The aspiration of this paper is to develop a novel approach towards investigating the socio-political history of mathematics teaching in educational systems. Traditionally, historical studies are confined to just one country, the author’s country. Broader approaches address international developments by confronting and comparing global and local aspects—revealing general patterns and more specific ‘local’ structures and characteristics. Yet, already in antiquity and medieval times, the specific characteristic of mathematics teaching, namely to operate at the crossroads of general education and vocational training, proved to be intimately tied to the functioning of the particular political system. In pre-modern times, however, a truly international pattern emerged for the first time: European powers conquered, occupied and colonised overseas regions. Given that educational systems were emerging at the same time within these states, they often transmitted elements of these structures to their colonies. This phenomenon included mathematics, and the history of its teaching is analysed here as a part of coloniality. It is shown that this was not a uniform process, and the differences between the various colonial powers are discussed. The involvement of mathematics in the process of decolonisation is addressed, as well as its role in the tension between continued coloniality and movements of decoloniality. Finally, the general framework provided for studying socio-political processes connected with establishing mathematics teaching within public educational systems is applied, in order to analyse recent coloniality practices effected by international achievement studies.

本文的目的是开发一种新颖的方法来调查教育系统中数学教学的社会政治历史。传统上，历史研究仅限于一个国家，即作者的国家。更为广泛的方法是通过面对和比较全球和本地方面来应对国际发展，从而揭示总体模式以及更具体的“本地”结构和特征。然而，在古代和中世纪，数学教学的特定特征，即在通识教育和职业培训的十字路口运作，已被证明与特定政治系统的功能紧密相关。但是，在近现代之前，真正的国际格局首次出现：欧洲大国被征服，占领并殖民了海外地区。鉴于在这些州内同时出现了教育系统，它们经常将这些结构的要素传播到其殖民地。这种现象包括数学，这里将其教学历史作为殖民地的一部分进行分析。结果表明，这不是一个统一的过程，并且讨论了各种殖民权力之间的差异。讨论了数学在非殖民化过程中的参与及其在继续殖民与殖民主义运动之间的紧张关系中的作用。最后，采用了用于研究与在公共教育系统中建立数学教学有关的社会政治过程的一般框架，