DISMANTLING THE COLONIAL EUROCENTRIC HISTORY CANON AT BELGIAN UNIVERSITIES: AN IN-DEPTH ANALYSIS OF THE GHENT UNIVERSITY HISTORY PROGRAMME

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DISMANTLING

THE

COLONIAL

EUROCENTRIC HISTORY CANON AT

BELGIAN UNIVERSITIES:

AN IN-DEPTH ANALYSIS OF THE GHENT UNIVERSITY HISTORY

PROGRAMME

Word count: 16.542

Yolan Devriendt

Student number: 01301849

Supervisor(s): Dr. Omar Jabary Salamanca, Prof. Dr. Felicitas Becker

Commissary: Dr. Julie Carlier.

A dissertation submitted to Ghent University in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of science in Conflict and Development

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Deze pagina is niet beschikbaar omdat ze persoonsgegevens bevat.

Universiteitsbibliotheek Gent, 2021.

This page is not available because it contains personal information.

Ghent University, Library, 2021.

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It is no use painting the foot of the tree white, the strength of the bark cries

out from beneath the paint. (Aimé Césaire, Discourse on Colonialism)

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ABSTRACT

Since Congolese independence in 1960, Belgium, its former colonizer, has always struggled with the memory of its colonial past. The way in which that colonial past is put into a narrative within the history education in secondary schools in Flanders has already been extensively researched. At the moment, a 'Congo Commission' is working in the federal parliament under Wouter De Vriendt, whose aim is, among other things, to anchor Belgium's colonial history more firmly in the curriculum of secondary schools in Flanders. However, this study argues that this might be unsuccessful if insufficient attention is paid to the way in which history teachers and historians-to-be are trained at the university.

Based on a case study of the history course at the University of Ghent, this research makes an analysis based on three pillars. On the basis of semi-structured interviews with lecturers and students, the following aspects of the university are questioned: First, what knowledge do students get to process during their studies and how? Secondly, what are the relationships between students and teachers and how do the latter operate pedagogically? And thirdly, what environment does the university create in which these first two pillars thrive? By means of recommendations for each of the three pillars, this thesis aims to initiate a history programme with a broader substantive vision and a sense of debate, a programme within a university that gives both its staff and its students the space to search for answers and to enter into debate with one another.

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DUTCH SUMMARY

Sinds de onafhankelijkheid van Congo in 1960 heeft België, zijn voormalige kolonisator, altijd geworsteld met de herinnering aan het koloniale verleden. De manier waarop dat koloniale verleden in een narratief gegoten wordt binnen het geschiedenisonderwijs in het secundair in Vlaanderen is reeds uitvoerig onderzocht. Op dit moment werkt in het federale parlement een 'Congocommissie' onder Wouter De Vriendt, die er onder andere op uit is om koloniale geschiedenis van België steviger in het curriculum van middelbare scholen in Vlaanderen te verankeren. Dit onderzoek stelt echter dat die doelstelling wellicht zonder gevolg zal blijven wanneer er onvoldoende aandacht wordt besteed aan de manier waarop geschiedenisleerkrachten en historici in spe worden opgeleid aan de Vlaamse universiteiten.

Op basis van een case-study van de geschiedenisopleiding aan de Universiteit van Gent maakt dit onderzoek een analyse gestoeld op drie pijlers. Aan de hand van semi-gestructureerde interviews met lesgevers en studenten worden de volgende aspecten van de universiteit bevraagd: Ten eerste, welke kennis krijgen studenten tijdens hun opleiding te verwerken en op welke manier? Ten tweede, hoe zijn de relaties tussen leerlingen en lesgevers en hoe gaan die laatsen pedagogisch te werk? En ten derde, welke omgeving creeërt de universiteit waarin deze eerste twee pijlers gedijen? Door middel van aanbevelingen voor elk van de drie pijlers tracht deze thesis een aanzet te geven naar een geschiedenisopleiding met een ruimere inhoudelijke visie en zin voor debat, een opleiding die zowel haar personeel als haar studenten de ruimte geeft om op zoek te gaan naar antwoorden en met elkaar in debat te gaan.

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PREFACE

The coming about of this thesis has been a hectic and often turbulent ride, but also the pinnacle of two of the most interesting years of my young life. Within my masters’ in Conflict and Development, I learned more than ever to be critical and to continue to question the world around me from an intersectional point of view. Here I had the opportunity to work on a topic that I consider important, a topic with a large social impact. This would not have been possible without the faith of both my promotors, Dr. Omar Jabary Salamanca and Prof. Dr. Felicitas Becker. I would like to thank both of them for the endless brainstorming sessions, listening to my (sometimes rather confusing) ideas and presenting valuable adjustments where needed.

In addition to my two promotors, I would like to thank some other people without whom I probably would not have successfully completed what lies before you now. My dearest Evelyne who supported me through thick and thin for the past year. Floris, for asking the difficult questions when they needed to be asked, and always being open for discussion and reflection (and the occasional bike ride when writing was slow). Arno, Marie-Laure, Bryan and Lauria from UMOJA for providing me with crucial insights, Natan and Tom for the countless brainstorming sessions and proof-reading and all the people who transcribed for or participated in this research. In the end, I want to thank my parents, without whom I had never had such a long period of time to pursue my interests and develop myself towards the person I am today. Without these people, I would not have completed this thesis the way I did.

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INTRODUCTION

The year is 2017 and the sixtieth anniversary of Congolese independence from Belgium is approaching. The Belgian Minister of Development Cooperation, Alexander De Croo, finishes a lecture at Columbia University in New York on contemporary relations between Belgium and its former colony, Congo.1_{A logical question from the audience followed: “if a Belgian minister depicts}

Congolese ‘development’ as being so catastrophic, should he not look at his own colonial responsibility? And if he argues that development is not a matter of aid or giving, should he not be thinking about reparations for the damage the Congolese suffered at the hands of the Belgians?” De Croo answered that giving revolves around looking back and trying to make up for the past, while development concerns the future and can only be shaped with said perspective.2_{This story}

sheds a light on an important contradiction: on the one hand shared history is being used as a basis for cooperation, on the other hand, Belgium often chooses to forget the darkest pages of its history (Goris, 2020). This raises the following questions: does Belgium (as a country) actually deal with its colonial past, and does it possess a sense of postcolonial awareness?3_{In addition, I also wonder}

whether Belgium offers its citizens a truthful reading of its colonial history through education and whether lecturers at all levels are being given the right incentives and tools to organize said education.

KU Leuven professor Idesbald Goddeeris explains that the Belgians lack a strong postcolonial awareness. He states that according to foreign critics, Belgium is the worst student in the colonial classroom (Goddeeris, 2011). In short, our view regarding Belgian colonial history and its consequences is too narrow and lacking an international perspective. In addition, it is striking to see how our neighboring countries are engaging much more with their respective colonial histories. This is for example noticeable in public space. Whereas in The Netherlands, monuments for the victims of colonialism have been erected on a regular basis since the start of the 21st_century

(Wekker, 2016), Belgium still fails to do so. People of Congolese descent are almost never depicted in monuments, and Leopold II is still the only king being commemorated with a statue in the shadows of the royal palace. Another key difference is the absence of a large postcolonial migration. Over half of the people of Congolese descent living in Belgium today only arrived during

1_{De Croo heckled what he called the ‘faltering development of the DRC’. (Democratic Republic of Congo)} 2_{He quickly added that he was born after ‘colonial times’.}

3_{Postcolonial awareness in this thesis mainly revolves around the framework students are offered from education in}

Flanders to grasp histories of empire and colonialism and their implications for the present. A solid framework is useful for bridging the gap between colonial history and the way in which racism today finds its roots in said history.

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10 the last decade of the previous century. This results in a Congolese countervoice that is more silent than that of postcolonial migrants in other countries, such as Great Britain and The Netherlands. (Goddeeris, 2011).

According to some experts (Goddeeris, 2011; Van Nieuwenhuyse, 2017; Mahieu, 2018), the reason for this lack of attention to colonial history can partly be found in Belgian secondary education. The demand for a broader view of colonial history arises throughout the country, but seems difficult to reconcile with the curricula and books with which Flemish-Dutch secondary education works (Mahieu, 2018). In this thesis, the terms ‘postcolonial vision’ and ‘postcolonial awareness’ relate to the way in which colonial and imperialist discourses in Belgian history writing and public opinion are challenged. It functions as a stepping stone for investigating to what extent history education and its educators possess and disseminate conceptual frameworks that can undermine prevailing -isms. The -ism I focus on is eurocentrism (Gregory et. al., 2009). Historian and pedagogue Karel Van Nieuwenhuyse examines this debate in greater depth. According to him, anyone who graduated from secondary school between 1960 and 1990 may have learned little or nothing at all about Belgian Congo. "After Congolese independence, a sort of colonial amnesia has descended upon our education system," says Van Nieuwenhuyse. “That was an enormous contrast with the past, because between 1945 and 1960, there was a lot of attention for colonial history.” When analyzing learning material (textbooks in particular), Van Nieuwenhuyse notes that Congo simply fell under national history. “It was not considered an example of colonialism but a tenth province." The tide would turn again at the end of the twentieth century. This happened when the ever-growing controversy regarding abuses in the Belgian colony, driven by historians such as Adam Hochschild (1998), seeped through history education in Flanders. Initially, the critical attention was limited to the distant colonial history. From the twenty-first century onward, the chaotic (formal) decolonization was increasingly discussed. Again, a sensational book, Ludo De Witte’s The Assassination of Lumumba (2002), was the catalyst.

During that period, the 'attainment targets' entered Flemish secondary education. They can be best described as objectives approved by the Flemish Parliament in 1997 that pupils must achieve by the time they leave primary school.4_{Concepts such as 'Belgian Congo' or 'decolonization' do not}

occur in the final term history for the last two years of secondary education.5_{The final term history}

contains general principles, but no learning content. It is up to the various networks to complete

4_{And per grade of secondary education.}

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11 these via curricula and the accompanying textbooks. On this level, too, only the main guidelines are drawn. In the Catholic school network in particular,6_{history teachers are entrusted with a lot of}

freedom. Individual teachers may give entirely different lectures (Devriendt, 2018). With this research I want to fill a gap in the research by looking at how and how much colonial, imperia and non-eurocentric history are discussed at a Flemish University.

Students still hear nothing about the fact that they resisted colonial imperialism, or that Congo, like other African countries, had a pre-colonial civilization. Nor are they being taught about the impact of colonialism on Congo after 1960. In this way, pupils are still imbued with a Eurocentric superiority thinking. However, Van Nieuwenhuyse has shown us that not mentioning Belgian colonial history is no longer possible. 'Congo Free State and the murder of Patrice Lumumba are part of the fixed repertoire, yet there is still much to be gained. We still lack a sense of postcolonial perspective. The history of Congo is viewed through white, Eurocentric spectacles, through which the Congolese are reduced to passive victims, denying them any agency whatsoever. Now that our classes are becoming more diverse with students whose migration backgrounds are to be found within former colonies, this Eurocentric gaze is posing a larger issue by the day (Raspoet, 2018). The reason why is simple: you cannot claim as a society to work towards inclusion, while simultaneously adhering to (and largely limiting the range of the different existing historical perspectives to) a historical narrative that denies the people of any diaspora in Belgium any form of agency.

Nevertheless, much has changed the last decade. While in 2010 the Congolese people barely got a chance to speak at the anniversary of their independence, 2020 seems different. People from the African diaspora are increasingly claiming their place in the social debate within Flanders. They share their opinion about the colonial past. They tell about heritages such as inequality. They actively strive to decolonize education, public space and life in general. However, it seems like debate is often limited to the impact of Congo Free State (1885-1908) and Belgian Congo (1908-1960). People do not even realize the role Belgium still plays in her former colony. For economic and geopolitical reasons, the Belgian government continues to focus on the former colony. Post-colonial, and sometimes even neo-Post-colonial, policies have certainly had a negative impact on the political, economic and social emancipation of Congo and its people in certain periods. A story that is often not being told within secondary education in Flanders (Nsayi, 2018). Bringing this more to the foreground allow people to better contextualize racism and its historical roots, for example.

6_{Belgium has a number of educational networks that receive funding, the largest of which are state-sponsored and}

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RESEARCH OBJECTIVE AND QUESTION

The main goal of this thesis is to find an answer to the question of why Belgium is lacking a sense of postcolonial awareness in dealing with its colonial past. More specifically, I plan on tackling this question through an investigation of one of the places where knowledge concerning history comes about and where future historians and history teachers are trained: the history programme of Ghent University. I am well aware of the fact that the issue at hand is hugely complex and that there is no ready-made answer to the justified accusations when it comes to a general Belgian postcolonial awareness (or a lack of it). The motivation for writing this thesis came from one of the lecturers during my M.A. programme in history. He made me reflect on the programme I was in by stating that it was perfectly possible to graduate without being thoroughly taught about Belgian colonial history. In addition, I graduated as a historian with a master’s thesis on Belgian colonial history within Flemish secondary education (Devriendt, 2018). These two affairs made me understand some of the important facts and mechanisms within Flemish history education, both at secondary school and at university level. Both university and secondary school students very often find themselves at the mercy of their teachers. For secondary school students, this is due to the fact that the aforementioned end terms are fairly open for interpretation, which results in a lot of liberty for teachers to fill in their lessons the way they want. This results in a whole array of different history lessons, from very brief to very extensive.7

At university I experienced the same things, especially during my bachelor’s degree. A large part of the courses was strongly focused on Western Europe. At the time I thought it was mainly due to the fact that the course had to match the expertise of the lecturer that taught it, and I did not care to question them much (Universiteit Gent, 2020).8_{The first questions I want to pose are derived}

from Gloria Wekkers’s White Innocence (2016): first, is the distance between what Wekker describes as the ‘history of the motherland’ and the ‘history of the colony’ also visible in Belgian universities, and to what extent and purpose? I wonder if Ghent University puts European history above counter-hegemonic histories in its curriculum. Second, how do students and university staff

7_{The spectrum ranges from teachers who teach about western European history from a Eurocentric perspective, to}

teachers who teach with a great deal of attention for both sides of the interaction

8_{During the first two years of the programme, only two of the mandated courses per year move away from European}

history. In order of appearance: History of the Ancient Near East, World History, Global Processes Historical perspective and Tendencies in Historiography. There are more opportunities in practical courses such as Historical Practice but it depends very much on which lecturers teach the courses that year and what their area of expertise is.

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13 reflect on this and how do they envision the creation of an alternative educational environment?9

And third, what alternatives are possible to writing and/or rewriting courses and rethinking knowledge and knowledge production (Wekker, 2016)? Ultimately, these questions lead to the main part of my research in which I wonder if a lack of postcolonial awareness is due to the way we educate the historians and history teachers of tomorrow.

The value of the research at hand is to be situated within broader debates centering around Flemish history education and around the way Belgians do or do not deal with their colonial past. A first important voice within this debate in history education is Antoon De Baets, who mainly researched the depiction and imagination of cultures outside Western-Europe in history textbooks (De Baets, 1994). I already quoted Karel Van Nieuwenhuyse, who conducts research within the context of history education in Flemish secondary schools. His research mainly revolves around textbooks, history teachers and the educational context. Next to Karel Van Nieuwenhuyse, there is also Idesbald Goddeeris. He researches Belgian colonial history and the postcolonial.10_{Ultimately, I}

wish for this dissertation to instigate a dialogue between history students and some of their lecturers, a dialogue which can only be useful in the context of evaluating programme in both their favor. This intention will be operationalized through semi-structured interviews with both groups, culminating in an analysis and communicating the results to the history department in order to help realize a turn for the better. The interviews are prepared by compiling a general structure, which chronologically contains a number of open questions and topics important for the analysis. However, the structure itself is open enough to leave room for both interpretation and elaboration.

RESEARCH DESIGN

Before finally arriving at what lies before you today, this research has taken many different forms and angles of approach. Originally, I planned on conducting comparative research between different Flemish universities. This research was going to be centered around their policies of diversity, self-reflection on the production of knowledge at their respective institutions, and the way they deal with questions of decolonizing the schools' educational and academic environments. At

9_{This includes two things: providing learning material that starts from a less eurocentric perspective, and a reflection on}

the path of different groups within society towards our higher education.

10_{The extent to which Belgium still influences Congo, and also the extent to which relations between Congo and}

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14 the level of methodology, I planned a combination of semi-structured interviews and focus groups. During the semi-structured interviews, lecturers and staff of the different universities were questioned on their beliefs regarding the broader policy of the university and how they applied this during their daily routines and lectures. The focus groups were reserved for students, whom I planned to bring together in a more informal group setting to initiate a dialogue on the subjects of decolonization, diversity and to talk about their courses and lecturers.

Unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic threw a major spanner in the works, and this entire research needed to be reconceptualized. What lies before you is a case study of Ghent University’s history programme and of the way it produces and disseminates knowledge while educating tomorrow's history teachers and a new generation of historians. The motivation for going with a case study method can be best described by using the following definition: “Case studies are in-depth investigations of a single person, group, event or community in order to grasp a larger array of similar units” (McLeod, 2019). I chose this type of research design because the way in which it is organically built up was the best fit for the research at hand. It allowed me to research my different hypotheses into detail. In addition, the design of a case study allows for a great deal of flexibility, making it possible for me to refine and adapt my theories in the course of my research (Teegavarapu, S., Mocko, G.M., Summers, J.M., 2008).

In addition, Ghent University has the second largest bachelors’ program in history of all the Flemish universities.11_{The larger the number of future historians and history teachers, the greater the}

chance that I would find enough respondents for conducting my research. In addition, the sample is a lot more representative, because the program produces more historians and history teachers12

than to the Universities of Hasselt, Antwerp and Brussels. The only university whose history program is larger than the one in Ghent, is the Catholic University of Leuven.13_{However, I}

deliberately chose to conduct my research at Ghent university for aforementioned reasons: the fact that I am an alumnus of the program made it easier to arrange certain interviews. In addition, I was able to understand several of the issues that were discussed in the interviews a lot better, having finished the program myself (Vlaamse Overheid, 2018).

11_{With a total of 413 students in the entire bachelors, 103 in the first year.}

12_{Who generally teach students from the ages of fifteen to eighteen years old. Teachers who teach students from ages}

eleven until attain professional bachelors’ at graduate schools.

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My research is to a large extent influenced by my interests in democratic education, critical pedagogy, and postcolonial/subaltern studies combatting Eurocentrism. The latter was the focus of the Masters' thesis I wrote as a historian, which revolved around Belgian colonial history in Flemish Secondary education (Devriendt, 2018). While conducting said research two years ago, I gained an interest in education and in the different ways teachers influence their students through choices of content, teaching style, and learning materials. This research is centered around the history program at Ghent University as a case study to investigate how knowledge is created and through which forms it is being disseminated to students. Connected to this question, I ask both students and their lecturers for their opinion about the degree to which the curriculum is Eurocentric, how they reflect on this and whether there is a way to come up with a more inclusive narrative. Because the questions at hand do not allow themselves to be caught within numbers and statistics, a more qualitative approach was preferable. Within this thesis, I opt for semi-structured interviews. This allows for gathering general data on the history departments' research and educational practices, in combination with personal motivations from both students and lecturers for doing things the way they do. To avoid any inhibition while interviewing students, I guarantee full anonymity. During every interview, I clarified I was looking for the participants’ opinion concerning some aspects of the history programme and that there were no right or wrong answers.

One of the first things you are taught as a social scientist is to be aware of your positionality within the research you are conducting. You have to be critical when examining the data you collect and be aware of the structures in play when coming up with new information. My positionality as somewhat of an insider within this thesis comes with both advantages and disadvantages. In my conduct towards students, my positionality offered only advantages: having graduated the programme in 2018, the curriculum is still fresh in my memory, and I have probably taken a lot of the same optional courses as my participants. Besides, students feel more at ease talking to a peer, someone that took the same courses they did, and shared both their insights and frustrations. Through offering them dialogue with their lecturers, I attempt to bridge the lack of dialogue between both groups. By ensuring students anonymity and a platform to voice their concerns, I avoid making them feel ill at ease.

When it comes to the lecturers, I faced both advantages and disadvantages. On the one hand, I am a familiar face to most of them. I took a lot of their classes and some of the lecturers I interview guided me through previous research. Through this thesis, I try to offer them a channel for dialogue,

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which they might otherwise have found difficult, and suggest ways to reflect on their research and educational practice. Here, the disadvantage was that I sometimes felt intimidated by some lecturers while interviewing them. This feeling turned out to be unfounded, as all lecturers were very cooperative. After all, I hope they envision what I do: the building of education with room for debate and history from different perspectives combined. An education where students are appreciated for their input from the moment they enter until they graduate. To me, this was facilitated by the good cooperation with both groups of participants. That is why I aim for my interviews to be as constructive as possible, by allowing all participants to elaborate on what they think is important and speak their mind on the questions at hand.

DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS

This thesis mainly relies on qualitative data, gathered by conducting semi-structured interviews. The choice for this method of research seemed logical, since the research itself revolves around conceptions and ideas of producing and disseminating knowledge at the history department in Ghent. As is often the modus operandi when conducting semi-structured interviews, I compiled a list of topics that can be divided into three parts for both groups of participants. For the students, the topics were high school education, university education and beliefs about education in general. For the lecturers on the other hand, categories included their education, the subjects they teach and the way they organize their activities in research and education. In this way, I was able to find a large overlap between students and their lecturers and fill a hiatus within research on Flemish history education.14_{The order in which the questions were discussed varied depending on the}

interview and the participant. For example, some participants add topics on my list before I was able to do so. All participants gave their oral consent for both the interview and the recording, but all students were promised full anonymity to be as little inhibited as possible when talking about both their subjects and their lecturers (Voet, De Wever, 2016).

The advantage of this kind of research is twofold: on the one hand, the overlap between interviews allows for the comparison of general information. On the other hand, the semi-open structure allows for spontaneous conversation in which it is possible to elaborate on topics that the participants deemed relevant within the lines of this research. This sometimes gave me inspiration for

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17 subsequent interviews, I could ask questions I had previously overlooked. I have always tried to create an informal atmosphere, which was not easy given the circumstances and not being able to talk to people face to face. During the interviews, I often noticed how people are often more inhibited when talking through Skype or other conference programs. I think this was due to the fact that people are often more inhibited to speak their mind through online interviews than in real life. In addition, there is the context in which you are asked to reflect on your own education or your own profession.

Finding participants for my student group did not prove to be difficult which for me indicates that this is an important topic, which my participants consider to be important as well. Since a large part of them is very digitally present, I started off with a general message in each of the history programs Facebook groups.1516_{Quickly, responses followed which resulted in a first couple of interviews.}

Several participants admitted that the interview was more jovial than they expected, which resulted in a snowball sample. As for the lecturers, I sent all of them an e-mail in which I explained my research and asked for their cooperation. With the latter, I planned all of my interviews within two weeks. Within the second group also, word travelled fast. Some of the lecturers I interviewed indicated that they had been encouraged to participate in the interviews by their colleagues. To summarize, as the interviews progressed, the snowball grew.

In the end, the total of all primary sources collected during this interview amounts to a total of 27 interviews that were conducted between the 18 March and 17 April 2020. A total of 16 students and 11 lecturers participated in one-on-one semi-structured interviews (either through Microsoft Skype or Microsoft Teams). The educational level of the students who were interviewed ranged from first bachelor to masters, while the lecturers backgrounds spanned all years, time periods and departments.

Before commencing the interviews this thesis is based on, I started by conducting a critical literature analysis with the aim of gaining a better understanding of my field of research and being able to contextualize the data I encountered. I transcribed the interviews as literally as possible, but already made an initial selection of data during processing. They were conducted in Dutch, the participants’

15_{The recordings all happened through the Skype and Teams clients, and are not available for consultation.} 16_{There are seperate groups per year of the Bachelor’s, and one for the Masters’ students. They are being managed}

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18 native language. For processing in this thesis, the featured quotes are translated into English as literally as possible. First, I read through the transcripts I produced in order to gain preliminary insights in function of further analysis of the interviews. At a second stage, the interviews were entered in Nvivo and coded further, which helped me to further reduce and structure the data I had built up during the interviews. The different codes I used were initially based on my interview guidelines but changed as the processing of data came along (Charmaz, 2006). At the end of this process, all data that were relevant to my questions was structured according to the framework of my thesis. In this case, the most appropriate method for analyzing and coding my interviews is the grounded theory method. Atkinson, Coffey and Delamont (2003) describe the grounded theory method as a systematic yet flexible set of guidelines for collecting and analyzing qualitative data to construct theories that are ‘grounded’ in the data themselves. They offer a set of principles and heuristic devices rather than fixed rules. This method allows me to generate the concepts that drive this research from a basis of the collected data and its analysis. That way, I can learn and adapt to the research setting I am in in order to gain insight into the ideas, lives and aspirations of my participants. In general, qualitative methods of analysis allow researchers to follow up on interesting data. The Grounded Theory Method has the added advantage that guidelines about how we proceed are already present (Charmaz, 2006, 2).

As I have already stated, it is imperative in this study that the testimonials of both groups of participants are analyzed in relation to each other. This fits the holistic approach used to tackle a case study and also ensures that concerns within either group of participants can be voiced. The analysis within this research aims to initiate a dialogue between lecturers and their students about both the content and the form of the lessons they receive.17_{Thus, recommendations which benefit}

both groups can be formulated in order to take first strides towards a more inclusive and broader history program. This is to give future history teachers and historians the tools to transcend the Eurocentric canon and can also transfer that knowledge through an effective pedagogy.

CONCERNS

One of the points of self-critique, which may be the most pertinent in this study, concerns the population of my research, which mainly consists of both white middle-class students and

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19 teachers.18_{In addition, almost all of my participants were Flemish. Flanders is also the territory to}

which my research is limited. This is one of the downsides of research in this field: it is almost never happening across the language border. While I tried to find respondents outside this already overrepresented group, this proved to be a difficult task: some of my interviewees19_{indicated that}

they did not know anyone not fitting the profile of a white middle-class student. Although they too are being educated as critical historians, I cannot let them speak for the underrepresented groups within the programme, these groups should also speak for themselves. Interviewing Sünbül Karakaya20_{provided me with new insights on initiatives within the universities' diversity policy and}

on the reasons why students of different minority backgrounds do not find the way to our college auditoriums or are often overlooked when they are present.

The two main initiatives pertaining to the promotion of diversity active at Ghent University are the 'role model program' and 'UGent In Sight'. Within the first, students throughout the whole University get the opportunity to engage in conversations with pupils from secondary schools throughout the whole of East-Flanders to tell them about all aspects of life as a student in Ghent. Within the programme they especially reach out to schools with a higher percentage of EEO.21_{EEO includes,}

for example, children with a migration background or children in poverty. The latter, ‘UGent In Sight’, guides secondary school students (footnote: in their last year) with migration backgrounds in the process of making a decent study choice and preparing for higher education altogether. Both projects serve as instruments to stimulate a student body more representative of broader society within higher education.

Despite the university’s attempts at reaching out, however, children’s parents and their social environments play an important role in adolescents’ choice of study. Karakaya notes that students who enter the programs her cell offers steer away from an education within the humanities because of stigma: they are often characterized as programs that provide neither status, nor a solid paycheck. Because of this stigma, students with a migration background tend to enroll in law, trade engineering or architecture. A revolving door effect occurs when such students enter higher education. The few students from underrepresented groups usually have a harder time to be

18_{Which I mainly found via calls on Facebook and Twitter, I contacted the teachers via email.} 19_{Out of both the teacher and the student groups.}

20_{Karakaya is an executive officer within Diversity and Gender policy at Ghent University.} 21_{Equal Education Opportunities}

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20 successful at Ghent University and drop out faster. Students often do not feel represented in the occupation of the auditorium22_{or in the content of the lessons.}23

The recommendations made by the committee at Amsterdam University, a University that struggles with the same problems as Ghent University, can also be useful here. They can be used to increase the diversity in our aulas and to increase the presence of people with minority backgrounds. Just like in Amsterdam, it is also important in Ghent to attract, retain and support more diverse people. In this way, we can also work on a broader basis of knowledge, and rethink and broaden the range of courses that are offered. Here, I formulate three of their recommendations, which can in turn be useful for Ghent University (Wekker et. al., 2016, 82):

1. Increase student recruitment at schools in Flanders that have large populations of pupils with minority backgrounds.

2. More outreach towards pupils with parents that have lower educational attainments, special support and attention in the transition to university for students with non-academic backgrounds.

3. More action towards closing the gap in study success between students who are not perceived as migrants and persons with a migration background. This coincides with considering the creation of smaller-scale teaching environments earlier in all programs offered.

Wekker et al. (2016) plead for more guidance from the start and a smaller distance between teachers and students, I will return to this in detail, later in this thesis. Wolff (2013, 168) concludes the following: “the gap in belonging and study success between students with ‘non-Western’ backgrounds and ethnic Dutch backgrounds are smaller in such environments. Such environments have also been shown to be beneficial to students with mental challenges, for example, for those on the autism spectrum.

A final point of self-criticism is that in spite of the opinions of the people I interviewed, other people within the programme might have other opinions.24_{One of the lecturers that was interviewed}

describes it as follows: “For every student who wants a lesson with more interaction, there is

22_{Because of the predominantly white middle-class audience.}

23_{For the history programme, these are largely focused on Western Europe and its interaction with the world} 24_{I tried to put different opinions I did encounter into dialogue with others to create the fairest possible}

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21 another one who just wants to quietly doze off during a lecture.” The interviews taught me that the program is currently catering more to the needs of the latter group. With the recommendations I formulate here, I try to level the balance between both groups. Through working towards interacting within a more casual atmosphere, people who want more interaction can get what they want and people who prefer to sit in silence can still do so.

THE POWER OF TERMINOLOGY

Some concepts are very prominent in this study. Therefore, it seems appropriate to briefly explain them in this section, thereby indicating which delineations they are given within the limits of this study. Besides delineating them, I also discuss their broader implications for this research and for the way in which history is formed and handed down within different institutions of knowledge.25_I

do this to prevent the reader from getting lost in an amalgamation of umbrella terms that blur the core of the matter and turn important terms into metaphors of themselves. This section successively deals with the concepts of Eurocentrism, Postcoloniality, Decolonization and Globalization. I argue why I opt to keep the first two concepts and why I drop the last ones.

EUROCENTRISM

Eurocentrism is generally defined as a cultural phenomenon that views the histories and cultures of non-Western societies from a European or Western perspective (Pohkrel, 2011, 321). It is also one of the most crucial terms within this research and a guideline for all my interviews. As mentioned in the introduction, Belgium is accused of having a lack of postcolonial awareness. Karel Van Nieuwenhuyse (2017) and others (Goddeeris, 2011; Mahieu, 2018: Raspoet, 2018) argue that part of this issue is rooted partly within both secondary and higher education, both of which still attribute too much weight to Europe. This is why in this section I clarify what is meant with Eurocentrism and shed a light on its implications for the creation and dissemination of history.26

Europe, more specifically Western Europe or “the West,” functions as a universal signifier in that it assumes the superiority of European cultural values over those of non-European societies. Although Eurocentrism is anti-universalist in nature, it presents itself as a universalist phenomenon

25_{As we discuss the University of Ghent and its history programme.} 26_{Both within the University of Ghent and within Flemish history education.}

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22 and advocates for the imitation of a Western model based on “Western values” – individuality, human rights, equality, democracy, free market capitalism, secularism, and social justice – as a cure to all kinds of problems, no matter how different various societies are socially, culturally, and historically. Eurocentrism, however, is not a social theory providing an interpretation of or a solution to pressing social issues, nor can it be simply used interchangeably with popular big words such as nationalism, ethnocentrism, xenophobia, chauvinism (Amin, 2009; Pohkrel, 2011, 321). It is no coincidence that Eurocentrism has its historical roots in Europe. It was needed to legitimate the global system which entailed the forced submission of non-Europeans in order to serve the interests of the Antlantic imperialist states. The narrative of a developed, European, core attributed to Western-Europeans and Americans the vocation of imposing world wide capitalism. The narrative concealed the destructive consequences of European development, making it seem as a much needed civilization project (Hickel, 2018; Schmidt and Hersch, 2019).

For this research, a Eurocentric view mainly means that lectures are predominately centered around Western Europe. There is an implicit and explicit idea that Western Europe puts everyone else in ‘the waiting room of modernity’ (Chakrabarty, 2008). Research conducted by Karel Van Nieuwenhuyse (2018) states that both secondary school and university curricula are still largely Eurocentric. They tend to obscure a nuanced understanding of the past. Moreover, they can give the false impression that Western Europe has been at the core of human civilization for ages and can therefore serve as a benchmark for measuring others. In addition, Eurocentrism hinders the competence of students to think historically. After all, the consideration of multiple perspectives, and the analysis of different historical sources from different actors, is largely absent in a Eurocentric approach, as is a reflection on the agency of states, peoples, groups and individuals of different origins. They largely ignore (any agency of) the indigenous peoples in their account of 19th century modern imperialism. The absence of past non-Western European voices ties in closely with a second important implication, for students' identity formation. The Eurocentric suggestion that Western Europe has always been at the core of human civilization may give rise to a sense of superiority. Such thinking then easily leads to an ingroup/outgroup exclusive process of identity building. Previous research has already shown that such mechanisms are in effect. Young people belonging to a minority group, are at risk of not feeling at home in a history education that considers any non-Western European culture as "behind". In this way they threaten to alienate from today's society (Van Nieuwenhuyse, 2017, 22).

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23 However, the problem goes way beyond creating a false sense of superiority. Unilaterally telling a history that is strongly focused on Europe results in two additional effects: Firstly, young historians in training are not provided with the tools they need to grasp the world as it operates today. Secondly, such a story lacks the historical perspective that explains what global inequality is grafted onto. Postcolonial awareness is not only about taking Europe’s imperial and colonial history more into account, it also revolves around the teaching of a frame of reference to understand what implications said history has today. Several students testify that the first two years of the programme do not offer sufficient opportunities to actually gain an understanding of the world around them and the basic principles the economy revolves around, keeping global inequality in place. A first steppingstone can be the work of Jason Hickel (2018) who writes a historical account in which he traces the roots of global inequality in the colonial systems that were held in place until the middle of the last century. In doing so, he makes the link between past and present, a link that students say is often missing in their first two years. Not telling a more complete history means that historians and history teachers in training remain blind to the real history of global inequality. This provides that the Eurocentric load contained in many first-year courses is not only a symbolic problem, but also a systemic one which conserves a destructive economic and geopolitical reality. In summary, an increased postcolonial awareness is not only about paying more attention to non-European history, but also about educating future historians and history teachers so they can provide their future students with a more honest perspective from which they can understand the world in its entirety.

POSTCOLONIAL

As I mentioned in the introduction, Belgium is accused by various academics in the field of having a lack of postcolonial awareness. Like many other terms and concepts in this study, ‘postcolonial‘ also has a whole array of different meanings. The term is often used to indicate the time period in the mid-twentieth century in which colonizers were forced to leave their former colonies, and a large amount of countries formally regained their freedom in various struggles for independence. The Dictionary of Human Geography (2009, 561) describes this definition as both inadequate and problematic because:

The historical reality in the second half of the twentieth century in the once-colonized world was shaped by ‘a modernity that is scored by the claws of colonialism, left full of contradictions, of half-finished processes, of confusions, of HYBRIDITY, and liminalities’.

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24

The meaning of ‘postcolonial’ I use here is different and broader, and also derived from the Dictionary of Human Geography (2009, 561), as I find it more relevant for the research at hand. The important thing here is described by Mishra and Hodge (1991, 399) who state that ‘postcolonialism’ should be understood in a plural sense because there are crucial differences in the relationship between colonizers and colonized. Instead of using the term to indicate a specific historical moment, a political status or a concrete object, we should use it to signify an ‘attitude of critical engagement with the aftermath of colonialism and its accompanying constructions of knowledge’ (Radcliffe, 1997). In this thesis, ‘postcolonial awareness’ relates to the way in which colonial and imperialist discourses in Belgian history writing and public opinion are challenged. Through the concept of ‘postcolonial’ I try to investigate to what extent history education and its educators possess and disseminate conceptual frameworks that can undermine the prevailing -isms (Gregory et. al., 2009, 561). Within this thesis, the focus lies mainly on Eurocentrism. This is because, as Idesbald Goddeeris (2011) and Karel Van Nieuwenhuyse (2017) write, the focus within education in Flanders is still too much on Europe. Both judge Belgium as one of the worst students in the colonial classroom. As mentioned above this has two main drawbacks: a distorted world view and, possibly, misplaced sense of superiority towards people and cultures that lie outside Europe.

DECOLONIZING

When talking terminology, it seems only logical that this research revolves around decolonizing the university and its curriculum. An initial definition was given to me during an exploratory interview with someone of the Education Committee (OC).27_{We have come to a point that decolonization}

has become such a catch-all term that I sometimes wonder whether people still know what it means when they use the term at and if they’re not simply using it to signal their own moral superiority (Clark, Lehman, 2018). As was alluded in the paragraphs before, words are a battlefield of meaning, where different groups struggle to appropriate a certain meaning for a certain word. If we really envision inclusive education, then we are not talking about decolonizing but rather about disseminating geographically located knowledge.28_{I will return to this later in this section.}

27_{See quote below.}

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Decolonization means that there is a diversity background that goes back to what I believe to be an imagined shared past with one at the top and the other at the bottom. This applies equally to migrants and refugees, to women, but also to many other categories of people. When you talk about decolonization, you are just talking about the specific challenge of achieving emancipation for that group that is suffering under that disadvantage. That is simply a social duty, with all the difficulties that come with it.

I believe that the above definition is too broad and misses its purpose. Second, there was also the insightful article by Tuck and Yang (2012). Their goal is to remind us what is unsettling about actual decolonization: it refers to the reappropriation of indigenous land and life and is not a metaphor for things we want to do to improve both our societies and schools. For them, it offers a different perspective to human and civil rights-based approaches to justice which are more unsettling than they are complementary. Although they write about occupied indigenous land, their argument remains relevant for Belgium: when we attempt to unsettle Eurocentrism within our universities, we have to try to understand our own implications within the reproduction of epistemic hierarchies (Schwoerer, 2019, 57). A final definition of the term ‘decolonizing’, closest to the aim of this research, is provided by the Cambridge Dictionary which reads as follows: “to decolonize means to change something such as a curriculum (=a list of books, ideas etc. to be studied) in a way that considers the cultural beliefs behind it, for example the belief that European writers, artists or ideas are better and more important than ones from countries that were colonized (=controlled) by Europe, and that gives more importance to these non-european writers, artists, etc…” ("DECOLONIZE: meaning in the Cambridge English Dictionary", 2020).Ultimately combining the data at hand, I was struggling with the question whether the term was mine to appropriate and if it covered what the research was actually about. After a conversation with the board members of UMOJA29_{I finally decided to fully abandon the term. We agreed that in addition to the many}

meanings of the word decolonize, there was not one way to decolonize higher education, but that the approach varied from programme to programme.

I found a more suitable approach within ‘Let’s Do Diversity’, a report on diversity by a commission at the University of Amsterdam (Wekker et. al., 2016). The report sheds a light on curricula in general which often only present dominant perspectives while ignoring many alternatives and critical voices. They find that a lot of teachers do not realize or do not teach that knowledge is

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26 shaped by the context in which it is produced. After all, knowledge is created by specific persons (historically these are often white males). It is enabled by specific funds (industries, governments, funding agencies); emerges from specific political and commercial agendas (colonialism, slavery, religion, war, ‘third world development,’ democracy, integration, commercialization of medicines and healthcare, capitalism, neoliberalism), and is inspired by specific worldviews and norms (currently in the Netherlands: secularism and emancipation of women and LGBTQIAs). People who evaluate and use this knowledge are also embedded in such contexts, as universities themselves. In other words, knowledge is ‘positioned.’

As Haraway (1988, 585) and Harding (2015, 35) have shown, a more truthful knowledge is a located knowledge.30_{They argue that recognizing the geohistorical locations of knowledge and its}

production are crucial to move towards more inclusive practices of teaching, learning and conducting research with a larger focus on inclusivity and diversity. They make a plea for steering away from largely monocultural and ‘closed’ forms of expertise to pluri-cultural and ‘open’ forms of expertise. This would also enable an active reflection on the responsibility of any university vis-a-vis the global politics of knowledge. This reflection can be conducted by lecturers and their students but also by external actors. The commission makes a plea for the importance of epistemological diversity, making space for more context-conscious ways of doing science that acknowledge the knower’s positionality. Just like the UvA, I intend to use this research to advocate the broadening of perspectives on knowledge production beyond curricula and canons centered on Europe. According to Van Nieuwenhuyse (2017), they are still depicted as the most valid ways of knowing. Too Eurocentric a discourse still dominates history education in Flanders. The recognition of the geohistorical positionality of the European University and its knowledge practices is a necessary condition to move toward an inclusive academic community that facilitates a broader world view, not blind to the global injustices the European history of empire brought along. This path will allow us to develop a more open and truthful expertise in which diversity and inclusion can thrive (Wekker, G et. al., 2016, 26). Just like Harding (2015, 35), I also do not want to be the advocate for the destruction of the ideal of objective science. Instead, I am arguing for a ‘strong objectivity’ of said science. By that I mean that on the one hand we must strive for a truthful narrative of history and

30_{How apt is it, then, that this thesis on located knowledge and decolonization was in part written near the park where}

Leopold II’s statue used to stand before it was removed in June 30, 2020 – precisely sixty years after Congolese independence?

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27 on the other we must accept that there is no one correct version of history. Summarizing, I quote one last time from the report of the University of Amsterdam (2016, 26):

This entails the acknowledgement that much of our scientific knowledge is partly influenced by the backgrounds, lenses and interests of the researchers and the funding institutions, and that this developed knowledge is only part of what there is to know. By making science more diverse, this knowledge can be broadened.

The road to leaving a hegemonic Eurocentric discourse in both our society and our history education is complicated. As I mentioned before, an increasing postcolonial awareness is not just about adding indigenous authors to university curricula. It goes beyond the use of the word ‘decolonization’ as a hollow label of which no one really knows the exact meaning. I am moving away from the term, because the focus should lie on the location of knowledge, both in time and place. This research revolves around to what extent both lecturers and students acknowledge31

that much of our scientific knowledge is partly influenced by the backgrounds, lenses and interests of the researches and the institutions who fund them and that this ‘developed knowledge’ is only part of what historians know and teach. More diverse science and researchers lead to a broader knowledge base (Wekker, G et. al., 2016, 26). This base can be drawn from when putting together a more holistic curriculum that serves a double purpose: reaching people outside of Europe and their diaspora’s in Belgium, and both questioning and transcending the more dominant Eurocentric narrative.

GLOBALIZATION

“Globalization, according to sociologists, is an ongoing process that involves interconnected changes in the economic, cultural, social, and political spheres of society. As a process, it involves the ever-increasing integration of these aspects between nations, regions, communities, and even seemingly isolated places. In terms of the economy, globalization refers to the expansion of capitalism to include all places around the world into one globally integrated economic system. Culturally, it refers to the global spread and integration of ideas, values, norms, behaviors, and ways of life. Politically, it refers to the development of forms of governance that operate at the global scale and whose policies and rules

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cooperative nations are expected to abide by. These three core aspects of globalization are fueled by technological development, the global integration of communication technologies, and the global distribution of media (Cole, 2020).”

There are two problems with the concept of globalization, first the “global,” and second the “-ization.” The implication of the first is that a single system of connection, notably through capital and commodities markets, information flows, and imagined landscapes, has penetrated the entire globe, and the implication of the second is that it is doing so now, that this is the global age. There are certainly those, not least of them the advocates of unrestricted capital markets, who claim that the world should be open to them, but that does not mean that they have gotten their way. But many critics of market tyranny, social democrats who lament the alleged decline of the nation-state, and people who see the eruption of particularism as a counterreaction to market homogenization give the boasts of the globalizers too much credibility. Crucial questions are often not asked: about the limits of interconnection, about the areas where capital cannot go, and about the specificity of the structures necessary to make connections work (Cooper, 2005, 91).

Cooper (2005, 91-92) states that specialists on Africa, among others, have been drawn into the globalization paradigm, positing “globalization” as a challenge that Africa must meet or else as a construct through which to understand Africa’s place in a world whose boundaries are apparently becoming more problematic. His concern here is with seeking alternative perspectives to a concept that emphasizes change over time but remains ahistorical, and which seems to be about space, but which ends up glossing over the mechanisms and limitations of spatial relationships. He wonders whether the concept is a useful analytic category and concludes that it is not. This is because researchers that use it in an analytical sense risk being trapped in the same discursive structures they wish to shed a light on. Most important in the term’s current popularity in academic circles is how much it reveals about the poverty of contemporary social science faced with processes that are large-scale, but not universal, and with the fact of crucial linkages that cut across state borders and lines of cultural difference but which nonetheless are based on specific mechanisms within certain boundaries. That global should be contrasted to local, even if the point is to analyze their mutual constitution, only underscores the inadequacy of current analytical tools to analyze anything in between. Cooper compares recent interest in the concept of to a similar infatuation in the 1950s and 1960s: modernization. Both are “-ization” words, emphasizing a process, not necessarily fully realized but ongoing and probably inevitable, too teleological. Both name the process by its supposed endpoint, why is observed to be highly problematic. Both were

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29 inspired by a clearly valid and compelling observation: that change is rapid and pervasive. Of course, all the changing forms of transcontinental connections, all the forms of integration and differentiation, of flows and blockages, of the past and present can be seen as aspects of a singular but complex process, which we can label globalization. But that is to defend the concept by emphasizing how little it signifies (Cooper, 2005, 112). Although the concept of globalization may be of value in other contexts, I opt not to use it in this thesis. It obscures what is important in this case: the growth of the Congolese diaspora in Belgium and the question of how we deal fairly with a shared history that still affects their (and ‘our’) situation today.

ANALYZING COURSE CONTENT

EUROCENTRISM AND TELEOLOGY IN THE CURRICULUM

A significant part of this research consists of questions that mainly tackle the contents of courses in the first and the second year of the history programme. According to the majority of the students I interviewed, they are often too one-sidedly Eurocentric without much opportunity for debate. I find the impetus for abandoning this problematic course of events with Schwoerer (2019, 60) who states that the better thing to do is “training the production of agency without an imperial positioning (and the feeling of supremacy that comes with it), accompanied by a teleological single-perspective story.’ She makes the plea for a university that is more unconditional, with a larger focus on the relation between ‘the human’ and ‘the truth’. For the Ghent University History programme, this means two things: leaving a history that focuses solely on Western Europe and its interaction with the world and paying more attention to located knowledge, at an earlier stage of the program. Now, courses that are more diverse in terms of authors, narrative and syllabus content are mainly second- and third-year optional courses.32_{This makes the relationship of counter-hegemonic}

knowledge33_{to the mainly Eurocentric courses during the first two years a subordinate one. It is}

portrayed as a supplementary ‘other’ and allows countries as Belgium, France and the Netherlands to refashion themselves as being anti-racist and anti-colonial (Schwoerer, 2019, 62).

32_{For example, there is a cluster of optional courses that center around world histories: history of China, history of}

Japan… Students choose two courses out of a list of eleven, one in the second year and one in the third.

33_{Knowledge that goes against the narrative of the mainly teleological, Eurocentric courses of the first two years of the}

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I don’t know, every overarching first-year course that is connected to a certain era should spend more attention to a meta-reflection of the course itself. ‘What is the perspective these lectures depart from?’ The first two years of the bachelors have no self-reflection, at all. (Student)

Even a History of the World (first-year course) is very Eurocentric, I feel like we need more information from other parts of the world, but also a narrative that encompasses more perspectives. (Student)

As stated above, multiple students talked about the fact that the courses in the first two years of the study programme are very Eurocentric.34_{For example, the first year consists of era-specific}

courses that start in the ‘History of the Ancient Near East’, move to ‘History of the Classical Antiquity’35_{, ‘History of the Middle Ages’, ‘History of the Early Modern Ages’ and ends with a course}

called ‘History of the Modern and Contemporary Era’. According to Dearden (2017) such a Eurocentric teleology makes one consider other societies through the paradigm of European progress and evolution. Ordering historical evolutions in a teleological sense like this results in destructive evolutions from outside Europe being interpreted against the scenery of said ‘particular European evolution’. Dearden illustrates this using an example of French president Macron being asked why there was no Marshall plan for Africa and concludes the following: “President Macron identifies each problem that plagues Africa against the backdrop of Europe’s particular evolution, as if it was a natural law and as if racism and colonialism did not lie at the core of the historical processes affecting the entire world.” (Penney, 2017). The largest problem with these narratives of colonialism, both outside and inside the university, is that they are actively being constructed as being outside the national history canon and rarely related to historical events that affected Belgium in the first place. Often, colonial histories bear few consequences for the present situation within Europe. This is partly due to the fact that a large part of the lessons does not make enough of a

34_{As mentioned above: During the first two years of the programme, only two of the mandated courses per year move}

away from European history. In order of appearance: History of the Ancient Near East, World History, Global

Processes Historical perspective and Tendencies in Historiography. There are more opportunities in practical courses such as Historical Practice but it depends very much on which lecturers teach the courses that year and what their area of expertise is.

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31 link between past and present (Gomis, 2018, 236; Trouillot, 1995, 72; Bancel, Blanchard and Thomas, 2017, 14).

REFLECTING ON THE TEMPORALITY AND LOCALITY OF COURSE

from the first year on in order to make young historians think about the history they are presented with, but also to make them think about how that history comes about, and in what form the created narrative eventually reaches them. Leaving the almost uncontested Eurocentric canon which lies embedded in the courses of the first two years of the programme also means sustainably considering the imperial contexts that produced the knowledge hierarchies both the university and this thesis are trying to grasp. A substantive solution was presented to me during one of my interviews with a lecturer affiliated with an overseas faculty. She stated that in her lessons she tried to transcend that Eurocentric canon by moving away from a teleological narrative. Instead, she always gave several events that happened in a different place at the same time in time. In this way, too Eurocentric knowledge can be compared with a counter-hegemonic history within the same subject and the illusion of a linear evolution towards 'European modernity' is broken. Fryar (Behm et al., 2020, 4) makes a distinction between ‘history of decolonization’ and ‘history of empire’. According to her, the latter histories help explain the shape of the world as it is today. The former are more crucial when it comes to understanding the shape of the contemporary academy. She formulates it as follows: “yet it is the histories of empires that explain why departments may have three or four people working on various phases and places in mediaeval Europe and no one working on the Kingdom of Benin in the thirteenth century. We can’t decolonize history if we can’t diagnose how we got here” (Behm et al., 2020, 4).

Colonial history must certainly be covered in the history of Belgium, but it must go further, across all courses that are taught in the first year. I think we should rethink courses in the undergraduate programme altogether. To me, one of the most problematic things is the fact that history is being taught in periods and nobody really cares about or notices it. Starting

36_{Reflection on the perspective from which the course is given and on the choices made when drawing up the course}