The Changes in the Historiographies and its Implications in Teaching History in Tanzania Secondary Schools
Journal Title: Scholars Journal of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences - Year 2017, Vol 5, Issue 9
Abstract
This paper scrutinizes the major trends in the writing of African history from the colonial times to the modern era. In order to justify the western arrogant belief of civilising the non-western people in this case the black peoples in Africa, Africa was labelled as black continent in pejorative sense of the word. By calling Africa uncivilised and black continent, the Europeans deleted African history. The focus of African history became the history of the Europeans who invaded Africa. The dictum, it is the winners who write history became true in Africa. The Euro-centric European history created a myth of white superiority complex and reduced the black populace to tabula rasa-object as opposed to the subject of history. In a nutshell, for Euro-centric historians the history of a big continent like Africa commenced with the arrival of the white men. Before the coming of the Europeans in the continent, Africa was ahistorical and completely dark! During the time of the struggle for independence and soon after independence of most African countries in early 1960s, African intellectuals rejected the historical epistemology of Euro-centric historians maintaining that despite the lack of written historical sources Africans had history even before the onset of colonialism. The Afro-centric historians exaggerated in writing about African glorious past in order to avenge to Euro-centric racist beliefs. African history became the history of great men and women of the past, great empires, long distance trade to mention but a few. The changing nature of African historiography has affected and continues to affect the way history is taught in Tanzanian secondary schools. The author suggests that teaching philosophy of history in secondary schools may promote better understanding of history rather than simply teaching history polluted by both Euro-centric and Afro-centric historians. Keywords: epistemology, colonialism, Tanzanian
Authors and Affiliations
Dr. Pius Peter Mgeni
Keywords
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