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Flilix on 14 January 2021
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PDF said:
Flilix said:

Well, I got a Belgian history course at university where there was a chapter on the colony. I don't remember whether or not I learned it in secondary school as well. It could be that we didn't, but we skipped over more important stuff as well. It could be argued that Leopold II's Congo is a notable part of Belgian history, but it could also be argued that it actually wasn't all that relevant (because these things happened on a different continent, also because they had little influence on anything else that we'd learn about, and also because the colony was privately owned by the king and had no ties to Belgium).

We did extensively analyse the song We Didn't Start The Fire by Billy Joel in the 6th year, in which the murder of Patrice Lumumba was mentioned.

I understand the logic that it doesn't really feel like Belgium's history because as you said it happened on a different continent and it's now a different country. However, I think with that logic you could freely omit most foreign intervention from the history books.  

There was a ton of wealth generated in Belgium at the cost of the Congolese. This seems like a significant omission, especially for a country with only a couple hundred years of history. At least I understand if the UK or France were to examine colonization in school it would take forever because they practically colonized the whole world. Still, it does surprise me to hear some people from the colonial powers not to tackle colonization at all. Many problems in the world today are rooted in their colonial history.

Once again the US is not innocent in this. While we have become better at recognizing the genocide of Native Americans when colonization first took place on the continent. We still ignore the terrible acts the US engaged in as we moved westward and claimed more land. 

That raises the question, why would we focus on national history anyways? If we measure events purely by inherent importance, then we should learn stuff from all over the world instead of just our own country or continent, and then all European countries should learn as much about eachothers colonies as about their own. But if we measure the value of events in relation to their relevance to us (in what way did the things and structures we know get formed, and how well do the events fit in our general story?), then how important are the colonies to us?

I don't know to which degree the 'tons of wealth' were actually important to Belgium. My Belgian History textbook only mentions the following things about Congolese finances: 1) In the first years the colony was privately owned by Leopld II (with no official ties to Belgium), so the money went to him personally instead of the state. 2) After the Belgian state bought Congo in 1908, the 'free state' was restored which meant that it was mostly exploited by private international companies. 3) The book also says this: "The Belgian and Congolese treasuries were strictly seperated, to avoid that Belgium would have to fill financial shortages in Congo or would have to 'pay' for Congo in any way. After all, there was still little enthusiasm among the Belgian citizens for the colonial project."

Either way, my point is that if schools skip this, it's rather because of a lack of time than because of an intentional omission of the 'bad history'. I'm pretty sure we also skipped the whole pillarisation, even though it was a very important part of Belgian society and still has effects today. We only had 2 years / 2 hours per week to learn about everything that happened in the last 250 years, so it was mostly just a string of major political events (French Revolution, Napoleon, Belgian Revolution, French-German War, World War 1, Russian Revolution, Interwar struggles, World War 2, Cold War...)