Racialized hegemony and nationalist mythologies: representations of war and peace in high school history textbooks, 1945–2005

Author： Montgomery Ken

Publisher： Routledge Ltd

ISSN： 1740-0201

Source： Journal of Peace Education, Vol.3, Iss.1, 2006-03, pp. : 19-37

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Abstract

This paper examines the ways in which high school Canadian history textbooks authorized from 1945 to the present have represented national participation in wars and peace-making/keeping operations. I explore how national mythologies of Canada as a kinder, more tolerant, or less violent national body permeate the narratives of national history textbooks, but also position Canada, in racialized terms, as a nation superior to all others and thus burdened with the fantasized responsibility to uplift implicitly inferior spaces, nations and peoples elsewhere on the planet. I illustrate that these textbooks do not simply tell the history of the modern state of Canada and its relationship to war and war-related issues (i.e., peace-making/keeping), but rather redundantly disseminate racialized representations of Canada as a glorious and exceptional ‘living organism' that matures through the development of such redeeming qualities as respect for humanity, morality, compassion, heroism and tolerance. I argue that these patriotic and presumably benign representations of war and peace assist in the hegemonic maintenance of white power, privilege and governance.