Contested Memories of the Past: History Education and Textbooks Twist on Both Sides of the Taiwan Strait

History education and textbooks offer a primary vehicle through which the official historical discourse becomes socialized. This article analyzes how the teaching of history was used to instill feelings of national belonging in both China and Taiwan after the Civil War in 1949. Since the 1950s, both sides of Taiwan Strait sought to revise the history curriculum in middle and high school to boost students’ dedication to the nation. From the 1950s, national standardized textbooks in China sought to indoctrinate a class-based perspective and define Chinese national identity. From the 1980s, China’s embrace of globalization and modernization reconstructed its historiography. A Japanese colony from 1895 to 1945, and then a retreat for the defeated Nationalist government beginning in 1949, Taiwan has been struggling to find its identity. Remnants of this identity crisis can be seen in political realm, with its extreme polarization on various social, political, and historical issues. Unlike China, Taiwan society’s representation of its colonial and wartime past is highly contested, which was influenced by democratization. It attempts to provide an overview of the course of the textbook controversy in Taiwan from a historical perspective, and to show the reactions from educators, students, and the general public. Through an analysis of the different ways that wartime history was interpreted and represented in both China and Taiwan, this article shows how political and social factors help construct contested memories of the past.