peer reviewed
Over the last few years, we have seen France and Germany increasingly engage with
political acts of remembering their colonial past in Africa. And, most of the time,
these acts occur after a long resistance to face this difficult history and its impact
today. However, the late 2010s and early 2020s have most definitely seen a change
in the ways former colonial powers are now looking at their history and the way it is
remembered. This article postulates that what we have seen in the past decade has
been a turning point in memory politics of the colonial past, and it asks whether a
new Franco-German paradigm in memory politics has emerged? And if so, what is
it? To do so, a comparative approach is used to identify key dynamics, current challenges
(namely the restitution of cultural heritage and the return of human remains),
central actors and structures, as well as differences and similarities in the ways both
countries approach memory politics, notably through the lens of path dependency
and historical institutionalism.