Hi teachers! I’m working on Strand D of our PortraitEMB project, which means I’ve been lucky enough to spend a lot of my time exploring the huge archive of historical textbooks in the IOE Library’s Historical Textbook Collection (UCL Special Collections). We’ve been looking at history and geography textbooks from the last hundred years, trying to unravel the narrative threads that connect the past with the present, looking specifically at what textbook authors were telling students about the British Empire at different times. Of course, these textbooks are also historical sources in their own right, so we’re eager to hear from you! Would you consider using sources like these in your classrooms? If so, how might you engage your students with them? These are some ideas that occurred to me, but we’d love to hear from other teachers about how you might approach these materials.
Here’s an example from a book published in 1932, The Growth of the British Commonwealth by Elsa Nunn. This was the first book in a course for senior students, so it was probably aimed at children aged around 11 or 12, and in the introduction she’s trying to give readers a general historical overview of the British Empire – how it started, why, and the way it was at the time she was writing. Nunn, a well-loved author and teacher trainer, offers us a glimpse into the historical perspectives of her time. This is a section from the introductory chapter of the book, where Nunn introduces the British Empire and explains a little about its origins – I’ve highlighted some parts that I thought were particularly notable, and then come up with a few questions based on each section that I might be interested to discuss with students – obviously the questions would depend on how much the students knew about the British Empire already.
A Glimpse into the Past: Elsa Nunn’s Historical Lens
Nunn, Elsa: History, Senior Course: Book 1, The Growth of the British Commonwealth (Ginn & Co., 1932), pp. 10-12
As I’m a language teacher rather than a history teacher, I can imagine using this section as the basis for a discussion activity with advanced-level English learners (older teenagers or adults, although obviously they would need to have some interest in and knowledge of British imperial history!). I might start by asking them to guess when it was written, and then ask them to discuss some questions based on some of the highlighted sections:
Yellow section: European nations ‘taking possession’
- Nunn writes that different European nations ‘took possession of different parts of the earth’. What places do you think she might be talking about? How easy or difficult does she make the process of ‘taking possession’[1] sound? Is she encouraging her readers to think about the people who were already living in these places? What do you know (or what can you guess) about some of the different things that happened when Europeans actually tried to ‘take possession’ of different places?
- She writes that European nations sometimes ‘quarrelled with each other’. What do you think she means by ‘quarrelled’? Do you think this word accurately conveys what actually happened? Can you think of any other words she could have used instead of ‘quarrelled’? Why do you think she chose ‘quarrelled’ rather than any of these alternatives?
- She only mentions that European nations quarrelled with each other. Which other disputes involved in taking over land is she ignoring, and why do you think she doesn’t mention them?
Green section: Reasons for loving the empire
- Nunn asks her readers to consider the ways they personally benefit from the British Empire. From the perspective of a British child reading this in 1932, can you think of any other ways the British Empire might have impacted your life? How would the Empire have impacted British children’s lives in ways they might not have been aware of?
Blue section: Divisions and attitudes
- When Nunn talks about the people who live in different parts of the Empire, the first group she mentions are the descendants of ‘Englishmen’, even though she later says that this group is a minority in the Empire as a whole. Why do you think she talks about them first?
- She divides people into different groups based on characteristics such as race, language and religion. The first differences she mentions are that some people ‘are black, some are brown, some white’. Why do you think she mentions this first? What does it suggest about general attitudes to race in Britain at this time? Do you think this type of language would be used in a textbook now? Why/why not?
- Nunn writes that some people in the Empire ‘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’. What do you think about the way she’s written this? What is she suggesting about people whose lifestyles are different from these Western, urban lifestyles? How do you think she imagines the future for people in different parts of the British Empire?
- She suggests that people all over the British Empire feel a genuine sense of allegiance to the British King, up to the point where they would be willing to ‘help’ if Britain was in any kind of ‘danger’. What kind of ‘danger’ do you think she might have had in mind? How do you think she might have expected people from different parts of the Empire to ‘help’? Considering the historical context, why do you think she wrote this? If you were a young person living somewhere in the British Empire, do you think you would have felt this sense of connection to the British Empire and the British King?
General
If you were an English child reading this in the 1930s, what kind of feelings might you have about the British Empire based on this account? Why do you think authors might have been interested in encouraging children to feel an emotional connection to the British Empire?
A second glimpse into the classroom: Joseph Riley’s All the World in Picture and Story
We were considering including another textbook extract from 1932 in this post, this time from the last page of a geography textbook, All the World in Picture and Story: A First Book of Geography, by Joseph Riley. This book was first published in 1912, and the 1932 edition was the sixth. The page we were looking at includes a rather striking image of a group of Hausa and British soldiers taken in West Africa, probably in the early twentieth century, although no date is given. We decided not to include the extract, partly because there could be copyright issues relating to the image, and also because of the many potential issues involved in reproducing images depicting colonial violence or oppression[2]. We’d be particularly keen to hear your thoughts on using colonial photographs in history classes, and what we need to consider before deciding whether to use particular images.
If you would like to join us for a conversation about sources like these and how they might be of use, do reach out to us and join the conversation by emailing us at portraitemb@ucl.ac.uk, using the subject header textbooks.
NOTES
[1] As with so many issues connected with imperialism, it’s important to consider alternative perspectives that challenge or provide different narratives regarding European nations ‘taking possession’. This may involve exploring Indigenous perspectives, post-colonial theories, and voices from marginalized communities, focusing in particular on resistance to colonialism. See, for example:
Belmessous, Saliha (ed.) Native Claims: Indigenous Law against Empire, 1500–1920 (Oxford Academic, 2011; online edition 2012). This book outlines various examples of Indigenous legal opposition to European imperialism in the Americas, Australia, New Zealand and West Africa.
Veevers, David The Great Defiance: How the World took on the British Empire (Ebury Press, 2023). This book tells the story of the British Empire from the perspectives of peoples the British attempted to dominate, focusing on how they resisted.
[2] See e.g. Foliard, Daniel The Violence of Colonial Photography (Manchester University Press, 2022)