Historians who write in aristocratic ages are inclined to refer all
occurrences to the particular will and character of certain individuals;
and they are apt to attribute the most important revolutions to slight
accidents. They trace out the smallest causes with sagacity, and
frequently leave the greatest unperceived.
Historians who live in democratic ages exhibit precisely opposite
characteristics. Most of them attribute hardly any influence to the
individual over the destiny of the race, or to citizens over the fate of
a people; but, on the other hand, they assign great general causes to
all petty incidents.
—Alexis de Tocqueville,
Democracy in America
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, conservative governments in both the
United States and the United Kingdom invested heavily in programs to
redefine the study of history and to redraft the curricula for teaching
history in high schools. They did this for three reasons: surveys had
demonstrated young people had an appalling level of ignorance about
their societies’ major historical events; the proportion of students
studying history had declined in recent decades from a large majority to
a small minority; and they were concerned about the rise of political
correctness in history teaching, especially the denigration of the
achievements of Western culture and an overemphasis on claims about the
oppression of the lower classes, women, and ethnic groups.
The governments of both countries believed they were canvassing a broad
body of opinion when they filled their curriculum revision programs
