History Lessons

How Textbooks from Around the World Portray U.S. History

Dana Lindaman, Kyle Ward

• Publisher: The New Press
• Year: 2006
• ISBN:
  9781595585752
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Historiography
• Index: History

A "fascinating" look at what students in Russia, France, Iran, and other nations are taught about America ( The New York Times Book Review ). This "timely and important" book ( History News Network ) gives us a glimpse into classrooms across the globe, where opinions about the United States are first formed. History Lessons includes selections from textbooks and teaching materials used in Russia, France, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Cuba, Canada, and others, covering such events as the American Revolution, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Iran hostage crisis, and the Korean War—providing some alternative viewpoints on the history of the United States from the time of the Viking explorers to the post-Cold War era. By juxtaposing starkly contrasting versions of the historical events we take for granted, History Lessons affords us a sometimes hilarious, often sobering look at what the world thinks about America's past. "A brilliant idea." — Foreign Affairs

PART I

The New World and a New American Nation

1

Viking Exploration

In the 10th and 11th centuries, the Vikings were considered the most powerful force throughout Europe and the North Atlantic. Through raids and exploration, Viking ships traveled deep into Russia, the Mediterranean, and across the North Atlantic to North America. They are usually given credit for being the first Europeans to set foot on what would be known as the “New World.” Most American history textbooks today either briefly mention the Viking exploration of the North Atlantic or, as is more than likely, have completely dropped it from their books. When they are mentioned it is usually within the context of the history predating Columbus, with little attention being given to the actual power they once held.

NORWAY

In the history of the world the period of the Vikings is arguably Norway’s great shining moment on the world stage. Even though Norwegian textbooks spend a great deal of time discussing the Vikings within the context of Norway’s history, the Vikings’ westward exploration is given relatively little attention.

According to the sagas, some Vikings who had been driven off course went to Iceland in the latter half of the 800s. There they met some Irish monks who left the island when settlers from the Western Sea islands and Norway began to settle there from the 860s. One reason that many Norwegian chieftains emigrated to Iceland could have been that they didn’t want to submit to Harald Fairhair as overlord, but for most of them another motivation was probably decisive: On the island they could clear new farms without bloody conquest.

Under the leadership of Eirik1 the Red from Rogaland, Greenland was colonized by Icelanders in the 980s. In the time that followed, over 250 farms were built in the Eastern Settlement and almost 80 farms in the Western Settlement. The Nordic societies lasted until about 1500 when the population died out.

Eirik’s son Leif was the first European to land in North America. In the 1960s Norwegian archaeologists found remains of Viking houses in L’Anse aux Meadows on the northernmost tip of Newfoundland. That could have been the place where Leif Eiriksson wintered. The land was given the name of Vineland and several Greenlanders went west to settle there. Attacks by Indians or Inuits is the most likely reason that they were not successful.2

CANADA

Probably because of the assumed geographical location of the Vikings exploration, some Canadian textbooks not only include the story of the Vikings but also go into far greater detail than their American or Scandinavian counterparts.

The First Intruders

As every schoolchild knows, Norsemen made the first documented European visitations to North America. There is contemporary evidence of these visits in the great Icelandic epic sagas, confirmed in our own time by archaeological excavations near L’Anse aux Meadows on the northern tip of Newfoundland. The sagas describe the landings to the west of Greenland made by Leif Ericsson and his brother Thorvald. They also relate Thorfinn Karlsefni’s colonization attempt at a place Leif had called Vinland, an attempt that was thwarted by hostile Aboriginals labeled in the sagas as ‘Skraelings’. It is tempting to equate Vinland with the archaeological discoveries, although there is no real evidence for doing so.

Later Greenlanders may have timbered on Baffin Island. They may also have intermarried with the Inuit to such racial mixings. But Greenland gradually lost contact with Europe, and the Icelandic settlement there died away in the fifteenth century. For all intents and purposes, the Norse activities became at best part of the murky geographical knowledge of the late Middle Ages.

In our own time the uncovering of a world map executed in the midfifteenth century, showing a realistic Greenland and westward islands including inscriptions referring to Vinland, created much speculation about Europe’s geographical knowledge before Columbus. This Vinland map has never been definitively authenticated, and many experts have come to regard it with considerable scepticism. Like the Vinland map, none of the various candidates for North American landfalls before Columbus—except for the Vikings in Newfoundland—can be indisputably documented.3

---

1 Eirik is the Scandinavian spelling of Eric or Erik.

2 Emblem, Terje. Norge 1: Cappelens historieverk for den videregaende skolen. Oslo: Cappelens, 1997, 49.

3 Bumsted, J.M. A History of the Canadian Peoples. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1998, 7–9.

2

Columbus

Contact between the New World and Old Europe was virtually inevitable given the European desire for riches during the Renaissance period and the advances in navigation and cartography. Although Columbus has become an often maligned figure in contemporary textbooks, nobody fails to mention his contribution to the first lasting contact between the new world and old.

CUBA

Although most U.S. textbooks place “discovery” in quotations, this Cuban textbook does so for the “new world.” The terms may be controversial in some circles, but there is little debate that Columbus is the key figure.

Christopher Columbus and the “new world.” The existence of Cuba, and of the American continent, remained practically unknown to Europeans until the end of the 15th century. It is true that stories were being told of Norman incursions into territories west of Europe, beyond the cold Northern Sea, and that names like Eric the Red and his son Leif were being mentioned as the protagonists of those adventures. But in practice nothing was known about those lands, and much less about their inhabitants.

So when Christopher Columbus, an experienced sailor from Genoa, set about organizing a voyage across the Atlantic, his purpose was not to discover a new world but to find a shorter, less dangerous route to India, an important market of spices and other items in great demand in countries of Western Europe.

In his journey Columbus could of course come across territories not yet occupied by any European power, so in accepting the project, the Catholic King and Queen of Spain, Fernando and Isabel, not only agreed to share with Columbus the commercial benefits resulting from the undertaking but also appointed him Admiral, Viceroy, and Governor General of the lands he might discover.

This is how, authorized by the Capitulations of Santa Fe, and with supplies provided by the Spanish Crown, Columbus began his voyage. His three ships—the Santa María, the Niña, and the Pinta—set sail from palos de Moguer harbor, in the southern Spanish province of Huelva, on August 3rd, 1492.

Columbus sailed for 72 days. Longer than expected, the voyage created panic among the ever more restless sailors, who feared Columbus might have gone insane, and pressed him to return to Spain. But before the agreed 3 day term expired, in the early morning of October 12th, 1492, Andalucian sailor Rodrigo de Triana sighted land. Columbus’ intrepidity, willpower, and skills had paid off. They had arrived at an island the indigenous inhabitants called Guanahaní—presently Watling—in the Lucayas or Bahamas, and which the Admiral called San Salvador, since it had saved his efforts from disaster. Columbus did not know it then, but he had discovered a new continent for Spain.

Advised by the native inhabitants through signs and gestures that there was more land nearby, he continued his voyage southeast. Fifteen days later, on October 27th, Columbus arrived at the coasts of Cuba, which he called Juana in honor of Prince Juan, the first born of the Spanish royal couple. Later, in 1515, the island would be renamed Fernandina by a decision of King Fernando, although all along it would retain its primitive name of Cuba.

This is how Europe arrived in Cuba, a land whose pristine natural scenery prompted Columbus to call it “the most beautiful land the human eye has beheld”.

Columbus found in Cuba a hospitable, industrious, and peaceful civilization whose members he called Indians, in the belief he had arrived in India, the legendary Asian peninsula he had originally set off to find.1

CARIBBEAN

This Caribbean text is meant for students of the English-speaking Caribbean. There is insufficient demand in each island country to merit publishing separate textbooks. Consequently, these countries typically look to British or U.S. publishers for one general edition to be used across the various islands. The text spends a considerable amount of time recounting the destructive results of this initial contact.

Columbus’s First Voyage

The fears of the seamen grew daily as the trade winds steadily blew their ships further and further west. By mid-September they were on the point of mutiny. Even Columbus began to doubt the wisdom of his plan. According to his earlier reckoning they should have already reached Japan. For a while he quietened his men’s fears by showing them a log book in which he had underestimated the true distance they had travelled. A week later the seamen were once again talking about throwing their stubborn admiral into the sea and turning back. Columbus avoided mutiny by telling his men that they were sailing between two islands and could at any time turn towards land. On 10 October Columbus himself promised that the voyage would be abandoned if land was not sighted within forty-eight hours. As the deadline was drawing to a close, on Friday 12 October 1492, Rodrigo de Triana, keeping watch on the Pinta, sighted land.

Columbus went to bed convinced that the island was one of the Far Eastern spice islands. A closer look in the morning showed that the island had no exotic spices, jewels, rich clothes or gold. The natives he met had no trade goods at all, except a little inferior cotton. He could not learn where he was or what they called their island. Columbus gave it a new name, San Salvador (Holy Saviour), and pointed out to his men that the natives were willing to please and were nonbelievers. Their souls could be won for the Christian Church and that was sure to please Queen Isabella. Besides, the ‘Indians’, as Columbus mistakenly called the Arawaks, might be taught to cultivate cotton to export to Europe. In the meantime he took several Arawaks on board to guide him to the real spice islands.

Hispaniola

The Arawak guides led Columbus along their own trade routes between San Salvador, Cuba and Hispaniola. They continually told him—as they did all later European explorers—that there were mountains of gold further inland, or on ‘just’ the next island. For three months Columbus unsuccessfully looked for the fabled wealth of Asia. The search continued until one day just before Christmas when the Santa Maria ran aground on the north shore of Hispaniola, and sank. Thirty-nine seamen who couldn’t find a place on the remaining two ships unhappily became the first European settlers in the West.

The Amerindians and the Spanish

THE RETURN TO HISPANIOLA

Columbus returned to Spain in 1493 convinced that he had discovered one of the islands of the Indies. He wrote to Queen Isabella with plans for making Hispaniola the centre of a great trading empire. The first step would be to build towns from which Spaniards could trade with the Indians. The island could also be used as a base for exploring other parts of the Indies.

Isabella gave the task of collecting stores, men and ships to Juan de Fonseca, who was a priest, like most of the officials at her court. He and Columbus gathered seventeen ships and 1,200 men. Among them were builders, masons and carpenters with the materials to start work on the first towns in the ‘Indies’. To organise the trade there were merchants and clerks as well as map-makers who would be useful for voyages beyond Hispaniola. To provide food for the colony there were farmers with animals and stocks of seed. An important part of the expedition was a party of priests for the work of converting the Indians to Christianity.

Columbus led his fleet back to Hispaniola through the islands of the Lesser Antilles, where he saw many Carib settlements. He wrote that the Caribs were a savage people but that they seemed healthy and intelligent and would make good slaves.

At Hispaniola the fleet landed at Navidad. Columbus found that the fort built a year before had been des...