Indoctrinating Mutual Hatred? Teaching British Rule in Ireland

Abstract

Many European countries share a significant part of their history, with different narratives promoted by each nation-state. The focus of my PhD research is a comparative analysis of textbooks. This paper includes some of the early findings regarding ‘British rule in Ireland’, from the qualitative analysis of 61 textbooks, mostly from England, but also from Northern Ireland and Ireland. Although textbooks often represent both competing points of views, there are many ways to influence the reader about who can be considered ‘us’ against the ‘others’. The extent of this paper could only aim to cover a few examples of them: omitting ‘inconvenient’ parts of the relevant history or reducing supporting data, evaluating historic persons with certain bias, creating heavy bias by oversimplifying narratives, not calling out what is morally wrong, and avoiding parallels with similar events that the public considers unacceptable.