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History teaching and society: past and present

Research theme: Sovereignty | States, empires, international relations

Une école dans la colonie du Dahomey (Bénin), vers 1900, Musée National de l'Education. CCO

TEACHING THE COLONIAL FACT

For this year - the fourteenth since Laurent Wirth founded this seminar at the Centre d'histoire de Sciences Po, devoted to the links between society and the teaching of history - we wish to keep the colonial question and its contemporary resonances of all kinds, in several geographical areas, on our agenda. On this issue, as on those that have been on the program in previous years, our ambition remains to make this seminar a meeting place for dialogue between scientific research and school teaching. The hybrid format we have chosen, with the invaluable support of the CHSP administrative team, enables us to meet our objective of reaching a large audience of secondary school teachers, inspectors and trainers, who can follow the sessions remotely on Wednesday afternoons.

Since the beginning of this century, the history of colonialism and decolonization, widely understood, has undergone significant renewal, both in the conception of research objects and in the ways in which they are approached. These changes have contributed to its constant public visibility. But it seems desirable and even urgent to raise awareness of the advances made by scientific research in a field where, even more than in others, clear-cut opinions are asserted and spread, owing more to ideological petitions of principle, relayed by powerful media, than to the contributions of science. As early as the 1960s, the books of Charles-André Julien, whose Histoire de l'Algérie contemporaine, I, La conquête et les débuts de la colonisation, 1827-1871 was published in 1964, and those of Raoul Girardet illustrated a historical will that may have arisen from opposing partisan affiliations in the face of the national trials of decolonization - and we should not forget that while Raoul Girardet was a professor at the Institut d'études politiques, Charles-André Julien also taught there. Subsequently, French teaching was able to draw on valuable historiographical milestones, including the work of Charles-Robert Ageron, a pupil of Charles-André Julien, Gilbert Meynier and Jacques Frémeaux, René Gallissot and Bernard Droz, Catherine Coquery-Vidrovitch and Anne Hugon, Daniel Hémery and Pierre Brocheux. At the same time, the colonial question remained an object of public concern, linked to contemporary social issues and the development of issues of remembrance, both in research and in the teaching of history.

In 2012 and 2013, the two exhibitions organized at the Musée de l'Armée, the first on Algeria from 1830 to 1962, the second on Indochina from 1856 to 1956, marked a turning point in a number of respects, not least in demonstrating the ability to bring together the views of the military institution and those of the world of culture, Jacques Ferrandez stood next to Théodore Chassériau on the cover of Casterman's catalog Algérie 1830-1962.

The French and European colonial space is a plural world, the focus of increasingly international, comparative and even global historical research, and has given rise to new questions by and for teachers themselves, anxious to shed more light on another past that does not pass away. The history of education, like the didactics of history, is now tackling the subject with the rigor demanded by a socially vital issue. The program of our sessions has no other aim than to respond to this expectation and requirement. The seminar will continue to be held once a month, on Wednesdays from 5:00 to 7:00 pm. We are in the process of completing our guest list.

Provisional calendar 2024-2025

      1. 25 septembre 2024, 17h-19h | Pascal Clerc (Laboratoire EMA [École-Mutations-Apprentissages], CY Cergy Paris Université), « L'Enseignement de la "Géographie coloniale" en France entre la fin du XIXe siècle et le milieu du XXe siècle ». 
      2. 16 octobre 2024, 17h-19h | Luigi Cajani (professeur émérite à la Sapienza de Rome), « La colonisation italienne dans l’école italienne, hier et aujourd’hui »
      3. 13 novembre 2024, 17h-19h | Marc-André Éthier, (Université de Montréal) « La place de la colonisation dans l'enseignement de l'histoire au Québec »
      4. 18 décembre 2024, 17h-19h | Vincent Marie, (Université de Montpellier), « Les colonies au prisme de la bande-dessinée »
      5. 15 janvier, 17h-19h | Chizuru Namba (Université Keio, Tôkyô),« Juger les criminels de guerre en situation coloniale : le cas de l'Indochine et des procès de Tokyo et de Saigon ».
      6. 26 février 2025, 17h-19h | Bernard Michon (Nantes Université), « L’esclavage : comparaison des politiques et entreprises mémorielles ».
      7. 26 mars 2025, 17h-19h | Céline Labrune-Labiane (chercheuse associée à l’ITEM, CNRS-ENS, et au laboratoire AIHP, Université des Antilles) et Étienne Smith (Maître de conférences en science politique à Sciences Po Bordeaux/LAM), « Les Hussards noirs de la colonie : Instituteurs africains et petites patries en AOF (1913-1960) ».
      8. 15 mai 2025, 17h-19h | Philippe Rygiel (ENS Lyon), « La place de l’immigration coloniale et postcoloniale dans la transmission de l’histoire nationale ».
      9. 11 juin 2025, 17h-19h | Denise Bentrovato (présidente de l’association internationale de didactique de l’histoire), « Analyse synchronique et comparative des représentations du rôle de l’Afrique et des Africains dans la Première Guerre mondiale dans les manuels scolaires, en juxtaposant des manuels d’histoire contemporains africains et européens ».
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