The Politics of History

Abstract

This study traced historical footprints of national identity discourses production through high school history textbooks. The main question is, what did the New Order's politics look like to the national history of Indonesia? The method used was qualitative research that focused on analyzing the content of history textbooks. This research examined nine history textbooks from three national curriculums. Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) is used to analyze the content of the textbooks. The results show that New Order was discoursing Indonesian national identity as a nation that runs a modern and militaristic society. The discourse of modernity presents Western culture as the only source of Indonesian progression. As a result, national history exclusively narrates many of the Dutch colonial policies as a determinant factor for the development of the Indonesian people. In contrast, history textbooks negated indigenous culture as traditional that is inappropriate for modern life. On the other hand, militaristic discourse exposing the army's success in defending Indonesian independence. Instead, civil government and diplomatic negotiation were negated as the loser.

Keywords

• history textbook
• New Order
• national identity
• Politics of history
• modernism
• militaristic