Connections in the History of Textbook Revision, 1947–19521

Abstract

In this article, I focus on connections between textbook revision forums between 1947 and 1952. I examine the interrelations between the textbook activities of UNESCO, the World Movement of Trade Unions, the international historian conferences in Speyer and two Franco-German co-operation projects. I thus try to understand how these interrelations impacted on the development of each of these forums and on textbook revision in general. I argue that the revision projects were not just embedded within a diplomatic and institutional framework but also in a set of relations that closely linked them, irrespective of their institutional and ideological foundations. Further, I propose to conceive of textbook revision not as an entirely fragmented mosaic of bilateral and multilateral projects, but as a more or less coherent transnational field.