Mass Violence on a Continental Scale: Wiriyamu and the Historian's Positionality in Studying Atrocities in Colonial Africa

Brett Schmoll’s paper addresses the second question of the session by situating Wiriyamu among its peers, all of whom brought to an end European imperial rule in Africa: the Mau Mau and the British in Kenya, the French in Algiers, and Lumumba in Belgian Congo. Rather than a simple comparison, the paper finds important historiographic and pedagogic connections between Wiriyamu and the episodes it cites in mass violence historiography. In all three cases, historians positioned themselves in political and emotional danger to advocate on behalf of victims without sacrificing transparency in revealing historical truths. Wiriyamu, then, argues the paper, is a useful resource for grasping the relationship between narratives and their narrators in historical truth-telling.