This ties into something I have been thinking about regarding academic disciplines that are dominant in political elite discourse and thus required reading to get into the political elite. I think they tend to be tailored after the needs of the ruling elite, in terms of collective narrative to motivate teh existence of said elite, common language and tools of power. These do not always match, claiming for example that military victory is granted by God serves the narrative well regarding the victories that brought the eltie into power but serves poorly in understanding military as a tool of power.

So do empires change their dominant academic discipline, and if so how does it happen? Which leads to the question of what was the dominant academic discipline of past empires. Was history mandatory for the Brittish elite, and if so does the fall of the Brittish empire explain why the grand narratives died in history?

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