From November 15 to December 1, 2021, Senior Research Fellow Dr. Nadezhda Khokholkova and Junior Research Fellow Valentina Bryndina conducted field research in Tanzania, supported by the Russian Scientific Foundation (project №18-18-00454 "Historical Memory as the Evolutional Factor of Socio-Political Systems in Sub-Saharan Africa and Mesoamerica"). The study focused on the historical memory of European colonialism.
The main goal of this expedition was to examine the patterns of perception of the colonial past by modern Tanzanians. Among the tasks is to identify similarities and differences in the appraisals of the activities of the German and British colonial administrations.
During the work in Dar es Salaam and Tanga, 21 interviews were conducted, as well as a significant amount of historiographical and bibliographic materials were collected. The researchers visited the National Museum of Tanzania and the National Central Library in Dar es Salaam, the Tanga Heritage Museum (Urithi Tanga Museum), worked with collections and communicated with employees.
The results of the field research will be analyzed in detail and presented in scientific reports and ongoing publications.
N. Khokholkova and V. Bryndina are sincerely grateful to the staff of the Russian House in Dar es Salaam (Tanzania), and personally to Maria V. Pateeva and Rifat K. Pateev for their contribution in organizing this research, as well as Bairma Kihoro, Joel Niganile and Saleh Haji Khamis for their assistance in the data collection.