I started this project with the understandning that European hisory has become more important in government documents as a part in a larger European discourse, and that this fact is likely to be reflected in the chools textbooks. Therefore this essay deals with the task of comparing history textbooks over time trying to find changes. Firstly to find out how much space European history is afforded in the textbooks, and secondly how Europe is described and used in the textbooks. In my first task I will use a content analysis and in my second a conceptual analysis. My material consists of eight books and I have three pieces of older educational materials from the years 1949, 1954 and 1962. The contemporary educational material are from 1996, 2002, 2006, 2010 and 2011. My overall purpose is to examine the image and the creation of ´Europe´ in textbooks. My hypothesis is that Europe appears more and has a geater significance in newer textbooks.

My result shows that the amount of pages in which Europe appears changes between older and newer textbooks, and that the Scandinavian countries appear more at the expence of Europe. World history has also increased in page numbers but not that much. However, Europe apperas more often in the newer textbooks and the term is used in a different way han before. In the older textbooks the term Europe is not that important. But in the newer textbooks the term Europe is often used to explain geogaphical locations and define Europe as a cultural and political project. The older textbooks more foten use synonyms to describe Europe and do not need to define the term nor use it as a cultural and political unit.