The French Revolution In Secondary Schools' History Textbooks Of The Last Hundred Years

As a western event deeply influencing world history in the 20th century,the French Revolution has occupied a place in history textbooks of secondary school since the beginning of their generation.During more than one hundred years since the generation of secondary school's history text books,the description of the French Revolution in the history textbooks has undergone significant changes.In the Late Qing Dynasty and Early Republic of China,history textbooks tend to stress the turmoil brought about by the French Revolution with sympathy for the constitutional monarchy and antipathy towards the Revolutionary violence,regarding the mob as an important driving force of revolution.After the reform of educational system in 1922,the textbooks began to highlight the intention of promoting the civil rights of the French Revolution,with showing more sympathy for revolutionary violence and terror,while the class color of the writing is becoming more and more obvious as well.From the perspective of writing history,the "people" centered on the workers' and peasants' classes began to compete for the leading power of the revolution and their interests were beginning winning real concern.Along with the deepening of national crisis,"nationalism" has finally overcome the "cosmopolitanism",become the important aim of the writing of the French Revolution.After the founding of the People's Republic,the French Revolution in secondary school's history text books was described as a bourgeois revolution against feudalism,and the "people" were seem as the main driving force of revolution.Deeply influenced by Soviet historiography and the political and ideological revolution,the writing of the French Revolution showed a strong kind of class color,emphasizing the fundamental difference between the bourgeois revolution and the proletarian revolution,which denying the historical value of the Great Revolution in fact.Since the end of the 80s,the writing of the Revolution has weakened the arguments of class struggle and exposed many new things.Under the new ideas and new curriculum,the length of writing of the French Revolution in history textbooks was greatly reduced and the focus of which shifted as well,underlining the concern of the new era towards the development of human civilization.The changes in the writing of the French Revolution in history textbooks profoundly reflect the transformation of the concept of revolution and the ideas of world history,and also show the association and interaction between age,textbooks,historians and historiography.In the writing of the French Revolution in the current history textbooks,there are still many problems worthy of reflection and improvement.The writing of the Revolution should be adjusted with the times,in order to give full play to the effectiveness of revolutionary history education.