Colonized Curriculum

Abstract

Although U.S. scholars have long documented the stereotypical appearance of Africa in textbooks, scant research does so in the Netherlands. The Dutch, internationally recognized for generous aid, contributed to Africa’s historical underdevelopment by kidnapping, trading, and enslaving Africans. In this study, the author uses content and discourse analysis to examine how Africa, African independence, and European, particularly Dutch, aid organizations operating in Africa are represented in all Dutch primary school history textbooks published since 1980. A Eurocentric neocolonial master narrative homogenizes and essentializes Africa as a poor, primitive, and violent continent; discursively denies Dutch historical responsibility for African underdevelopment; excludes African nationalist efforts; and depicts the Dutch engaging in benevolent aid efforts toward African nations and peoples unable to help themselves. These textbooks, in constructing and perpetuating racialized conceptions of Africa and African peoples, constitute a continued legacy of colonialist conceptions that justify neoliberal intervention and exploitation. Given the denial of race and racism among both academics and the general populations in the Netherlands, these findings have critical implications for contemporary conceptions of Africa, Africans, and Afro-Dutch people living in the Netherlands today.