{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.023591087811271297, 'fraction_numerical': 0.0, 'mean_word_length': 5.161290322580645, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Europe in Front of its Colonial Past. The Question of Historiography

This paper employs Paul Ricœur’s insights to examine how European states should approach their colonial past. First, I explore the significance of historical knowledge for people from formerly colonized countries through the views of several anti-colonial thinkers. Then, referring to Ricoeur’s analyses in History and Truth, Time and Narrative and Memory, History, Forgetting, I examine the grounds and the legitimacy, of a historiography of colonization. I argue that European states should make the history of colonization part of their school curricula, as an expression of Europeans’ debt to the victims of the colonial past, and as a way to prevent the repetition of the colonial crimes.