Empire, emigration and school geography: changing discourses of Imperial citizenship, 1880–1925

The state school curriculum, and geography in particular, played a role in encouraging emigration to the colonies, if not in actually educating for emigration. Emigration was an implicit and explicit topic in school geography, and was increasingly endorsed after the 1885 Revised Instructions to inspectors of schools which explicitly sought the promotion of emigration to young people as an “honourable enterprise”. Early-twentieth century school geography texts were part of the broader imperial discourse which valorized the settler Dominions over the tropical colonies and portrayed them as the good citizen's choice for emigration. The 1922 Empire Settlement Act represented the British government's most direct intervention in supporting out-migration from Britain, but texts at this time were generally less jingoistic than some of their forerunners, in keeping with the changed attitudes in post-World War I Britain.