| > the ones you've listed are infamous and hardly overlooked You think? Here's my experience (I went to school in Germany). > Annihilation of local tribes by colonisers Saw some TV documentaries on it. Not mentioned in history class. > forced opium enslavement of China Heard about it on a history podcast. Not mentioned in any sort of mainstream media or curriculums. > dividing up China between France/Britain/Japan Hearing about this for the first time now. > pestilence from European cattle annihilating 2/3 of inland african people via starvation Hearing about this for the first time now. > the policy of the Holy Roman Emperor and The Pope to keep german states at war with italian states This rings a bell, but only very distantly. So maybe I've heard about that somewhere, but no idea where. > emperor Chin executing the whole village where any crime at all occurred Who's emperor Chin? > The Spanish Inquisition Saw some TV documentaries on it. Not mentioned in history class. > [the last three bulletpoints about communist dictatorships] The gulags were mentioned in history class. Nothing about Mao or the Khmer Rouge. I saw some documentaries about Mao on TV, though. In general, history education in school was infuriatingly superficial wrt the 20th century. The curriculum was basically chronological, starting with the antique Egyptian empire in 5th grade and ending with contemporary history in the 10th grade. (Then in 11th through 13th grade, the same structure, but condensed into three years.) The obvious issue with this structure is that you always run out of time at the end of the curriculum, so you have to rush through the most recent parts of history, which IMO ought to be given the strongest emphasis of all periods. |