Decolonizing Curriculum: Slavery, Empire, and History Teaching in Tanzania, 1961—2022

Abstract

In this paper the author examines the teaching of the history of slavery and empire in schools and universities in Tanzania. The study centers on the history curriculum and university's history course syllabi to show the themes of slavery and empire have been taught in Tanzania over the past five decades of the development of historical knowledge in Tanzania. The author attempts to show that the dominance of nationalist and materialist traditions that have defined the study of the Tanzanian past has pushed slavery to the periphery of Tanzanian history. Consequently, slavery as a topic and an analytical teaching category remained in the margins of history, being studied simply as part of the mode of production. Ultimately, the paper intends to show that the limited focus on teaching slavery and empire in Tanzanian schools and universities ought to be understood in terms of the national imperatives as well as the nature and character of history curriculum and syllabi that have paid relatively less attention to the topics.