Dbq Differences in History Textbooks

American History Honors
Noren
23 Feb 2014


Differences in History Textbooks
Throughout many students education, they are given a textbook and told to learn what the textbook says without looking at other outside sources. For some, this gets them through high school with passing grades but when they get to college, they find out what they “learned” is not always portrayed accurately or is a beefed up account that is taught differently in other places. By examining the topics of the Boxer Rebellion and the Spanish-American War in the U.S. History textbook The American Pageant and excerpts taken from History Lessons: How Textbooks from Around the World Portray U.S. History, it is seen that what is taught in one is taught differently in the other or not at all.

Each excerpt on the Boxer Rebellion focuses on a different aspect surrounding the rebellion as a whole, although not talking much about what went on during the months of it. The Chinese textbook focuses on the history of the Boxer Rebellion, in terms of the people behind it. Japan’s textbook talks about the results of the rebellion. Great Britain’s textbook focuses more on French and Russian expansion. The American textbook talks more about the Open Door policy set in place.

In the Chinese textbook, Boxer Rebellion, is a term probably not accepted well considering the fact that no where in the excerpt does it refer to it as the Boxer Rebellion. All the excerpts call what happened a “revolt”, even though the Society for Righteous Harmony (Boxers) was a governmentally recognized society, and from what the excerpts described happened, was a normal occurrence in China. It is no surprise that since each other excerpt makes them out to be the bad guy, the Chinese textbook makes it seem that the Chinese were not at fault. Instead they blame the Boxer Rebellion on a united army that “carried out violent reprisals in Beijing, widely looting the city, massacring residents, and burning royal palaces”...