Consensus History: George Bancroft And Francis Parkman

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Consensus history is a nationalistic and homogenized narrative composed by white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant, New Englander elites that aimed to minimize some of the errors of our nation’s past (p.20). Books composed in this manner frequently exaggerated, omitted, or falsified information to make the history of America look less shameful and more valiant than it really was. Some of those omitted were women, Native Americans, and African Americans because they did not fit this positive narrative. Two of the major authors of consensus history were George Bancroft and Francis Parkman. Bancroft published a ten-volume series, History of the United States, which was read by a few generations of people (p.20). Even though Bancroft was a scholar,