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Abstract
During the interwar period, a number of organisations started to look into education as part of an attempt to understand how nationalism was fuelled through education and to what extent it had forced the outbreak of the Great War. In response to nationalism and a perceived need for reformation of national narratives, the school subjects of history and geography became the primary suspects as advocates of chauvinism and militarism. In 1919, associations for the promotion of understanding and cooperation between the Scandinavian countries – the Norden Associations [föreningarna Norden] – began investigating history textbooks. This revision of textbooks was expanded in the 1930s to explore, assess, and develop the entire teaching of history in the Nordic countries. The Norden Associations converged on many levels with the disparate international movements for educational change. This article presents the Norden Associations as part of a process of hegemonic isomorphism in which cultural hegemony set the institutional boundaries within which the organisations could work in order to attain legitimacy. The article demonstrates how an organisation with a specific political agenda, and with only limited international objectives came to be – not only a part of – but, to some extent, an organisational role model for loftier efforts aimed at global and cosmopolitan history teachings.
Notes
1 John Boli and George M. Thomas, “INGOs and the Organization of World Culture,” in Constructing World Culture: International Non-Governmental Organizations since 1875, ed. John Boli and George M. Thomas (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999), 13–49; Akira Iriye, Global Community: The Role of International Organizations in the Making of the Contemporary World (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2002).
2 Elly Hermon, “The International Peace Education Movement, 1919–1939,” in Peace Movements and Political Culture, ed. Charles Chatfield and Peter van den Dungen (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1988), 127–42; Eckhardt Fuchs, “The Creation of New International Networks in Education: The League of Nations and Educational Organizations in the 1920s,” Paedagogica Historica 43, no. 2 (2007): 199–209; Ingela Nilsson, Nationalism i fredens tjänst: Svenska skolornas fredsförening, fredsfostran och historieundervisning 1919–1939 (Umeå: Umeå University, 2015).
3 Thomas Renna, “Peace Education: An historical Overview,” Peace & Change 6, no. 1–2 (1980): 61–65; Christophe Bechet, “La révision pacifiste des manuels scolaires: Les enjeux de la mémoire de la guerre 14–18 dans l’enseignement belge de l’Entre-deux-guerres,” Cahier d’Histoire du Temps Présent 20 (2008): 49–101; Henrik Åström Elmersjö and Daniel Lindmark, “Nationalism, Peace Education, and History Textbook Revision in Scandinavia, 1886–1940,” Journal of Educational Media, Memory, and Society 2, no. 2 (2010): 63–74.
4 I use the term “Scandinavia” as a synonym for “Norden” [the Nordic countries], i.e. the region that is made up of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden as well as their respective realms.
5 Monika Janfelt, Att leva i den bästa av världar: Föreningarna Nordens syn på Norden 1919–1933 (Stockholm: Carlssons, 2005), 16; Jan A. Andersson, Idé och verklighet: Föreningarna Norden genom 70 år (Stockholm: Föreningen Norden, 1991), 15.
6 Jan A. Andersson, Nordiskt samarbete: Aktörer, idéer och organisering 1919–1953 (Lund: Lund University, 1994), 59; Janfelt, Leva i bästa av världar, 68–76.
7 For a further discussion on the cultural construct of Norden see Øystein Sørensen and Bo Stråth, eds., The Cultural Construction of Norden (Oslo: Scandinavian University Press, 1997).
8 Bo Stråth, “Scandinavian Unity: A Mythical Reality,” in European Identities: Cultural Diversity and Integration in Europe since 1700, ed. Nils Arne Sørensen (Odense: Odense University Press), 38–48; Janfelt, Leva i bästa av världar; Jan Hecker-Stampehl, Vereinigte Staaten des Nordens: Integrationsideen in Nordeuropa im Zweiten Weltkrieg (Munich: Oldenbourg, 2011).
9 See also Henrik Åström Elmersjö, Norden, nationen och historien: Perspektiv på föreningarna Nordens historieläroboksrevision 1919–1972 (Lund: Nordic Academic Press, 2013).
10 Eckhardt Fuchs, “Networks and the History of Education,” Paedagogica Historica 43, no. 2 (2007): 185–97; Fuchs, “Creation of New International Networks”; Romain Faure, “Connections in the History of Textbook Revision, 1947–1952,” Education Inquiry 2, no. 1 (2011): 21–35; Romain Faure, Netzwerke der Kulturdiplomatie: Die Internationale Schulbuchrevision in Europa 1945–1989 (Berlin: DeGruyter Oldenbourg, forthcoming 2015). For research on networks of historians during the twentieth century see Jan Eivind Myhre, “Wider Connections: International Networks among European Historians,” in Setting the Standards: Institutions, Networks and Communities of National Historiography, ed. Ilara Porciani and Jo Tollebeek (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 266–87.
11 Paul J. DiMaggio and Walter W. Powell, “Introduction,” in The New Institutionalism in Organizational Analysis, ed. Walter W. Powell and Paul J. DiMaggio (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 1–3.
12 W. Richard Scott, Institutions and Organizations: Ideas and Interests (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1995), 33.
13 Paul J. DiMaggio and Walter W. Powell, “The Ironcage Revisited: Institutional Isomorphism and Collective Rationality in Organizational Fields,” American Sociological Review 48, no. 2 (1983): 150–54.
14 Ibid.
15 Florian Waldow, “The Neo-institutionalist Account of the Emergence of Mass Schooling: Some Remarks on the Swedish Case,” in Internationalisation: Comparing Educational Systems and Semantics, ed. Marcelo Caruso and Heinz-Elmar Tenroth (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2002), 110–11.
16 DiMaggio and Powell also highlight the benefits with this approach. DiMaggio and Powell, “Introduction,” 38 (n. 29).
17 Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, ed. and trans. Q. Hoare and G. Nowell Smith (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1971), 260. See also Michael W. Apple and Linda K. Christian-Smith, “The politics of the textbook,” in The Politics of the Textbook, ed. Michael W. Apple and Linda K. Christian-Smith (New York: Routledge, 1991), 10.
18 See Herminio Martins, “Time and Theory in Sociology,” in Approaches to Sociology: An Introduction to Major Trends in British Sociology, ed. John Rex (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1974), 276; Anthony D. Smith, Nationalism in the Twentieth Century (Oxford: Martin Robertson, 1979), 191; Andreas Wimmer and Nina Glick Schiller, “Methodological Nationalism and Beyond: Nation-state Building, Migration and the Social Sciences,” Global Networks 2, no. 4 (2002): 302. See also Michael Billig, Banal Nationalism (London: Sage, 1995).
19 Marcelo Caruso, “Within, Between, Above, and Beyond: (Pre)Positions for a History of the Internationalisation of Educational Practices and Knowledge,” Paedagogica Historica 50, no. 1–2 (2014): 10–12.
20 Janfelt, Leva i bästa av världar, 24–26.
21 Caruso, “Within, Between, Above,” 23; Eckhardt Fuchs, “Educational Sciences, Morality and Politics: International Educational Congresses in the Early Twentieth Century,” Paedagogica Historica 40, no. 5–6 (2004): 782.
22 Foreningen Norden, “Det nordiske samarbeide og historieundervisningen” [Nordic Cooperation and History Education], Den høiere skole 1922, no. 8 (1922): 308–15.
23 “Protokoll över förhandlingarna vid möte mellan delegerade för föreningarna Nordens styrelser i Stockholm fredagen den 16 och lördagen den 17 september 1932” [The minutes from the delegates’ meeting in Stockholm, 16–17 September 1932], A1:7, Föreningen Nordens arkiv (Archives of the Norden Association, ANA), Riksarkivet, Stockholm (the National Archives of Sweden, Stockholm, NAS), and “Meddelande rörande Föreningarna Nordens kommitté för historieundervisningen” [Memo regarding the Norden Association’s Committee on History Education], F10A:1, ANA, NAS.
24 Håkan Andersson, Kampen om det förflutna: Studier i historieundervisningens målfrågor i Finland 1843–1917 (Turku: Åbo Akademi, 1979), 134–35, 264; Berit Bratholm “Godkjenningsordningen for lærebøker 1889–2001,” in Fokus på pedagogiske tekster, ed. Staffan Selander and Dagrun Skjelbred (Tønsberg: Høgskolen i Vestfold, 2001); Anna Johnsson Harrie, Staten och läromedlen: En studie av den svenska statliga förhandsgranskningen av läromedel 1938–1991 (Linköping: Linköping University, 2009), 211–14.
25 Elmersjö and Lindmark, “Nationalism, Peace Education”.
26 See Tomas Englund, Curriculum as a Political Problem: Changing Educational Conceptions, with Special Reference to Citizenship Education (Lund: Studentlitteratur, 1986); Thomas Nygren, “International Reformation of Swedish History Education, 1927–1961: The Complexity of Implementing International Understanding,” Journal of World History 22, no. 2 (2011): 329–54.
27 Historians in the Norden Associations’ committees and commissions included the Finnish professor A.R. Cederberg (1885–1948); the Swedish professors Nils Ahnlund (1889–1957), Nils Herlitz (1888–1978), Sven Tunberg (1882–1954), and the Danish professor Aage Friis (1870–1949). Some historiographical notes concerning their research and how they were challenged can be found in Carsten Tage Nielsen “Between Art and Scholarship – Danish Scholarly and Popular History in the 19th and 20th Centuries,” in Nordic Historiography in the 20th Century, ed. Frank Meyer and Jan Eivind Myhre (Oslo: University of Oslo, 2000), 313; Max Engman, “National Conceptions of History in Finland,” in Conceptions of National History, ed. Erik Lönnroth, Karl Molin, and Ragnar Björk (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter & Co, 1994), 57; Håkan Gunneriusson, Det historiska fältet – svensk historievetenskap från 1920–talet till 1957 (Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis, 2002); Rolf Torstendahl, “Scandinavian Historical Writing,” in The Oxford History of Historical Writing, vol. 4: 1800–1945, ed. Stuart Macintyre, Juan Maiguashca and Attila Pók (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011): 263–82; Rolf Torstendahl, “Scandinavian Historical Writing,” in The Oxford History of Historical Writing, vol. 5: Historical Writing since 1945, ed. Axel Schneider and Daniel Woolf (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 311–32. In Norway, the historians engaged in the revision were more progressive in the field of social history, but the historical materialist, Halvdan Koht (1873–1965) of the Norwegian commission was also known for diluting his Marxist views with a notion of national heritage. Knud Kjeldstadli, “History as Science,” in Making a Historical Culture: Historiography in Norway, ed. William H. Hubbard, Jan Eivind Myhre, Trond Nordby and Sølvi Sogner (Oslo: Scandinavian University Press, 1995), 59–63; Jarle Simensen, “National and Transnational History: The National Determinant on Norwegian Historiography,” in Nordic Historiography in the 20th Century, ed. Frank Meyer and Jan Eivind Myhre (Oslo: University of Oslo, 2000), 97–98. Halvdan Koht was also the first president of the International Committee of Historical Sciences, Myhre, “Wider Connections,” 273.
28 For example Sven Grauers (1891–1977) in Sweden, Oskari Mantere (1874–1942), Gunnar Sarva (1879–1952), and A.K. Ottelin (1871–1952) in Finland.
29 Letters from the Danish (18 October 1932), Finnish (10 October 1932), Icelandic (29 October 1932), and Norwegian (20 October 1932) Norden Associations to the Swedish Norden Association, F10A:1, ANA, NAS. See also the Norden Associations’ own account of their work in the 1930s, Wilhelm Carlgren, A.R. Cederberg, Knud Kretzschmer and Haakon Vigander, “Foreningene Norden og lærebøkene i historie” [The Norden Associations and the history textbooks], in Nordens läroböcker i historia, ed. Wilhelm Carlgren, A.R. Cederberg, Knud Kretzschmer and Haakon Vigander (Helsingfors: Föreningen Norden, 1937), 11.
30 See Katherine Storr, “Thinking Women: International Education for Peace and Equality, 1918–1930,” in Women, Education, and Agency, 1600–2000, ed. Jean Spence, Sarah Jane Aiston and Maureen M. Meikle (New York: Routledge, 2010), 168–83.
31 For this interpretation of “men’s hegemony” see Jeff Hearn, “From Hegemonic Masculinity to the Hegemony of Men,” Feminist Theory 5, no. 1 (2004): 49–72.
32 Christina Florin and Ulla Wikander, Där de härliga lagrarna gro: Kultur, klass och kön i det svenska läroverket 1850–1914 (Stockholm: Tiden, 1993); Christina Florin, Kampen om katedern: Feminiserings- och professionaliseringsprocessen inom den svenska folkskolans lärarkår 1860–1906 (Umeå: Umeå University, 1987); Kerstin Skog-Östlin, Pedagogisk kontroll och auktoritet (Malmö: Gleerups, 1984).
33 Jan Kolasa, International Intellectual Cooperation – the League Experience and the Beginnings of UNESCO (Wrocłav: Polskiej Akademii, 1962), 70–71. Sometimes representatives of the Norden Associations mentioned the “zeitgeist” as an influence, but never Casares himself.
34 See for example Carlgren, Cederberg, Kretzschmer and Vigander, “Foreningene Norden og lærebøkene i historie,” 3–14.
35 School Text-book Revision and International Understanding, 2nd ed. (Paris: League of Nations, 1933), 3; Bilateral Consultations for the Improvement of History Textbooks (Paris: UNESCO, 1953), 4.
36 Elmersjö and Lindmark, “Nationalism, Peace Education”; William E. Marsden, “‘Poisoned History’: A Comparative Study of Nationalism, Propaganda and the Treatment of War and Peace in the Late Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-century School Curriculum,” History of Education 29, no. 1 (2000): 35; Pertti Luntinen, “School History Textbook Revision by and under the Auspices of UNESCO Part I,” Internationale Schulbuchforschung 10 (1988): 337; J. A. Lauwerys, History Textbooks and International Understanding (Paris: UNESCO 1953), 39.
37 Similar discussions had been seen before 1914. See Sandi E. Cooper, Patriotic Pacifism: Waging War on War in Europe, 1815–1914 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991).
38 “The minutes from the delegates’ meeting in Stockholm, 16–17 September 1932,” A1:7, ANA, NAS, 7–8. Originally written in Swedish (and for undisclosed reasons it is written in the third person): “Det vore framför allt föreningarna Nordens sak att genomföra en sådan uppgift. De borde icke låta detta tillfälle att visa sitt existensberättigande glida sig ur händerna och överlåta uppgiften till den internationella historikerorganisationen eller Rotaryrörelsen eller andra organisationer, som redan hade satt sig i rörelse för lösning av ifrågavarande spörsmål.”
39 Verner Söderberg, “Läroböcker i folkhat – Carnegiefondens enquête om skolböckerna efter världskriget” [Textbooks of hatred: The Carnegie Endowment and the schoolbooks after the world war], Svensk tidskrift (1925): 116; Wilhelm Carlgren, ed., Report on Nationalism in History Textbooks (Stockholm: Magn. Bergvalls förlag, 1928); Bulletin of the International Committee of Historical Sciences 13 (1931): 406 and 23 (1934): 149.
40 See for example letter from James T. Shotwell, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Division of Economics and History, to Professor Aage Friis, 13 November 1937, vol. 148, Pohjola-Nordens arkiv (Archives of Pohjola-Norden, APN), Riksarkivet, Helsingfors (the National Archives of Finland, Helsinki, NAH), in which the Norden Associations are denied fiscal aid for international publications.
41 Falk Pingel, “Can Truth be Negotiated? History Textbook Revision as a Means to Reconciliation,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences 617 (2008): 183; Georg Stöber, “From Textbook Comparison to Common Textbooks? Changing Patterns in International Textbook Revision,” in History Education and Post-Conflict Reconciliation: Reconsidering Joint Textbook Projects, ed. Karina V. Korostelina and Simone Lässig (New York: Routledge, 2013), 45.
42 Henry Bruun, Gottfrid Carlsson and Sverre Steen, “De nordiske unioner 1380–1523” [The Nordic Unions, 1380–1523], in Omstridda spörsmål i Nordens historia I [Disputed Questions in Nordic History I], ed. Wilhelm Carlgren, Knud Kretzschmer, Axel Mickwitz and Haakon Vigander (Stockholm: Föreningen Norden, 1940), 31–75.
43 See for example “Protokoll fört vid möte 18/4 1963 i Stockholm” [Minutes from meeting in Stockholm, 18 April 1963], A5:6, ANA, NAS, 5–6.
44 See compilation of members elected in Elmersjö, Norden, nationen och historien, and the archival sources given there.
45 See “Foreningen Nordens seminar om historieundervisning på Hindsgavl 27 juli–2 augusti 1969” [The Norden Association seminar on history education 27 July–2 August 1969] and “Förslag till uppläggning av och program för seminarium kring Norden i historieundervisningen på Bohusgården 31 juli–5 augusti 1972” [Program proposal for a seminar about the Nordic countries in history education, 31 July–5 August 1972], vol. 152, APN, NAH
46 Falk Pingel, UNESCO Guidebook on Textbook Research and Textbook Revision (Braunschweig: GEI/UNESCO, 1999); UNESCO, A Handbook for the Improvement of Textbooks and Teaching Materials as Aids to International Understanding (Paris: UNESCO, 1949), 33–34; UNESCO, Bilateral Consultations for the Improvement of History Textbooks (Paris: UNESCO, 1953), 4; J. A. Lauwerys, History Textbooks and International Understanding, Towards World Understanding XI (Paris: UNESCO, 1953), 39. See also Faure, Netzwerke der Kulturdiplomatie.
47 Haakon Vigander, Mutual Revision of Textbooks in the Nordic Countries (Paris: UNESCO, 1950), 2.
48 Ibid., 1.
49 “Council of Europe Symposium on the Revision of History Textbooks at Lysebu, Oslo,” 7–15 August 1954, Box 2747, 1954, Council of Europe Archives, Strasbourg (CEAS).
50 “Oslo Symposium: Speech by Mr Einar Boyesen,” 7 August 1954, Box 2747, 1954, CEAS.
51 Letter from E. Drotsby (Danish Ministry of Children and Education) to G. Neumann (Council of Europe), 31 August 1963, AKK, NAC; “Protokoll fört vid sammanträde i Föreningen Nordens historiska facknämnd, 27/11 1959” [Minutes from the Swedish Commission of Experts meeting, 27 November 1959], A5:6, ANA, NAS and Minutes from Meeting in Stockholm, 18 April 1963, 13. See also Georg Eckert, “History Instruction and International Understanding: The Problem of International Textbook Improvement,” in Howard Approaches to an Understanding of World Affairs, ed. R. Anderson (Washington, DC: National Council for the Social Studies, 1954), 437–40; Faure, “Connections in the History of Textbook Revision.”
52 Otto-Ernst Schüddekopf, “History Textbook Revision 1945–1965,” in History Teaching and History Textbook Revision, ed. Otto-Ernst Schüddekopf (Strasbourg: Council of Europe, 1967), 16.
53 Haakon Vigander, “History Textbook Revision in the Nordic Countries,” in History Teaching and History Textbook Revision, ed. Otto-Ernst Schüddekopf (Strasbourg: Council of Europe, 1967), 43–64.
54 Vigander, “History Textbook Revision,” 63.
55 Thomas Nygren, History in the Service of Mankind: International Guidelines and History Education in Upper Secondary Schools in Sweden, 1927–2002 (Umeå: Umeå University, 2011).
56 Minutes from meeting in Stockholm, 18 April 1963, 5.
57 Vigander, “History Textbook Revision,” 61.
58 Caruso, “Within, Between, Above,” 20–23.
59 Letter from Holger Andersson (UN Conciliation Commission for Palestine) to Knud Kretzschmer, 15 January 1952, and letter from Pierre A. Visseur (Fraternite Mondiale) to Knud Kretzschmer, 25 January 1952, Knud Kretzschmers arkiv (Archive of Knud Kretzschmer, AKK), Riksarkivet, København (the National Archives of Denmark, Copenhagen, NAC).
60 Faure, Netzwerke der Kulturdiplomatie.
61 Minutes from meeting in Stockholm, 19 April 1963, 13.
62 For example Haakon Vigander described the Norwegian Commission of Experts’ influence in Norway in “Protokoll, foreningen Nordens historie fagnemnd, 9/6 1971” [Minutes from meeting with the Commission of History Experts (Norwegian), 9 June 1971], A5:11, ANA, NAS and the Finnish commission pessimistically announced that they had lost the insight into curriculum changes which they once had. See Minutes from meeting in Stockholm, 18 April 1963, 5–6.
63 UNESCO, A Handbook for Improvement, 34; Vigander, Mutual Revision of Textbooks; Nygren, History in Service of Mankind.
64 Nygren, History in Service of Mankind; Henrik Åström Elmersjö, “The Meaning and Use of ‘Europe’ in Swedish History Textbooks, 1910–2008,” Education Inquiry 2, no. 1 (2011): 61–78.
65 Consider Georg G. Iggers, Historiography in the Twentieth Century – From Scientific Objectivity to the Postmodern Challenge (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 1997), 23; Yasemin Nuhoğlu Soysal and Hanna Shissler, “Teaching Beyond the National Narrative,” in The Nation, Europe, and the World: Textbooks and Curricula in Transition, ed. Hanna Shissler and Yasemin Nuhoğlu Soysal (New York: Berghahn Books, 2004), 2. For discussions on historians as national myth-makers, see Stefan Berger and Chris Lorenz, eds., Nationalizing the Past: Historians as Nation Builders in Modern Europe (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010).
66 See for example Sørensen and Stråth, eds., Cultural Construction of Norden.