The Analysis About The American War Of Independence Under The PRP High School History Textbook

In China, history education has always been taken seriously and history is even a basic course in schools at all levels. After the foundation of People’s Republic of China, this has been continued and strengthened, particularly in high schools. History textbooks are an important part of history education, particularly its compilation and usage. Studying history textbooks at different times is helpful to examine the purpose, process, and effect of history education in the past and referential to current and future compilation and usage of history textbooks.After the foundation of People’s Republic of China, as the new regime adopted the "Lean to One Side" policy in foreign affairs, the Chinese government allied with the Soviet Union to struggle against the United States and China became alienated and even isolated from the United States. Studying how People’s Republic of China described the history of the United States, China’s ideological opponent, in its history textbooks is helpful to explore the correlation between history education and the past ideology as well as political environment.Compared with the long history of China, American history is quite short and American War of Independence, the important beginning of American history, is an indispensable part in American history education. Although the new People’s Republic of China had a tense relationship with the United States and mainstream voices mostly criticized the United States,history textbooks at different stages of the new People’s Republic of China showed various attitudes towards and details about American War of Independence after all it’s the world’s first large-scale war started by colonies for national independence and consistent with the mainstream voices of backward countries fighting against colonialism for national independence. On one hand, this is related to the dominance of class-struggle view of history in the past academia; on the other hand, as there was no academic exchange between China and the United States, Chinese scholars studying American history couldn’t adopt latest American studies and findings on American history, which influenced the compilation of history textbooks for high schools.After the Reform and Opening up, the exchange between China and the United States was normalized. There were frequent academic exchanges and scholars had chances to share views of history and findings. This promoted the rapid development of studies on American history in China. Accordingly, the contents about American history in Chinese history textbooks gradually changed. This paper studied various editions of high school history textbooks published by People’s Education Press, examined the parts about American War of Independence, and made comparative analysis from several aspects to reflect the change of textbooks in a long time.