“Z. do P.’S” Africa: African History(ies) as School Knowledge in Early 20th Century Brazil

Abstract

This article analyzes the chronicle “Uma lição de História Pátria”, published in the Brazilian press in 1925 and signed “Z. do P.”, the pseudonym of Professor José Eutrópio (1887-1929). The chronicle examined how certain themes related to the past and the historical memory of Africa could be constituted as school knowledge. Its narrative mobilized a pedagogical understanding that prescribed what, how, and why to teach content then associated with African history. The article aims to investigate this educational thinking and to understand the attempt to construct school-based knowledge grounded in a particular conception of African history. It argues that, for “Z. do P.”, the schooling of specific knowledge about the African continent and its diasporas represented a strategy to legitimize such knowledge within the educational field. The inclusion of African history within school history reflected an original political reading, aimed at offering alternative approaches to teaching history and at reframing the historical role of Black populations in the formation of Brazilian society. Methodologically, this study is based on the analysis of sources published in the early twentieth-century press, such as chronicles, opinion pieces, and critical essays.