this post was submitted on 08 Dec 2025
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Do Europeans just not learn about the scramble for Africa and the Berlin Conference of 1885 or something? How do you have so many colonial powers and none of your history classes touch on the murdering of non-whites? This feels like some truly insane educational blinders
EDIT: Corrected conference date
The racist wars by European countries are diluted by any other wars. One decade they're at war because the prices of wheat went down 10%, another because a pop had a vision, the third because someone's princess is ugly and nobody want's to marry her, then because someone found a sliver deposit in a desert.
The history of Europe is a history of wars and war-related horrors.
1885 is way too recent. Anything past 1800 is Napoleon taking Europe, everyone's local consequences, and then WW1. There's a thousand and a half years of material to discuss before that even after Greece and Rome, this is only the very end and if you're paying attention.
Yeah, even in the US (who Europe makes fun of for not knowing history) we spent a ton of time on the triangle trade with Africa (which Europe was very much the creator of and active participant in).
Like the "we didn't have a lot of racism here" when they were the powers enslaving the native populations to sell to their other colonies...is an insane thing to say.
I can only speak for Germany's history education.
Yes it did touch the scramble for Africa and Germany's colonies. But colonialism is a comparitively minor part of that period (1890 - 1920) for Germany so it was the focus for a couple of lessons only. The genocide was covered - but again, only for like a single lesson or two.
There's just a bit too much history to cramp it down into 90 minutes per week and go over in detail, especially since teaching about the world wars is a priority.
I mean, we literally crammed the period 1970ish to reunification within a single lesson at the very end of 12th grade because we ran out of time.
That's a fair point. I don't know that I would say colonialism was minor for Germany, but I suppose the advantage of American education is you have a lot fewer years of crimes against humanity to cover since its a younger country.
Sorry, I didn't mean minor in that sense.
I meant more like in the sense of not exceeding a single chapter in a history book. It did happen and was significant – but overshadowed by WW1 happening shortly thereafter and ending German colonization right then and there (except for WW2 but that's another topic).
A significant part of Europe did not participate in the scramble for Africa, which can in part explain OP pic - the guy is from Poland.
There was no Berlin conference in 1845.
Anyway, each country has its own educational system, with different scope and methods of teaching history (unavoidably wildly different due to different national histories), so making any blanket statement on what is taught in Europe is a minefield. Now, I'm pretty sure most kids in Europe are taught about the colonisation of Africa, but how exactly it is presented, how much weight is given to it, how it is integrated into broader cultural discourse (including e.g. does anyone even talk or care about it outside school history lessons) can vary wildly.
Practically speaking, why would Poles have to care e.g. about English colonisation of India a whole lot? Do you really think such stuff can be relevant enough to strongly shape people's worldview?
Sorry, I wanted to confirm the name and it is listed on wikipedia as the Berlin Conference of 1884-1885, and I typo'd it anyway. I think it should be relevant enough to shape peoples worldview though. Its hard not to see parallels with the current campaigns of genocidal colonial starvation.