Teaching the Ends of Empires (original) (raw)
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The Dutch Education System: Teaching the Pro's of Colonialism
This essay looks at the way in which children in the Netherlands are taught to think about the country's colonial past. In doing so, several educational sources such as school textbooks, tv-series and websites have been analysed. In these sources, colonialism is more often than not omitted, and when discussed it is mostly in terms of Dutch bravery and innovation at sea and the lucrativeness of the spice trade. Any negative aspects are airbrushed, thus creating a positive image of the Netherland's colonial past. Furthermore, this essay claims that this historical narrative is ethnocentric, and therefor ought to be revised and de-nationalised.
Postcolonial history education: Issues, tensions and opportunities
Historical Encounters Journal, 2020
This paper introduces a journal special issue devoted to an exploration of post-colonial history education with contributions from Ghana, Uganda, New Zealand, Canada, Botswana, Nigeria, Cyprus, Lebanon and London. It provides an overview of key issues, tensions and opportunities around decolonising the history curriculum. Relevant contexts such as the ‘History Wars’, subaltern studies, the conception of decolonising the mind and the possibilities of de-colonising pedagogies are explored. History education lenses around critical historical literacy, historical consciousness, multidimensional identities and multi-perspectivity are brought to bear upon the question of re-thinking forms of postcolonial history education. Specific political circumstances inform the nature of history education in every national jurisdiction; here the contemporary Black Lives Matter campaign, the fallout from the mismanagement of the fate of the ‘Windrush’ settlers in the UK and the recent focus of protestors globally upon colonial oppressors memorialised in statues frame the authors’ reflections. However, echoing the optimism of most of the special issue contributions, opportunities to build bridges between divided communities, open up more inclusive history curricula to student voices and nuance and complicate homogeneous national narratives are identified and recommended.
Susanne Popp, Katja Gorbahn, Susanne Grindel (Hrsg.), Colonialism and History Teaching (Peter Lang: Bern 2019), 2019
The teaching of a shared European history has a colonial past. Starting from examples of cooperative projects among colonizers in the production of knowledge and the teaching of European cooperation, this article shows that a common European history is hardly innocent, even though it is portrayed as being progressive today. Europe emerged from a colonial context and the education system was very much influenced by joint projects of colonial lobby groups. International Organizations such as the International Colonial Institute tried to produce apologetic knowledge about the colonized world and bring it into European schools. Famous collaborative editorial projects about the colonial history and history of Africa, and even publication series by UNESCO are influenced by such a colonial agenda. This article argues that the project of teaching a "common European past" and a shared history in the European Union has to be analyzed with regard to colonial origins and legacies
History education in the Netherlands
in L. Cajani, S. Lässig & M. Repoussi eds., Palgrave Handbook of Conflict and History Education in the Post-Cold War Eras (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019) 385-402 (https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9783030057213)., 2019
Recent controversies on history education in the Netherlands often refer to public debates around whether knowledge or skills should be emphasised, and how history education can strengthen national identity. There are, however, also less noticed issues. Since the 1970s history is not a compulsory subject at upper secondary level. At lower secondary level the school subject history is often fused with civics, geography and economics into a single subject field, entitled “world orientation”. At the same time historians encounter a tendency in academia and education which favours science and marginalizes their own field. Despite all disagreements, in the end the acrimonious debates have generated in the Netherlands more collaboration between academic historians, experts in history didactics and history teachers.
The continuous refusal of colonial permanence as a pedagogy
2020
When thinking about how to 'decolonize' the classroom, and more specifically how we can embrace emotions and create open, transformative spaces, our point of departure must always be the realization that we, students and lecturers, are 'in it together'. The realization that study has been made impossible under the conditions in which we are being made to operate by and within the University: the realization that lecturers and students are (being) put together in the classroom under, what Ann Laura Stoler would call, similar conditions of duress. Albeit not entirely the same, these similar conditions under which we are being made to operate make 'decolonizing education' an incredibly difficult task, especially if students and lecturers are separated. A separation that doesn't only happen along the lines of hierarchy, but very much also along the lines of the belief that students are the 'enemy', or more specifically, students 'ask too much of our time'. This 'time question' is of course interesting, especially when the students aren't the cause of our time issues, but rather these issues emerge out of administrative and financial policies. In other words, the conditions under which we are being made to operate are structured along the lines of a racial-patriarchal-capitalistic logic on which the University is build and operates. This is of course why we speak of 'decolonizing the University', because we work from the understanding that the University is very much build upon various colonial histories and in so many cases the University is a direct result of colonialism.
Matthew G. Stanard in European History Yearbook 17 (2016), pp. 151-174. History writing about empire is thriving, although few could have predicted this in the 1980s, when the field was moribund. This article examines the history and historiography of post-1945 empires and decolonization, observing how international and economic developments, combined with changes to the history profession, revived the field in the 1990s. From this resurgence emerged the " new imperial history, " with its focus on imperialism and culture, although some debate whether Europe ever developed a " colonial culture. " The essay assesses recent works on the legacies of empire and decolonization that indicate what we know about colonial culture at this juncture, and how it should be studied. It also identifies obstacles like missed collaborations between postcolonial studies and history writing, and terminological issues, including problems with the label " new imperial history. " The essay concludes by indicating directions for future research: into the forms of decolonization; toward greater inclusion of the " smaller " empires; toward fuller comparison of cultures and empires; and into migration's effects on Europe.
History writing about empire is thriving, although few could have predicted this in the 1980s, when the field was moribund. This article examines the history and historiography of post-1945 empires and decolonization, observing how international and economic developments, combined with changes to the history profession, revived the field in the 1990s. From this resurgence emerged the “new imperial history,” with its focus on imperialism and culture, although some debate whether Europe ever developed a “colonial culture.” The essay assesses recent works on the legacies of empire and decolonization that indicate what we know about colonial culture at this juncture, and how it should be studied. It also identifies obstacles like missed collaborations between postcolonial studies and history writing, and terminological issues, including problems with the label “new imperial history.” The essay concludes by indicating directions for future research: into the forms of decolonization; toward greater inclusion of the “smaller” empires; toward fuller comparison of cultures and empires; and into migration’s effects on Europe.
Decolonising history teaching in the United Kingdom: Movements, methods, and curricula
Hungarian Educational Research Journal
Toppling the statue of the slave merchant Edward Colston in Bristol, removing the monuments of King Leopold II from public places in Belgium, Black Lives Matter protests, and mass demonstrations targeting remembrance of certain chapters of the history of the Global North – these are some of the significant events that drew attention to the ongoing disputes around the legacy of colonialism during the summer of 2020. These developments form an integral part of the long-drawn-out process of decolonisation: decolonising the culture of the former mother countries. From museology through the natural sciences and linguistics to visual arts, vast areas of the academic, scientific, and cultural scene of the Global North are crucially affected by decolonizing tendencies, with the teaching of history arguably among the most disputed ones. This paper reviews the key decolonising aspirations of history teaching in the United Kingdom by studying the goals, messages, methods, and endeavours of thr...