Decolonizing Classroom Coverage of Colonialism
Less Scrambling, More Reflecting
Presented with Bram Hubbell, Great Lakes History Conference, October 2018, Grand Valley State University
Responding to Imperialism in the History Classroom
Presented at Minnesota History Fest, August 2018, Minnesota Historical Society
Preview blog post introducing concerns about reinforcing racism when teaching imperialism. The presentation includes these ideas, but focuses more on interventions.
Intro music for the session from Oumou Sangaré, a Malian musician.
Key Resources
- Brenda Randolph, Howard University, Colonized Women Talk Back
- Record sheet for extended version of Colonized Women Talk Back
- Class slides for Facing Colonialism: How Would You Respond? Text for students, not reproduced here, is from the original (early 1990s) TCI World History curriculum, Modern Africa, lesson 2.2.
Additional Resources
Being Real About Impacts
- Famine
- Review of Late Victorian Holocausts, a book on famines in late 19th Century colonial India by Mike Davis
- Another review of Late Victorian Holocausts
- German Exterminism in Namibia aka Herero Genocide
- Deutsche Welle (aka DW) article from 7/30/18, with videos featuring contemporary Herero activists:
- Smithsonian.com article, with interviews from Herero descendants and quotations from German commander Lothar von Trotha
- Episode 29 of the On top of the World history podcast includes description of Herero genocide. Listen in to hear about an event so brutal that it causes a World Historian to say “holy shit!”.
- Episode 12 of the Ufahamu Africa podcast featured an interview with Herero activist Dr. Kavemuii Murangi
- Article highlighting an important source in writing the history of the Namibia: the German “Extermination Order” directed at the Herero people
Remember the Resistance
- Emilio Aguinaldo’s Letter to the America People, excellent opportunity for sourcing analysis
- New York Public Library, African Resistance to Colonial Rule
- Stanford History Education Group
- Assessments on Italian atrocities in Africa and two on the Philippine-American War.
- World History activities on the Battle of Adwa, the Indian Rebellion, and the Nigerian Women’s War
- Creative resistance in Vietnam, an interview with Michael Vann, author of a graphic novel: The Great Hanoi Rat Hunt.
- UNESCO Women in African History resources, which include comic strip biographies and more
- Midwife and activist Aoua Keita, present-day Mali
- Yoruba activist Funmilayo Ransome-Kuti, present-day Nigeria.
- World History for Us All close up unit on anti-colonial resistance in Africa, the Americas, and Asia
Books consulted
- Antoinette Burton, The Trouble with Empire: Challenges to Modern British Imperialism, 2015
- Sven Beckert, Empire of Cotton: A Global History, 2014
- Gregory Cushman, Guano and the Opening of the Pacific World, 2013.
- Michael Goebel, Anti-Imperial Metropolis: Interwar Paris and the Seeds of Third World Nationalism, 2016.
- Paul Kramer, The Blood of Government: Race, Empire, the United States, and the Philippines, 2006.
- Heather Streets-Salter, World War One in Southeast Asia: Colonialism and Anticolonialism in an Age of Global Conflict, 2017.
