A Child's History of the World Author: V. M. Hillyer | Language: English | ISBN:
8087888545 | Format: EPUB
A Child's History of the World Description
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
- Paperback: 458 pages
- Publisher: Important Books (November 27, 2013)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 8087888545
- ISBN-13: 978-8087888544
- Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 1 inches
- Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Harsh as it sounds, I would like to make the argument that no matter how much children enjoy it, this book is still a very bad idea. The biggest problem with it is its overtly racist framework, something that may have seemed perfectly all right when it was first written in the 1920's, but that is quite shocking today. The author is very clear at the outset about who "we" are: white Christians of European descent. And the word he uses - which even the 1947 revision does not cut - is "Aryan", an imaginary racial category that reached its peak of popularity in Nazi Germany.
The author carefully explains that there were "just three different white families, and from these families all the white people in the world are descended". Although the book does not explicitly say so, these three families, the Aryans, the Semites, and the Hamites, are presumably descended from the three sons of Noah. (For the discredited 19th-century racist origins of this theory, see [..].) The paragraph that has stayed in my mind since I first found a copy of this book 20 years ago runs:
"If your name is Henry or Charles or Wiliam, you are probably an Aryan.
"If it is Moses or Solomon, you are probably a Semite.
"If it is Shufu or Rameses, you are probably a Hamite."
According to Mr. Hillyer, all the major civilizations of the world have been created by white people (the inhabitants of the Indian subcontinent are helpfully identified as white). Although Confucius and the Buddha get respectful nods, the civilizations of Asia are not worth mentioning.
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