In 1948, he, a young history teacher, said in a 5th grade lesson at a French gymnasium in the Algerian city of Oran that “after the fall of the Roman Empire and the barbarian kingdoms, they were replaced by Arab civilization.” A deafening burst of laughter followed.

The study of the French historian sets a perspective from which the opposition “multiculturalism - total integration” looks limited and little meaningful

The book by the French historian Marc Ferro (b. 1924) is structured at first glance very simply. It talks about how national and world history was simplified and changed in textbooks for primary schools in different countries of the world - South Africa, Algeria, Egypt, Iran, USA, India, Russia, Armenia, Poland, China, Japan... A thought that can be derived from this comparison, it seems trivial to the point of obviousness and does not require so many examples for confirmation. In the 19th and 20th centuries, teachers and politicians were convinced that “it is school textbooks that shape the nation” (a statement by one of the French statesmen of the era of the Third Republic). Therefore, the authors of textbooks everywhere adjusted history to fit the template set by the state. In all countries, schoolchildren learned that their country was the most ancient, suffered the most from foreigners or showed the greatest courage in wars. What's surprising here?

However, the book reads like a gripping novel - it is impossible to stop until you finish reading it. The reason for this fascination is not only Ferro’s brilliant style, carefully preserved by Elena Lebedeva. And not only that we are presented with a long line of cultures that we barely know about. And not only in quotes from textbooks for children: regardless of the culture in which they were born, these books invariably captivate with their didactic pressure and stylized confidential intonation. The very task of this research is much more unusual and new than it seems at first. The author is interested diversity And complementarity national simplified versions of history.

For example, the story of the Great Geographical Discoveries is told to children in the Arab Maghreb very differently than to children in mainland China. But both of them receive different ideas about this era in history lessons than those that children of Western European countries learn from school (if they learn). North African teenagers in the 1970s read in their textbooks: while medieval Europe was plagued by corvée exploitation of peasants, famine and mass epidemics, what is now the Republic of Mali was a developed feudal state with codified law, low taxes and thriving trade (and indeed indeed, it was so). But for European textbooks this state - the so-called Empire of Ghana - does not exist.

The “defamiliarization” offered by the non-European perspective is expressed most effectively in the epically deadpan phrase that concludes the Angolan folk tale of the discovery of the country by European navigators in the 15th century. The tradition is given by one of the authors whom Ferro quotes in his story about Africa: “From these times until the present day, the whites have brought us nothing but wars and misfortunes, maize, cassava and the way they are grown.”

Of course, the temptation to rewrite the past also arises in highly enlightened democratic countries. Thus, Ferro recalls how, after the assassination attempt on President de Gaulle, which was carried out in 1962 in France by far-right opponents of the decolonization of Algeria, Georges Bidault, who was involved in organizing the assassination (one of the radical leaders during World War II - hero of the Resistance and one of the comrades-in-arms of the future president). There are plenty of similar stories everywhere, but it is in Russia that, as Ferro shows, they are “embedded” in a particularly frightening context. In our country, the Soviet tradition of nationalizing history and perceiving the most widespread version of the past as the only possible one is very influential. In the 1990s, much was done to overcome this inertia, but, as the results of sociological research and content analysis of new textbooks show, it is not yet enough.

Ferro's book has not lost its relevance, despite the fact that this work is quite old.

In French, How to Tell a Story to Children... was published in 1981; in the 1980s it was translated into more than ten languages; the book was first published in Russian in 1992, with cuts: the translation by Elena Lebedeva was being prepared for publication back in Soviet times. For the new edition, Lebedeva translated the book again, and all omissions in it were restored. The translation was made from the 2004 edition, to which Ferro made additions, but they were very small and did not change the main picture. Both the textbooks discussed in the book and the ideologies that gave rise to them have long since sunk into oblivion. The apartheid regime in South Africa has been abolished for twenty years; The Iran-Iraq war is over, and the Iranians, on the other hand, are staging demonstrations inspired by the Egyptian revolution. Soviet Armenia, to which Ferro devotes a separate chapter, was replaced by an independent state, and in Russia Soviet textbooks have long been out of use. Sometimes Ferro plunges into even more “plusquaperfect” than the 1970s: Japanese textbooks of the pre-war period or German propaganda opuses from the Nazi era. But despite this almost complete lack of modern data, the book does not look out of date at all.

“How they tell a story to children...” is a good example of a study that arose in a purely local context and over time acquires more and more meaning. Ferro's work, as is clear from the book, was born for biographical and political reasons. The author recalls how in 1948, he, a young history teacher, said in a 5th grade lesson at a French gymnasium in the Algerian city of Oran that “after the fall of the Roman Empire and the barbarian kingdoms, they were replaced by Arab civilization.” “A deafening burst of laughter followed. In the heads of schoolchildren Arabs And civilization didn’t fit in with each other at all.” I wonder what will happen if the phrase “Tajik culture” is used during a lesson in an ordinary Russian school somewhere in the outback?

Politically, Ferro's book, as far as one can judge, was born as a response to the proliferation of versions of French history that occurred in the post-war years. The unifying “Parisian” scenario began to compete with the “anti-colonial” versions created in Brittany, Corsica or the French part of Catalonia. “...Little by little different visions of history emerged, each of which differed in some way from the traditional one, what was taught at school. However, they all embody the memory of the French.”

A “semantic upgrade” of Ferro’s book in the reader’s consciousness is possible today because another political impulse that gave rise to the French historian’s book is becoming increasingly noticeable - the desire to find a place for individual cultures in a globalized world. Comparing different versions of history is necessary because, as Salman Rushdie said, “...from now on, everyone and everything is part of something else. Russia, America, London, Kashmir. Our lives, our private stories flow into each other like rivers, they no longer belong only to us, they have lost their individuality, just as they have lost their clear definition” (novel “Shalimar the Clown”). From Ferro's book it appears that individuality these stories have not been lost - rather, each of them has lost rights to uniqueness. Simultaneously with the intensification of globalization, the collapse of empires (USSR) and some multinational states (Ethiopia, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia) continues. “Memory wars” began between peoples who had lived nearby for many years. A memorable example of such wars for many is the debate about the Holodomor between the Russian and Ukrainian authorities (and between bloggers from the two countries). But in a less scandalous form, such debates about history began earlier, in the united Europe of the 1980s. Ferro's book ends with the chapter “What should the history of Europe be?” These are brief theses on how to write textbooks for children whose parents want to reorganize their life together in a single economic and cultural space.

Point 2 looks especially nontrivial for today’s Russia:

“Different human communities, including entire nations, willingly appropriate certain crises of the past for themselves, considering them their own, experienced primarily by these communities or peoples. However, in fact, many of these crises - from the Reformation and the so-called wars of religion to the Enlightenment, revolutions, ideologies, wars and totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century. - affected the whole of Europe “from the Atlantic to the Urals.” It would be good to begin by isolating this past, common to everyone.”

Ferro's theses are suitable not only for a Europe that is uniting politically, but also for a Europe that is increasingly migrant. It is common to think - in particular among European right-wing politicians - that multiculturalism, based on the principle salad-bowl: different cultures lived side by side without mixing, and the right to self-isolation was recognized by default for national communities. Recently, British Prime Minister David Cameron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel spoke out in the spirit that the policy of multiculturalism has not justified itself because Islamic fundamentalism is ripening in self-isolated communities of the Middle Eastern peoples. These statements are based on a mental trap. According to the logic of Cameron and Merkel, multiculturalism can only be countered by national integration within one specific country.

Ferro's book shows how such a pitfall can be avoided. The idea of ​​history created in it does not directly respond to the remarks of Cameron and Merkel, but sets a perspective from which the opposition “multiculturalism - total integration” looks limited and little meaningful. Ferro shows that there can be no history without omissions and omissions, but the comparison of different versions of the same events makes it possible to keep these distortions under control and create a kind of stereoscopic effect. In modern world generally anachronistic any ethnocultural history that imagines itself to be the only or main one and accordingly organizes the self-awareness of those who read it as an isolated “river” that does not “flow” anywhere (remember Rushdie’s metaphor).

Finally, it’s worth talking about who Marc Ferro is. As a teenager, he took part in the French Resistance, then, as already mentioned, he taught and made a career as a university scientist. Today he is co-editor of the most authoritative journals "Annals" and Journal of Contemporary History, (-tsr-) one of the leaders of the Paris School of Higher Social Research (EHESS). The range of his scientific interests is non-trivially wide: the history of European colonialism and colonial societies, the history of totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century, the history of France, the history of Russia in the twentieth century, the representation of history in cinema, the methodology of historical research... In addition, he was the director of several television documentaries - about the German Nazism, about Lenin, about Marshal Pétain... Why, with all this, only one of his books was translated into Russian, one can only wonder.

Mark Ferro. How the story is told to children around the world. M.: Book Club 36’6, 2010
Translation from French by E. Lebedeva

___________________
Quote translated by Anton Nesterov. ​

How the story is told to children around the world Ferro Mark

The understanding of the historical process as the history of white people has become obsolete, but it is still alive. “White” history is dying, but “white” history is not dead yet.

A list of stereotypes of such a “white” history, based on a systematic study of school textbooks in several European countries, was compiled by R. Preiswerk and D. Perrault (I.1). These stereotypes, which determine the periodization of history, represent the main values ​​of Europeans in relations with the rest of the world: respect for order and law, national unity, monotheism, democracy, preference for a sedentary lifestyle and an industrial economy, faith in progress, etc. In all In European countries these values ​​are approximately the same.

However, in the last half century this story has ceased to inspire confidence. Doubts could, of course, come from whites, but it is clear that the main driver of the revision was the struggle of the peoples of the colonies for independence. Gradually, as decolonization proceeded, under the powerful pressure of the historical process, “white” history gave way to its positions.

In the 1950s, school textbooks contained only a few minor concessions regarding Black Africa. Thus, the Tukuleurs and al-Haj Omar are no longer called “Muslim fanatics.” Omar now no longer “robs Bamboo”, but “conquers it...” (III. 6. 7).

The demands of diplomacy and a sense of time are forcing even the former metropolises to somehow adapt. For example, in 1980, the illustration “The Street after the Passage of the French” (1907) disappeared from the French textbook for the 3rd grade: in this illustration there are corpses of Moroccans on the street of Casablanca.

However, if in the West “white” history disappears from books, it remains very tenacious in the collective consciousness; We will be convinced of this more than once.

And yet, in Europe, and even more so beyond its borders, “white” history in its pure form no longer exists anywhere in the 80s, with the exception of South Africa, an apartheid country. At least that's how it's told to white children in Johannesburg.

The history of Afrikaner Africa is, in its origins, the history of the white man. It goes back to the “Christian” tradition. The companion of fear and loneliness of the Boer in the vast expanses of Africa has always been the Bible and the gun.

The “Christian” and at the same time racist goals of teaching are clearly defined in the cited document, which dates back to 1948 and adopts formulations and ideas that arose as early as the beginning of the 19th century.

“The teaching and upbringing of children of white parents should be based on the ideas of the parents; therefore, they must be based on the Holy Scriptures... love for what our homeland is, its language and history.

History must be taught in the light of Revelation and understood as the fulfillment of God's will for the world and for humanity. We believe that the Creation, the Fall, and the Resurrection of Jesus Christ are fundamental historical facts and that the life of Jesus Christ was a great turning point in world history.

We think that God intended the existence of separate nations, separate peoples and gave each of them his own calling, his own tasks, his own abilities. Young people accept the vows of their elders with faith only if they know history, that is, have a clear understanding of the nation and its heritage. We believe that, following the study of the native language, the only way to instill love among some for others is the patriotic teaching of national history” (III. 3).

Sociologists and futurologists predict absolute globalization and a single information space, but so far the reality is far from utopia. The worldview, mentality, and political ideology of individual nations influence the perception of not only the present, but also the past. We have collected the key differences in teaching history in different countries.

Russia

The school history curriculum in our country is as follows: fifth grade - history of the ancient world, sixth grade - history of the Middle Ages, seventh and eighth grade - Modern times, ninth grade - Modern times (from the First World War to the present day). In high school they usually repeat what they have learned. At the same time, Russian history itself is taught from sixth to ninth grades, and 70% of the time of the entire program is spent on it.

A key feature of history education in Russia is the emphasis on patriotism. Mainly due to long descriptions of the heroic exploits of Russian conquerors and soldiers. It is no secret that the history of the Second World War is presented with a bias towards the course of the Great Patriotic War, which lasted from 1941 to 1945. And here the healthy desire to educate loyal citizens has a side effect: many Russian schoolchildren believe that the global confrontation with Nazi Germany began and ended at the same time.

American textbooks significantly distort information about historical figures and events, argues sociologist James Lowen in his book Teacher's Lies: Your History Textbooks Are Wrong. As examples - the history of the first colonialists. The United States prefers to remain silent about the bloody conquests and genocide of indigenous people or to present relations between Indian tribes and gold miners as more or less calm. At the same time, in general, according to the scientist, the history in American textbooks is pessimistic and creates in children the perception that the country’s best time is already behind it.

New Jersey student Harold Kinsberg states that the history of other countries is taught very fluently in the United States: “We are taught that there is North America, there is Europe and there are other countries that can be considered in one pile. We heard something about Scandinavia, we read something about the Ottoman Empire and Russia. The World History course also talks a little about Africa, mainly about the pyramids. South America is just the Aztecs, Mayans, Incas, Spanish colonization and a couple of liberation movements. And it’s as if central and south-east Asia never existed before British colonization.”

In addition, information about the Second World War is also distorted. A recent survey among American citizens showed that the majority believes that it was the United States that defeated the Nazis.

Germany

From fifth to ninth grade, children study the Stone Age, the Roman Empire, the Crusades, the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. Teachers form separate groups of tenth-graders who study this or that event in more detail. In general, the material is presented in a free form and without much in-depth, but there is a clear moral: “society should learn from its own and others’ mistakes.”

French historian Marc Ferro writes that in Nazi Germany, history in schools began in modern times - they mainly studied the biography and activities of Hitler and the politicians close to him. And immediately after the defeat of fascism, the history of the Second World War was completely excluded from the program, until the 60s. Today this episode is taught in great detail. Modern Germans prefer to draw conclusions from the mistakes of their ancestors.

France

Ferro speaks of France as a country in which the idea of ​​history is shaped by writers: in novels, pictures and comics. It is interesting that modern French textbooks contain practically no dates, but are replete with reproductions and illustrations.

American historian George Huppert argues that certain historical facts have been repeatedly suppressed in the past. Thus, French authors did not talk about the events related to the trial of Joan of Arc until the 16th century; the role of the church was not mentioned; almost the entire narrative was dedicated to the king. In addition, in the 20th century, they began to ignore the “marriage alliance” with Brittany, which turned out to be violent for France.

B O Most of the program in Spain is focused on cultural and religious experiences. For example, in one of the most popular textbooks by Antonio Alvarez Perez, “Encyclopedia, first stage,” more than half of the material is devoted to the history of spirituality. Great attention is paid to the history of folk holidays, of which the Spaniards have more than three thousand.

The general representation of the historical process in Spain looks like the country's long struggle for freedom. However, to this day, events such as the conquest of Mexico and Peru, the destruction of the Indians and slavery are hushed up.

Great Britain

The British approach is also not without subjectivity. “If we want to instill civic spirit in young people, they need to be imbued with patriotic myths,” said Cambridge University professor Richard Evans. The school curriculum in Great Britain is built on honoring the past victories of the state. Almost no attention is paid to the problems faced by other countries.

On the other hand, these ideas have been repeatedly criticized. Opponents of the patriotic program come out with the slogans “more facts” and “less subjectivity.” And, judging by the polls, they are winning: British schoolchildren have recently loved history for the opportunity to reveal their research potential and compare several different points of view on certain processes.

Current page: 1 (book has 14 pages in total)

Mark Ferro
How the story is told to children around the world

From the author

Ten years have passed since the publication of the book How Children Tell History. You have in your hands a Soviet edition of it. Before this, translations of the book were published in England and the USA, in Japan and Italy, in Portugal, in Brazil, in the Netherlands. German and Spanish editions are being prepared.

But, of course, the publication of this book in Russian is of greatest interest to me. It is in your country today, more than anywhere else, that the stakes of history are high. You cannot build the future of a country without properly imagining its past and without knowing anything about how other societies see their history.

I didn’t change anything in the text of the book, although the course of history itself changes a lot in life. Only in the chapter on the USSR did I add several pages about the problems of history during the period of perestroika. A chapter on World War II has also been added; it was written quite recently. In other places everything remains the same as it was ten years ago. Moreover, I must warn the reader that if the history of Western Europe occupies a limited place in the book, this was done deliberately. The time has come to abandon the Eurocentric understanding of history. And I strived for this.

It remains to add that without the qualified and intelligent help of Elena Lebedeva, this publication would not have seen the light of day. And I offer her my gratitude.

Mark Ferro

From the translator

Translating Marc Ferro's work was difficult. “The gigantic concept of the book, reeking of delusions of grandeur,” which the author justifies in the preface, poses many problems for the translator in mastering heterogeneous and extensive material: historical, cultural and film studies, and pedagogical. The help of specialists in various fields of history, who answered my questions, provided bibliographic references, and finally, took the trouble to read the texts of individual chapters in translation and make their comments, was absolutely invaluable in this work. I offer my most heartfelt gratitude to M. S. Alperovich, A. S. Balezin, I. A. Belyavskaya, Yu. L. Bessmertny, O. I. Varyash, A. A. Vigasin, R. R. Vyatkina, A. Ya Gurevich, M. V. Isaeva, A. V. Korotaev, S. I. Luchitskaya, A. N. Meshcheryakov, A. S. Namazova, S. V. Obolenskaya, B. N. Flora, G. S. Chertkova .

The reader of this book will also face many problems. A kaleidoscope of dates, names, titles, historical events, scientific essays and textbooks for children, films and comics - you name it. And not everything is easily perceived without the help of comments. However, it was completely impossible to comment on every name, every fact, event, which may not be known to the non-specialist reader. It would be another book. Comments (indicated by asterisks in the text) are given only where they are necessary for an accurate perception of the author’s thoughts, and especially in cases where it is difficult to find information in Soviet reference publications.

Despite the above, Mark Ferro's book is intended not only for specialist historians and teachers. It is intended primarily for the general reader. The author does not constrain himself by the rules of a strict scientific essay; this is an essay written in a completely relaxed manner, just as its composition itself is relaxed.

Certain constructions of the author may raise doubts and a desire to argue; The text of the book constantly stirs the consciousness, excites thought. It makes you think, and not only about the meaning of the science of history, about how science relates to history, which is “released” to everyone. You also think about what its role is in the formation of relationships between people, groups of people, between nations. And many of the thoughts of the author of this book turn out to be interesting specifically for us, first of all for us. That is why, despite all the difficulties, working on the translation was a pleasure. I hope that my readers will share it with me.

E. Lebedeva

Preface

Dedicated to Vonnie

There is no need to deceive yourself: the image of other peoples or our own image that lives in our soul depends on how we were taught history in childhood. This is imprinted for life. For each of us, this is the discovery of the world, the discovery of its past, and the ideas formed in childhood are subsequently superimposed on both fleeting reflections and stable concepts about something. However, what satisfied our first curiosity, awakened our first emotions, remains indelible.

We must be able to discern, to distinguish this indelible, whether we are talking about us or about others - about Trinidad, as well as about Moscow or Yokohama. This will be a journey in space, but, of course, also in time. Its peculiarity is the refraction of the past in unsteady images. This past is not only not common to everyone, but in everyone’s memory it is transformed over time; our ideas change as knowledge and ideologies transform, as the functions of history change in a particular society.

Comparing all these ideas has become extremely important today, because with the expansion of the boundaries of the world, with the desire for its economic unification while maintaining political isolation, the past of various societies is becoming more than ever one of the stakes in the clashes of states, nations, cultures and ethnic groups. groups. Knowing the past, it is easier to master the present, to give legal grounds to power and claims. After all, it is the dominant structures: the state, the church, political parties and groups associated with private interests that own the media and book publishing, finance them from the production of school textbooks or comics to cinema or television. The past they release to everyone becomes more and more uniform. Hence the mute protest from those whose History is “banned.”

However, what nation, what group of people is still capable of recreating its own history? Even among ancient peoples who had associations and states in time immemorial (like the Volga Khazars or the Kingdom of Arelat), their group identity turns out to be dissolved in the nameless past. In the East, from Prague to Ulaanbaatar, all ethnic and national conflicts until recently were explained according to the same model, allegedly belonging to Marx, but in the Moscow interpretation. And all societies of the South are decolonizing their history, and often by the same means that the colonialists used, i.e. construct a story opposite to the one that was imposed on them before.

Today, every or almost every nation has several histories, overlapping and juxtaposed with one another. In Poland, for example, the history that was recently taught in school is markedly different from the one that was told at home. The Russians did not play exactly the same role in these stories... We find here a clash of collective memory with official historiography, and in it the problems of historical science are probably manifested much more clearly than in the works of historians.

History, as it is told to children, and indeed to adults, allows us to learn both what a society thinks about itself and how its position changes over time. You just need to not limit yourself to studying school textbooks and comics, but try to compare them with the postulates of modern science. For example, the history of the Armenian people, the one taught in Soviet Armenia, the one taught to children of the diaspora (and many children in Armenia, but at home, in the home circle), and the one presented by the generally accepted interpretation of world history are three different versions of history . Moreover, it cannot be argued that the latter is more realistic or more legitimate than the others.

In fact, history, regardless of its desire for scientific knowledge, has two functions: healing and struggle. These missions were carried out in different ways at different times, but their meaning remains unchanged. Whether the praise of Jesus Christ in Franco's Spain, the nation and state in Republican France, the Communist Party in the USSR or China, history remains equally missionary: scientism and methodology serve as little more than a fig leaf for ideology. Benedetto Croce wrote at the beginning of the 20th century that history poses more problems of its time than of the era it is supposed to study. Thus, the films “Alexander Nevsky” by Eisenstein and “Andrei Rublev” by Tarkovsky, resurrecting the Russian Middle Ages, inform us one about Stalinist Russia and its fears associated with Germany, the other about the USSR of Brezhnev times, its desire to gain freedom and its problems in relations with China. The history that is taught to little Africans today says as much about the contemporary problems of the black continent as about its past. Children's books are there to glorify the great African empires of the past, the splendor of which is juxtaposed with the decline and backwardness of feudal Europe in the same era. This is definitely fulfilling a healing function. Or there – and this is also very relevant – the tangle of controversial issues generated by the conflict with Islam is hushed up, they are downplayed, or even with the help of the subjunctive mood their legitimacy is questioned.

In the Caribbean region, where the population is uprooted (Blacks, Chinese, Indians, etc.), history, translated for children, transforms the descendants of former slaves and coolies into citizens of the world who alone have the privilege of belonging to all the cultures of mankind. The history of slavery is presented in such a way that the black child in Jamaica is less sympathetic to the fate of his ancestors than to the fate of the unfortunate Englishmen who were sent to Italy in the time of Caesar and who were the first slaves.

As for the function of history as a fighter, what comes to mind first of all are the manipulations practiced in the USSR. For a long time, Trotsky fell into oblivion, and only Stalin was talked about, then Stalin’s name disappeared or almost disappeared, and Trotsky began to be quoted often, but only in order to condemn. With the beginning of perestroika, Bukharin appeared again, they began to write more softly about Trotsky, they remembered Martov... The evolution of education in the USA was even more radical. It consists of a transition from the melting-pot ideology (America is like a “melting pot” in which peoples mix, turning into a single whole) to the salad-bowl ideology, according to which each culture retains its originality.

However, despite all the changes, there is a kind of matrix of the history of each country: this is the dominant, imprinted in the collective memory of society. And it is very important to know the essence of this matrix. The stories and legends of which it is composed, whether the heroic exploits of Shivaji in India, the misadventures of Yoshitsune in Japan, the adventures of Chaka, king of the Zulu, or the tales of Joan of Arc, always surpass in color and expressiveness any analysis; This is a reward for the historian, who is also a reader.

Thus, I do not intend to present in this book a truth acceptable to everyone; that would be absurd and fictional. I would like to recreate different images of the past that has been experienced by numerous societies in our world. Of course, it may very well happen that one image will be the direct opposite of another; these will be opposite “truths”. In this case, let me be forgiven: the professional habit of a historian always forces me to try to restore the truth.

Of course, in this trip around the world through distant images of the past presented to the children of the USSR or the children of Trinidad, I will not consider the entire history of these countries. However, I will try to give a general idea of ​​the communities or nations that come within my field of vision, as true as possible, since it is such a general view that underlies the ideas of every person. I will not miss the opportunity to compare different interpretations of the same problem, but I will not overdo it either, since in this book I am interested in each national history in its integral identity, the vision of the past inherent in each culture.

So, it's about questioning the very idea of ​​traditional "world history." I do not present a narrative that begins with the times of the pharaohs and ends with the funeral of Khomeini or the destruction of the Berlin Wall, because such a narrative order would mean tacit acceptance of an ideological vision of history under the sign of Christianity, Marxism, or simply adherence to the idea of ​​progress. Equally, such an order would mean a tacit recognition of Eurocentrism, because in this case, peoples “enter” History only when they are “discovered” by Europeans. But in this book everything is completely different.

We will repeatedly encounter the European view of history, but in connection with the history of the rest of the world. As for the other sides of this story, which is so familiar to us, on the pages of this book we will be able to come into contact with only some of them.

After all, it is enough to remember that this story will be the same, or almost the same, whether one looks at it from Paris or Milan, from Berlin or Barcelona, ​​or even from Zagreb. History is identified with the history of the West, and here a manifestation of the same ethnocentrism is revealed, only at different levels. The first is when we mean the relationship of Europe with the peoples of Asia and Africa, or when within Europe itself in Russian history they study, for example, mainly the time after Peter the Great, i.e., the time when this country “Europeanized.” Thus, both Christianity and technological progress are essentially identified with Europe.

The second level of ethnocentrism is manifested in the relationship of each country with its neighbors. For example, in France, after the name of Charlemagne appears, the Holy Roman Empire of the German nation is practically not mentioned anymore, and yet it exists for another nine centuries. If they remember it, it will be only its end in 1806 in order to emphasize the role played by Napoleon in its collapse. In the same way, the French underestimate the role of romanticism, which blossomed in Germany, and its influence on Europe, but they insist on the importance of the consequences of the French Revolution of 1789 for Germany. This second type of ethnocentrism is especially developed in France, Spain and England; it is less common in Italy, where the national state was formed later. But in Italy (as in France), the ethnocentric approach of the third type is practiced in history, in which the role of Northern Italy or Northern France is exaggerated in relation to the southern provinces. In Great Britain, this peculiarity has long been overcome: the histories of Wales, Scotland and Ireland are analyzed in themselves, and not only in connection with London, with the English government. Behind “world history,” whether written in France, Italy, or elsewhere, lies ethnocentrism in various forms. Everything in it “originates” in ancient Egypt, Chaldea and Israel, and it receives its development in the great civilizations of Greece and Rome. The "Middle Ages" begin with the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and the great barbarian invasions, and end with the fall of the Eastern Roman Empire in 1453 and the Turkish conquest. Great geographical discoveries, humanism and the Reformation open up a “new time”, and it gives way to the modern era, which begins with the revolution of 1789.

I, as the reader will see, followed a different logic. I will not claim that my way is the best. But I invite the reader to walk along it with me. Of course, I cannot stop him from starting with a chapter on Islam or a chapter on Japan. I know that the reader will turn the pages of the book, wandering through the pages, so I have placed some kind of chronological landmarks almost everywhere at the beginning of the chapter as a simple reminder. And one more word to the reader.

The gigantic design of this book smacks of delusions of grandeur, and I must explain myself and justify the inevitable weaknesses in its implementation.

Having chosen fifteen to twenty societies that appear here, it was necessary to research a huge number of textbooks, films, comics, historical novels, etc. in who knows how many languages, not to mention getting to know each of these cultures, with the twists and turns of the history of each nation, with all the diversity of its historiography. This, however, did not frighten me; I did not abandon the idea, but I abandoned the idea that each chapter would become a “doctoral dissertation”: a whole life would not be enough for this. And the work would be completely in vain, since, having barely run the distance to the end, I would have to sit down again with books, films and something else created by a new generation, a new being. The abundance and variety of material explains the serious differences in approaches to presentation in different chapters of the book. I am fully aware that some of my constructions are more free than others, some sections are merely descriptive, and pedagogical problems are raised less often than I would like. But, I hope, I have at least managed to outline the panorama without any important gaps, and subsequently I will be able to transform into chapters what is offered here only in the more modest form of notes.

Let the reader only know that I felt pleasure, true passion, when I worked on this book, when I wrote it.

May she, my friend, help you, like me, to better understand your neighbor.

1. Remnants of “white” history: Johannesburg

“Tell me, mom, why don’t they like Jews?

– Because they killed Jesus and poisoned the wells: when I was little, I was taught that way according to the Catechism...

Heydrich: I know it's all a lie, but who cares; this tradition can be useful to us.”

"Holocaust"

Brussels during the German occupation

« Member of a relief organization– And yet, why don’t you want to hide the child anymore?

Citizen- Because he is a thief...

Member of a relief organization- Thief... But he is not yet four years old...

Citizen- And yet he is a thief...

Member of a relief organization- Well, listen, is this possible? What did he steal?

Citizen– He stole the baby Jesus...

Member of a relief organization– Stole baby Jesus?

Citizen– Yes, my wife and I were preparing a Christmas manger, and he secretly stole baby Jesus.

Member of a relief organization(to a Jewish child)– Is it true that you stole baby Jesus?

Child(stubbornly)- It’s not true, I didn’t steal, I didn’t steal...

Member of a relief organization– Listen, Samuel, tell us the truth. This uncle and aunt only want the best for you; you know, they are hiding you from the Germans...

Child(in tears)“I didn’t steal... I didn’t steal... after all, the baby Jesus... he’s a Jew... I hid him... I hid him from the Germans...”

Based on the script of the film by E. Hoffenberg and M. Abramovich “As if it were yesterday”, 1980.

Chronology

1488 – Bartolomeu Dias reaches the Cape of Good Hope.

1652 (April 6) – Landing of Jan van Riebeeck; he represents the Netherlands East India Company.

1658 – First delivery of slaves from Angola.

1685 – Cancellation of the Edict of Nantes in France; Beginning of French Huguenot immigration.

XVIII century - The beginning of the Boer struggle against the Xhosa, Zulu, and then other Bantu tribes.

1795 – Termination of the East India Company. Formation of the Batavian Republic. The British occupy the Cap.

1806-1814 – South Africa goes to England.

1833 - The British abolish slavery.

1837-1857 – Great track 2
The Great Trek (1830–1840) – from the Dutch. trek – relocation. The gradual resettlement of the Boers from the English Cape Colony to the north, as a result of which the Transvaal and Orange republics were formed. The motivating reason for the trek was the contradictions between the British and the Dutch (Boers) in southern Africa. The Great Trek was accompanied by the displacement of indigenous African tribes from the territories they occupied.

Boers under the leadership of A. Pretorius.

1838 - Victory of the Boers over the Zulu at the river, which received the name Blood River (Bloody River) in memory of this battle.

1839 – Proclamation of the Republic of Natal by the Boers.

1843 - The British annex the Republic of Natal.

1853 - Founding of the Transvaal Republic by the Boers.

1877 - First British attack on the Transvaal.

1879 – End of the Zulu kingdom.

OK. 1880 – Discovery of diamonds in Kimberley.

1881 – First Transvaal War of Independence. Kruger's victory over the British at Majuba.

1885 – Discovery of gold in Witwatersland; mass arrival of English immigrants.

1890 - Cecil Rhodes, governor of the Cape Colony, president of the De Beers Company, which was engaged in diamond mining, sets the task of subjugating the Kruger Transvaal.

1887 – Cecil Rhodes annexes Zululand.

1899-1902 - Second Anglo-Boer War. After three years of struggle, Lord Kitchener and Lord Roberts are victorious.

1910 - The emergence of the Union of South Africa, a British dominion.

1913 - The Native Land Act prohibits Africans from acquiring land outside reserves.

1925 – Dutch (Afrikaans) becomes an official language along with English.

Ser. 20s – “Color barrier” policy. According to the law on "civilized labor", Africans should not be allowed to work in jobs requiring high qualifications.

1931 – Adoption of the Statute of Westminster by the English Parliament: a significant expansion of the rights of the dominions, including the Union of South Africa.

1948 – The Nationalist Party wins the elections. Party leader Malan proclaims the program of apartheid, that is, the separate, separate existence of different races, the inadmissibility of any kind of racial integration.

1959 – Bantu Self-Government Development Act. The creation of bantustans, “national fatherlands” of the Bantu tribes, begins. In the rest of the country, Africans were deprived of their remaining rights. The emergence of the Pan-Africanist Congress, a black nationalist organization.

1960 – First major performances by Africans in Johannesburg. Demonstration in Charleville, a suburb of the capital, at the call of the Pan-Africanist Congress. Police open fire on demonstrators. As a result, 69 people died.

1976 - Uprising in Soweto, an African suburb of Johannesburg, brutally suppressed by the authorities. The apartheid policy has been condemned by the UN.

The book by the famous French historian Marc Ferro talks about how history is studied in schools in Africa and Australia, the Middle East, Germany, Japan, the USA, China, Poland, Russia, etc. The material is presented in a popular form. The book is equipped with chronological tables, bibliography and comments.

Mark Ferro
How the story is told to children around the world

From the author

Ten years have passed since the publication of the book How Children Tell History. You have in your hands a Soviet edition of it. Before this, translations of the book were published in England and the USA, in Japan and Italy, in Portugal, in Brazil, in the Netherlands. German and Spanish editions are being prepared.

But, of course, the publication of this book in Russian is of greatest interest to me. It is in your country today, more than anywhere else, that the stakes of history are high. You cannot build the future of a country without properly imagining its past and without knowing anything about how other societies see their history.

I didn’t change anything in the text of the book, although the course of history itself changes a lot in life. Only in the chapter on the USSR did I add several pages about the problems of history during the period of perestroika. A chapter on World War II has also been added; it was written quite recently. In other places everything remains the same as it was ten years ago. Moreover, I must warn the reader that if the history of Western Europe occupies a limited place in the book, this was done deliberately. The time has come to abandon the Eurocentric understanding of history. And I strived for this.

It remains to add that without the qualified and intelligent help of Elena Lebedeva, this publication would not have seen the light of day. And I offer her my gratitude.

Mark Ferro

From the translator

Translating Marc Ferro's work was difficult. “The gigantic concept of the book, reeking of delusions of grandeur,” which the author justifies in the preface, poses many problems for the translator in mastering heterogeneous and extensive material: historical, cultural and film studies, and pedagogical. The help of specialists in various fields of history, who answered my questions, provided bibliographic references, and finally, took the trouble to read the texts of individual chapters in translation and make their comments, was absolutely invaluable in this work. I offer my most heartfelt gratitude to M. S. Alperovich, A. S. Balezin, I. A. Belyavskaya, Yu. L. Bessmertny, O. I. Varyash, A. A. Vigasin, R. R. Vyatkina, A. Ya Gurevich, M. V. Isaeva, A. V. Korotaev, S. I. Luchitskaya, A. N. Meshcheryakov, A. S. Namazova, S. V. Obolenskaya, B. N. Flora, G. S. Chertkova .

The reader of this book will also face many problems. A kaleidoscope of dates, names, titles, historical events, scientific essays and textbooks for children, films and comics - you name it. And not everything is easily perceived without the help of comments. However, it was completely impossible to comment on every name, every fact, event, which may not be known to the non-specialist reader. It would be another book. Comments (indicated by asterisks in the text) are given only where they are necessary for an accurate perception of the author’s thoughts, and especially in cases where it is difficult to find information in Soviet reference publications.

Despite the above, Mark Ferro's book is intended not only for specialist historians and teachers. It is intended primarily for the general reader. The author does not constrain himself by the rules of a strict scientific essay; this is an essay written in a completely relaxed manner, just as its composition itself is relaxed.

Certain constructions of the author may raise doubts and a desire to argue; The text of the book constantly stirs the consciousness, excites thought. It makes you think, and not only about the meaning of the science of history, about how science relates to history, which is “released” to everyone. You also think about what its role is in the formation of relationships between people, groups of people, between nations. And many of the thoughts of the author of this book turn out to be interesting specifically for us, first of all for us. That is why, despite all the difficulties, working on the translation was a pleasure. I hope that my readers will share it with me.

E. Lebedeva

Preface

Dedicated to Vonnie

There is no need to deceive yourself: the image of other peoples or our own image that lives in our soul depends on how we were taught history in childhood. This is imprinted for life. For each of us, this is the discovery of the world, the discovery of its past, and the ideas formed in childhood are subsequently superimposed on both fleeting reflections and stable concepts about something. However, what satisfied our first curiosity, awakened our first emotions, remains indelible.

We must be able to discern, to distinguish this indelible, whether we are talking about us or about others - about Trinidad, as well as about Moscow or Yokohama. This will be a journey in space, but, of course, also in time. Its peculiarity is the refraction of the past in unsteady images. This past is not only not common to everyone, but in everyone’s memory it is transformed over time; our ideas change as knowledge and ideologies transform, as the functions of history change in a particular society.

Comparing all these ideas has become extremely important today, because with the expansion of the boundaries of the world, with the desire for its economic unification while maintaining political isolation, the past of various societies is becoming more than ever one of the stakes in the clashes of states, nations, cultures and ethnic groups. groups. Knowing the past, it is easier to master the present, to give legal grounds to power and claims. After all, it is the dominant structures: the state, the church, political parties and groups associated with private interests that own the media and book publishing, finance them from the production of school textbooks or comics to cinema or television. The past they release to everyone becomes more and more uniform. Hence the muted protest on the part of those whose History is “banned.”

However, what nation, what group of people is still capable of recreating its own history? Even among ancient peoples who had associations and states in time immemorial (like the Volga Khazars or the Kingdom of Arelat), their group identity turns out to be dissolved in the nameless past. In the East, from Prague to Ulaanbaatar, all ethnic and national conflicts until recently were explained according to the same model, allegedly belonging to Marx, but in the Moscow interpretation. And all societies of the South are decolonizing their history, and often by the same means that the colonialists used, i.e. construct a story opposite to the one that was imposed on them before.

Today, every or almost every nation has several histories, overlapping and juxtaposed with one another. In Poland, for example, the history that was recently taught in school is markedly different from the one that was told at home. The Russians did not play exactly the same role in these stories... We find here a clash of collective memory with official historiography, and in it the problems of historical science are probably manifested much more clearly than in the works of historians.

History, as it is told to children, and indeed to adults, allows us to learn both what a society thinks about itself and how its position changes over time. You just need to not limit yourself to studying school textbooks and comics, but try to compare them with the postulates of modern science. For example, the history of the Armenian people, the one taught in Soviet Armenia, the one taught to children of the diaspora (and many children in Armenia, but at home, in the home circle), and the one presented by the generally accepted interpretation of world history are three different versions of history . Moreover, it cannot be argued that the latter is more realistic or more legitimate than the others.