Colonial Education in Transnational and Transectoral Networks: A Global Intellectual History (1900-1961)

In the early 20th-century European colonialism became more socially oriented and reflective of the rise of the welfare state. Yet, the better funded and larger colonial school networks became, the more European officials differentiated schools for colonial youth. Addressing this crucial tension, COLED examines how common ideas of colonial education—education for colonial subjects—formed and changed through transnational and transectoral knowledge transfers at the International Colonial Institute, the Save the Children International Fund, the Teachers College, the League of Nations, and UNESCO (1900-1961). Building on my 10-year experience researching education in colonial Africa, COLED: 1) offers the first global intellectual history of colonial education in modern empires, a topic usually studied within separate national cases; 2) shows that deliberate gender-, class-, and race-specific educational planning was a peculiarity of 20th-century European colonialism, thus challenging the common narrative that European states lacked interest in colonial education; 3) identifies for the first time the transition from assimilationist-elitist to differentialist and mass-oriented approaches to colonial education as a byproduct of inter-imperial negotiations between officials, teachers, students, activists, and scholars. Pan-European in scope, this transition questions views of colonial education as a fixed block and of liberal and fascist colonial projects as divergent and mutually opposed. COLED not only fosters interdisciplinary dialogue integrating global history methods with the social and intellectual study of colonialism, pedagogy, and humanitarianism. Also, it promotes awareness among citizens and self-reflection among public agencies committed to universal school rights by contextualizing modern educational inequalities within the still neglected history of institutionalized knowledge exchange on colonial education across networks and borders.