The Lexicographer's Rules

;History is, indeed, a central component of national self-understanding. But for much of the past 30 years, the notion of history as a grand narrative has been out of fashion, and the idea of placing the national history and culture at the centre of teaching in schools has been attacked as ethnocentric and reactionary. As a result, many British children leave school with no sense of the broad sweep of their national history and culture; they feel neither pride in the achievements of their nation, nor shame at its wrongdoings. There are various reasons for this. One is a desire to provide children with a cosmopolitan education to fit them for our post-imperial and, by implication, post-national future. Another is the desire not to exclude ethnic minority children by teaching them about events with which they have no personal connection. (Source Link)

´ …mainland China again offers us most interesting examples, and will continue to do so. Once a year, the government stages a huge television spectacular, which goes on for many hours and is extremely popular, showing the various peoples that make up the population of the PRC. What is very noticeable in this long display is a sharp distinction between the Great Han people and the various minorities. The minorities are made to appear in their most colourful traditional costumes, and indeed make a splendid sight. The Han themselves, however, cannot appear in traditional clothing, even though we know from paintings and other historical records just how colourful and beautiful these actually were. So the men, for example, appear in business suits, derived from Italian and French models, about which there is nothing Han at all. The Han thus manifest themselves as the Future, and the minorities as the Past, in a tableau which is utterly political, even if not entirely consciously so. This Past, of which the minorities are the visible sign, is also part of a Big Past through which the Chinese state’s territorial stretch is legitimized. It is, of course, therefore a Chinese past.  “Western Nationalism and Eastern Nationalism,” by Benedict Anderson from New Left Review.

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