The Nation in the World, and the World in the Nation

Abstract

This thesis explores issues of nationalism and Euro-centrism in history writing at the start of the Cold War by examining, as case studies, national and world history textbooks of three emergent nation-states in the mid-1950s: Egypt, China, and South Korea. Most broadly, it shows the ways in which textual discourses about the nation and Europe were informed by transnational ideas and political movements, and in turn, the centrality of national identity in defining such global discourses. It adopts a comparative, transnational approach.