man (1962), Stavrianos wrote one unit that gave a broad overview of the world since 1500, while the other units provided a detailed treatment of the most important regions of the world, including sub-Saharan Africa, India, and the Soviet Union. These units displayed a remarkable sensitivity to non-European peoples, explaining how Western bias had incorrectly characterized the many colonial peoples of the world, especially Africans. Indeed, the unit on sub-Saharan Africa stands out as a testament to new research that came out in universities across America with the rise of the postwar area-studies movement. As part of his global textbook, Stavrianos and his coauthors devoted a large amount of space to issues of independence and decolonization. They sympathetically explained the difficulties newly independent nations faced and many of the problems left behind by years of imperial rule.
Despite the sympathetic treatment of newly independent countries, however, Stavrianos and his colleagues forcefully argued that “behind Europe's decline is Europe's triumph.” They continued this line of thought, noting that “it is largely this spread of European political ideas and movements that undermined and swept away the European colonial empires.”Footnote 94 Even for Stavrianos and his colleagues, who were in many ways so sensitive to formerly colonized nations, decolonization was first and foremost the result of the spreading of Western culture and ideas throughout the world.
Stavrianos was perhaps the most influential advocate of a discourse that rationalized the process of decolonization in world and American history textbooks following the Second World War. The narrative centered on the triumphant expansion of the Western world. The very desire of non-Western peoples for independence represented an acceptance of Western ideals in the form of nationalism. Decolonization, as Stavrianos suggested, was not a victory for non-Western peoples but rather the pinnacle of Western achievement, the very triumph of the West. In his 1966 textbook The World Since 1500: A Global History, he said that “the idea of Western civilization has made the real conquest and has become the triumphant, benevolent dictator.”Footnote 95
Though Western ideals were triumphant, students in the postwar period were repeatedly warned that dangers remained, necessitating a continued role for the United States in international affairs. Newly independent countries had not fully absorbed Western principles and were in danger of communist subversion. The United States, as simultaneously a formerly colonized nation and an enlightened decolonizer, had the “responsibility of leadership among the democratic countries of the world.”Footnote 96
Conclusion
In his work on textbooks in the nineteenth century, Barry Joyce argues that history textbooks are “the most accessible and enduring repository of America's grand narrative,” which tell the story of “how we see ourselves and how we want to be seen.”Footnote 97 The textbooks themselves are powerful cultural artifacts that shaped American attitudes of their own history and of America's role in the world. This survey of history textbooks demonstrates the complex evolution of American attitudes toward the non-European world in the era of decolonization and the ways in which these texts provided convenient exculpatory narratives that justified the often violent and chaotic end of empire.
American secondary students from the 1930s to the 1960s were, through the medium of textbooks, exposed to a series of narratives that presented non-Western peoples as having little agency, frequently touted the benevolent nature of European imperialism, and promoted an overarching narrative that independence movements were simply the latest stage in the global diffusion of Western culture. In the 1930s and early 1940s, many world history textbooks made the case that the United States itself was an empire and frequently lauded the benevolent civilizing impulses of late colonial regimes.
The Second World War stands as a significant moment in the unfolding progression of textbook depictions of anti-colonial activity. Postwar texts increasingly suggested that nationalism was a Western ideology transmitted to Eastern cultures that were scarcely ready for independence. This was dangerous because the Soviet Union looked to capitalize on anti-colonial nationalism in its quest to produce a “new” and global imperialism. So, although nationalist agitation certainly spurred on independence movements, nationalists had little agency in the process of decolonization. They were either “infected” with Western ideas of nationalism or by global communism centered in the Soviet Union. This perspective ignored or marginalized the extreme violence inherent in decolonization in many regions of the world and the vital role of anti-colonial nationalists in the process.
The historical discourses in these textbooks provided a justification of American foreign policy and of American allies abroad that authors and officials deemed acceptable for secondary students. What this meant in practice was a rhetoric rationalizing both interventionism across the newly decolonized world and the establishment of an informal global American empire. By the 1960s, textbooks portrayed the end of formal European imperialism as a victory for a new international world order centered on Western forms of political and cultural life, leaving a lasting impact on how Americans understand the process of decolonization.
Appendix
The textbooks consulted for this study are available at the Library of Congress, the United States National Library of Education Special Collection, and the Harvard Graduate School of Education's Monroe C. Gutman Library. Education in the United States is decentralized, with textbook decisions often occurring at the individual school board level (only occasionally at the state level). Information about publishing sales is not publicly available, and the scarcity of archival textbook collections makes comprehensive comparisons difficult. A school district-by-school district comparison, or even a state-by-state comprehensive comparison, would be impossible given the number of locations involved. What follows is a list of textbooks consulted for this study in chronological order.
