Chimamanda Adichie Criticising Europe for Erasing Colonial Past Sparks New Online Discourse
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Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has criticised European countries for presenting colonial history in ways that minimise or erase its most brutal aspects, particularly Belgium’s record in the Congo.
Speaking at the opening of the Ethnological Museum and Museum of Asian Art at Berlin’s Humboldt Forum in September 2021, Chimamanda told the audience that Europe has not simply denied its colonial history. The statement has since regained traction on social media, sparking new discourse.
“It is not that Europe has denied its colonial history that would be too crude,” she said. “It is instead that Europe has developed a way of telling the story of its colonial history that ultimately seeks to erase that history.”
Chimamanda illustrated her point with an account from a Nigerian woman married to a Belgian and living in Belgium for many years. The woman, she said, was shocked that her son’s Belgian history lessons taught him nothing about the Congo.
“They teach my son in school that he must help the poor Africans,” the woman told her, “but they don’t teach him about what Belgium did in Congo.”
Chimamanda continued; “If her son does not learn that the modern Congo state began a hundred years ago as the personal property of a brutal Belgian king who was desperate to get wealthy from ivory and rubber; if her son does not learn that the hands of Congolese people were chopped off with rusty axes for not producing enough resources to meet a quota…”
She linked this selective narrative to wider European approaches, quoting former French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s 2007 speech in Senegal in which he acknowledged that “mistakes were made and crimes committed” but insisted that “no one can ask of the generations of today to expiate this crime perpetrated by past generations.”
Chimamanda’s address also referenced Germany’s colonial actions in what is now Namibia, including the killing of the Herero people, and called for more honest historical education alongside the return of sacred and looted artefacts held in European collections. The speech formed part of the official opening events at the Humboldt Forum, which has faced ongoing debate over the provenance of its non-European holdings.
The video clip of the remarks has continued to spark online discourse in recent days, renewing attention to Chimamanda’s critique of how colonial violence is taught or omitted in European schools. Historians widely document the Congo Free State (1885–1908) under King Leopold II as a period of forced labour, resource extraction and documented mutilations, though estimates of the overall death toll remain debated among scholars.
