Textbooks, crucial nation-building devices conveying state-sanctioned historical interpretations, offer essential clues to how knowledge is produced, selected, and disseminated in specific time junctures. Considering the increasing institutional acknowledgement of the relevance of (post-)colonial history in European contexts following global protests against racism in recent years, this chapter debates the benefits of interdisciplinary research on textbooks concerning politically and socially relevant topics. It focuses on a long, transnational historical process about which official narratives have been undergoing considerable change in the last decades: racial enslavement, a notion encapsulating the imbricated relationship between enslavement and race. Considering the continuing relevance of textbooks in classrooms worldwide, this chapter advances a conceptual approach that situates them within their broader epistemological, political, socio-cultural, and economic contexts. Firstly, anchored in the debate between history and memory, this chapter engages with the increasingly accepted notion that the production of historical knowledge was informed by the notion of race, having sustained epistemological silences that did not obliterate collective memory. By appealing to the use of primary historical sources and encouraging students to collect social and family memories, history textbooks are understood as privileged objects that help reveal the interconnectedness of official history, collective memory, and state-sanctioned pedagogical discourse. Secondly, while inter/national academic work on history, memory, and heritage has increasingly addressed the colonial past and the racial present in Europe, their intersections in history education, particularly when jointly considering public and school history, have not been examined. Hence, grounded in an interdisciplinary approach that considers the relationship between public and school history, the potential of a comparative study of narrative formulas, knowledge validation, and memorialisation processes concerning the history of racial enslavement in these two fields of academic enquiry is pondered. In the second part of the chapter, a research agenda along three thematic lines is outlined: (i) an analysis of recent global and regional initiatives and guidelines on the role of history education in combating racial discrimination, including those concerning textbook revision; (ii) the study of the current frameworks and narratives on enslavement, race and racism deployed in school history, particularly in curricula and textbooks in compulsory education; (iii) research on public initiatives related to the history of enslavement, and its articulation with race and racism, which can benefit teachers’ mediating practices of textbooks.

Slavery and Race in History Education in Post-2020 Europe

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发表日期：

2026年

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Marta Araújo

摘要

Textbooks, crucial nation-building devices conveying state-sanctioned historical interpretations, offer essential clues to how knowledge is produced, selected, and disseminated in specific time junctures. Considering the increasing institutional acknowledgement of the relevance of (post-)colonial history in European contexts following global protests against racism in recent years, this chapter debates the benefits of interdisciplinary research on textbooks concerning politically and socially relevant topics. It focuses on a long, transnational historical process about which official narratives have been undergoing considerable change in the last decades: racial enslavement, a notion encapsulating the imbricated relationship between enslavement and race. Considering the continuing relevance of textbooks in classrooms worldwide, this chapter advances a conceptual approach that situates them within their broader epistemological, political, socio-cultural, and economic contexts. Firstly, anchored in the debate between history and memory, this chapter engages with the increasingly accepted notion that the production of historical knowledge was informed by the notion of race, having sustained epistemological silences that did not obliterate collective memory. By appealing to the use of primary historical sources and encouraging students to collect social and family memories, history textbooks are understood as privileged objects that help reveal the interconnectedness of official history, collective memory, and state-sanctioned pedagogical discourse. Secondly, while inter/national academic work on history, memory, and heritage has increasingly addressed the colonial past and the racial present in Europe, their intersections in history education, particularly when jointly considering public and school history, have not been examined. Hence, grounded in an interdisciplinary approach that considers the relationship between public and school history, the potential of a comparative study of narrative formulas, knowledge validation, and memorialisation processes concerning the history of racial enslavement in these two fields of academic enquiry is pondered. In the second part of the chapter, a research agenda along three thematic lines is outlined: (i) an analysis of recent global and regional initiatives and guidelines on the role of history education in combating racial discrimination, including those concerning textbook revision; (ii) the study of the current frameworks and narratives on enslavement, race and racism deployed in school history, particularly in curricula and textbooks in compulsory education; (iii) research on public initiatives related to the history of enslavement, and its articulation with race and racism, which can benefit teachers’ mediating practices of textbooks.