A China-central East Asian History : A Study of History Textbooks for Elementary and Middle Schools Written by Chinese Scholars From Late Qing Dynasty to 1949

After losing the war to the Eight-Nation Alliance, imperial China implemented a comprehensive education reform. With the realization that school textbooks were useful in transferring knowledge to students, and under the influence from Japan, imperial China issued a new series of history textbooks. At the establishment of the Republic of China, Chinese scholars took the responsibility to write textbooks on Chinese history and world history for elementary schools, middle schools, and tertiary institutes. This study has investigated those for elementary and middle schools published between late Qing and 1949. The aim is to acquire an overview of the East Asian history constructed by the Chinese people during the post-First Sino-Japanese War period. It was found many of such textbooks still adopted a worldview which regarded China as the center of the world, with Korea and Japan being “foreign examples” to learn from. This has caused a lack of understanding of the genuine historical outlooks of the two countries, and moreover a lack of interest in the development of East Asian history.