How is the American War for Independance taught in the UK?

[Jon Shannow]

BTW the red coats were because some paragon of the British officer class thought it'd stop the men freaking out over the wounded, as you'd hardly notice the bleeding and screaming over the loudness of their jackets

No it wasn't. Red was chosen by the new model army (who later became the British Army) as it was the cheapest colour to mass produce.

 

[Eatbrainz]

What war for independance?

 

[maturin]

But yes, historically speaking America has been the greatest player in the last 75 years, but before that the UK was the greatest for about 150 years. the US is without a doubt incredibly important, but you could never say it is the most important.

You haven't said why. If China will be, and Britain was, that doesn't change anything in the present.

'Most important country' is a pretty stupid title, but if it exists, the US has it.

 

[thebolt]

The United States can't even agree on how to teach it. The south, north, and states who weren't involves ALL teach the war differently just in our own country.

Are you sure you're not talking about the Civil War instead of the Revolutionary War?

lolololololol I obviously still need my morning coffee.

 

[Jon Shannow]

All i was taught at school about that time period was the Napoleonic War and a brief sidetrack to the war of 1812 which consisted of my teacher saying "They tried to conquer Canada, it didn't work so we burnt down the white house"

 

[Harkonnen64]

The United States can't even agree on how to teach it. The south, north, and states who weren't involves ALL teach the war differently just in our own country.

Are you sure you're not talking about the Civil War instead of the Revolutionary War?

lolololololol I obviously still need my morning coffee.

Lol, don't worry about it, buddy.

 

[mirasiel]

With a lot of you guys from across the Pond I am very curious as to how the UK treats this part in your history.

It was only lightly touched upon during my full run of history lessons (about 4-6 years total because I took it as one of my optionals at standard grad level), we covered some of the preceding events in shallow detail (boston tea party/taxation w/o representation) and looked at some of the conflict in the context of competion with France.


Mostly we focused on major historical events that shaped Britain: Roman occupation, Viking raiding, Saxon occupation, various kings, English civil war, The act of Union, Jacobite rebellion, colonialism (this is where you colonials sit), Napoleonic wars, Industrial revolution (mainly highland clearances, oh fuck that was dull) then BANG world war 1 (arms races, imperialism, political strategic alliances, oh my ) treaty of Versailles, hitler gets nasty, WORLD WAR 2...then history ends for the UK more or less

Yup, that sums up my history education from the age of about 10 I think.

/edit basically enough education for me to get my own interests, a basic idea of national history and a little international in a EU context and go hunting for advance info on my own for anything/everything else

Which I did with glee, then again I was one of those weirdos in school who you know...actually prized knowledge and intelligence as virtues

 

[Dingo John]

But yes, historically speaking America has been the greatest player in the last 75 years, but before that the UK was the greatest for about 150 years. the US is without a doubt incredibly important, but you could never say it is the most important.

You haven't said why. If China will be, and Britain was, that doesn't change anything in the present.

'Most important country' is a pretty stupid title, but if it exists, the US has it.

Because of globe-spanning power and ruling economies.

But all that aside, yes 'most important' is rather unspecific. America is significant and american culture and history should be taught at schools, preferebly world-wide, but on account of that, other countries and cultures shouldn't be neglected. That was pretty much what I meant

 

[Kinokohatake]

*British School Teacher*

And at the end of the 1700's England left for a while to go do some amazing British things that won't be mentioned and those filthy colonists decided they didn't care about the queen and threw a hissy fit so we decided to let them be big kids.


Oh and to the person several pages back who said they wouldn't want to be taught about it, WHY? Why would you be unwilling to learn about any countries history. Do you hate America so much that you refuse to learn a single thing about it? I love learning any and all history.

 

[Cpt.Crumbe]

One thing that is pretty important to emphasise in this dicussion is that English history is substantially longer than the history of the Americas, and teachers in the UK barely have time to cover it even patchily. It becomes a matter of priority, and for example, the French revolution and subsequent Napoleonic wars, which happened in close historical proximity at about the same time as the American war of independence was a much bigger deal to the peoples of England, and the war with Napoleonic wars (c.1803-1815) were a much bigger focus for the British at the start of the nineteenth century. Remember people didn't know what an important world power the United States would go on to be at the time! It kind of reminds me of how a lot of Americans assume the 1812 overture is about the War of 1812, when in fact it's about Napoleon invading Russia.

 

[Sebenko]

As said before it isn't really in the curriculum, but I assure you that in the media and what little we are taught of it we don't exactly paint ourselves as noble. In fact, we paint ourselves in a pretty sour image in most eras.

Except for dress sense. We're always the best dressed side.

But no, we spent more time on the Korean War than we did on the US's running away from home because it's mummy never understood it.

 

[Irriduccibilli]

I've wondered this before. I also wonder how World War 2 and the Holocaust are covered in Germany.

I asked, it's so touchy there they don't mention it more than in passing, they won't go into a 40 hour section of how fucking horrible their country was 70 years ago.

The people didnt know what they where doing, Hitler was very convincing as the country was already in deep trouble, so when the war started they where either forced into the army or excecuted. See it like this. Wouldnt you fight for your country as well, that was what they did.

 

[Socks and Shoes]

Canadian Here.

They really didn't touch on it, the only part that was really in the spotlight was that colonial citizens loyal to the crown moved en masse to the part of the country I lived in during and after the revolution.

 

[Dastardly]

@Emancipation: Sure, sure- Lincoln announced a plan to halt slavery's expansion, then slowly stop it. This way the South's agricultural economy would get less bum raped. It was his campaign platform (which means that people in the US, on a whole, voted for it), hence the secessions starting after he took office. It also would have been far preferable than Sherman's Assrape Spree to the Sea towards the South's economy.

It definitely would have. Slavery was a great evil... but the federal government had allowed the South's entire agricultural economy to be built on it for many years. That kind of entanglement can't be undone cold turkey, unfortunately. Many folks in the South supported the ending of slavery, but in a measured and gradual way. To those people, slavery wasn't about subjugation--it was an economic necessity of the time.

It's just not an issue that's as black/white (no pun intended) as we often want it to be. Slavery is a bad thing, and that's a clear truth... but that doesn't mean everyone participating in a slave-driven economy is an evil jackass with nothing but ill feelings toward man. The government had allowed slavery to become a necessity, while the North was getting rich off of the slave trade. Then they turned around to yank that out from under the South without recompense, and painted the entire region as morally bankrupt devils.

The majority of slaves were well kept--not well thought of, mind you, but well kept. They represented a substantial investment, and were the fuel on which the plantation kept running, so it was better that they be healthy (ie, not starved and beaten). Yet all anyone hears are the stories about how they were "always" beaten and "always" starved. Yes, they were treated as less than human. Something more akin to livestock or pets, which is a tragedy of human rights. There's no need to ascribe all sorts of false evils, when the real evils are sufficiently damning.

There are layers to the slavery issue that people are afraid to get into, lest they appear to be defending slavery. It would be like not allowing people to say anything about Germany other than "Nazis" or "Holocaust."

I live in Tennessee, and have for almost a decade now, and would just like to say there's nothing of history in any of the plethora of instances of racism I've seen- it's the same "not one of us"-based thinking that perpetuates racism is all cultures, the Civil War doesn't matter.

Of course, you go to the ghettos of Nashville and see 99% poor Black people there porch sitting, but that's got lots to do with segregation (which also occurred in the North, but they had more to start off going into it and thus faired slightly better).

Sometimes the top of a tree looks nothing like its roots. I'm not saying people today are consciously aware of where their misplaced hatred comes from. Obviously, they're not. All of us, a human beings, have hated and resented something for so long that we've all but forgotten how it all started--now picture that phenomenon occurring over generations.

From the perspective of Southerners, they were suddenly thrown into economic ruin. Their infrastructure basically collapsed, and everyone was thrown into sudden poverty. Plantation owners certainly couldn't afford to pay workers in order to keep up production, and workers couldn't survive on the wages that could be offered. That's a clear recipe for extreme resentment. Now, they'd learned that directing that resentment at the government just earned them a war... so they instead turn that burning, hateful resentment to the nearest and most visible symbol of their newly-imposed poverty: the newly-freed slaves.

From the perspective of those newly-freed slaves, they were freed, which was great... but now what? They couldn't all move north (and the North really wouldn't have them). There were no jobs being offered, and they had no land or homes or means to acquire either. The North had cut them loose and left them adrift, only half-finishing the job of transitioning them into the population. Yet they couldn't go on hating the government, because it wasn't there to be hated. So they hatred and resentment were directed at the nearest and most visible symbol of their abandonment: Southern whites, whether slave owners or not.

Over the years, this resentment grew and changed shape in the socioeconomic climate of the "reconstructed" South. One side grew to distrust the government, the other to become dependent on it. Each grew to hate what the other represented to them. Over generations, that cultural "reasoning" was lost, but hate remains. This kind of cultural hatred happens all over the world.

(We have some students from Taiwan, and some students from China. They're middle school students, around 11 to 13 years of age. And whenever one crowd does something good, the other crowd boos. Whenever one crowd does something bad, the other crowd rages. Ask any of them why they act that way, and they can't tell you the historical reasons for why one would resent the other. They just know their parents or parents-parents told them something about how those "other guys" are scum.)

 

[JochemDude]

In Holland, not that much. Probably because we used to ship you're slaves to you. I mean you're just a country, we can't go around learning every struggle for freedom in every country. That you put our great merchant fleet pretty much out of business when you outlawed slavery.

 

[MasterOfHisOwnDomain]

I've never been taught it, and as far as I'm aware in the UK you will only be taught it as part of the British Empire, never as a stand alone subject. To be honest, in a history as long and interesting as Britain's, the American War of Independence is a footnote. Whenever I talk about the War of Independence I usually have a laugh about it and how you guys still love our country and monarchy despite fighting to get rid of us.

 

[X123Lewis123X]

The war in question was never even mentioned by the teachers at my school.

 

[rob_simple]

Being a Britfag who wasted several years of his life in a history class, I can assure you there simply isn't time to teach our children about American history. We have to devote half the curriculum to Anderson shelters/mustard gas and the other half to how shitty plague-era Britain was. (Protip: It was super, super shitty.)

 

[theonlyblaze2]

I've wondered this before. I also wonder how World War 2 and the Holocaust are covered in Germany.

having been partially educated in germany i can answer that. they teach world war two and the holocaust without a blindfold, in all it's evilnes and gore. the only good way to teach it. when i was in the u.s. i found it kind of redicolous that there can't be any graphic pictures in the school books. how are you supposed to teach them the horrors of war if not by letting them see the guts^^

on a semi-related note, when i went to school in the u.s. it was remarkable how far historical accuracy is bent in favor of patriotism. for example the american revolution was taught as if the colonist rebels were heavily outnumbered by the brittish military juggernaut of an army. while everyone who looks into the matter a little more will learn that the french and american forces had the advantage in numbers and supply (fighting on home turf and all).
similar with second world war, where the american role was greatly exaggerated. it was taught as if america came to the rescue of the poor world under the jackboot of the nazis. while in reality when the u.s. quit sitting on their thumbs and landed in france in mid 44 the war already pretty much over and the soviet troops had already done the vast majority of the fighting

Thank you. Out of the 17 quotes I have gotten for this post, you are the only one with any real experience on the subject. Everyone else just says "Well, we kinda cover it, but sweep most of it under the rug." To get the straight answer to a question I have asked for 10 years now is a big deal.

As for the second part of the answer, it all depends on the teacher. I had one history teacher who acted as if the US saved the world, while my current history teacher simply says the truth: The US was looking to sit this one out.

 

[UberNoodle]

I think it's the Japanese lack of interest in the history of WW2 that's sorta creepy. The only war crime the poms committed was wearing red and walking in a straight line. BTW the red coats were because some paragon of the British officer class thought it'd stop the men freaking out over the wounded, as you'd hardly notice the bleeding and screaming over the loudness of their jackets

As a long term resident of Japan, I somewhat agree, however I don't see the lack of interest as insideous. Ask average, young Americans, Australians, Canadians, etc about their own history and you'll find alarming gaps or entire voids of knowledge there. The same happens in Japan, but it just so happens that the history the subsequent generations are increasingly disinterested in is history that the rest of the world demands Japan never forget.

However, bear in mind that Japanese culture has as its foundation an instinct to avoid all forms of social conflict. The issue between Grin and Square-Enix is an example of this. Rather than just say that the project was all but cancelled, the management danced around the matter, until an inevitable collapse in the relationship occurred. Grin were, perhaps, expected to pick up on that and apologetically withdraw in some way.

Anyway, parts of Japan's imperial history are highly prone to capsize the boat, nationally and internationally, thus those parts are not avoided but quietly and indirectly conversed on. As someone who has observed the two and fro between Japan and China, I can see clearly the deep roots of their troubles, to centuries before any modern war. Discussion over these events in history are frequently derailed by parties on both sides who would rather capitalise on and exploit the issues.

I am not wanting to evoke the 'Boy Who Cried Wolf' here, or even that a leopard cannot change its spots, but as sure as the atrocities did indeed occur, both China and Japan have not been forthcoming or honest about the actual definition, description and scope of those atrocities. There is so much bad blood historically, and sadly it is now inextricable from the current day's economic and political machinations.

However, I am not one to demand that each and every Japanese citizen beg for forgiveness because they are not the ones who purpetrated the sins of their fathers. Any American would resist being expected to do the same for the sins committed against the Native Americans. Acknowledgement is essential, however, Japan is not the kind of place, yet, in which painful and socially dangerous matters are attacked head on.

Progress will always be slow because that's how it has always been for this island nation. Never confuse a lack of comment or protest in Japan for a sign of acceptance or complicity. Otherwise, it is easily that a great many of the young, like so many in every Western nation, don't give a crap about their grandparents' wars.