Historical Justice in International Perspective: How Societies Are Trying to Right the Wrongs of the Past

by Manfred Berg, Bernd Schaefer

Overview

This book makes a valuable contribution to recent debates on redress for historical injustices by offering case studies from nine countries on five continents. The contributors examine the problems of material restitution, criminal justice, apologies, recognition, memory, and reconciliation in national contexts as well as in comparative perspective. Among the topics discussed are the claims for reparations for slavery in the United States, West German restitution for the Holocaust, the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the efforts to prosecute the perpetrators of the Khmer Rouge’s mass murders in Cambodia, and the struggles of the indigenous people of Australia and New Zealand. The book highlights the diversity of the ways societies have tried to right past wrongs as the demand for historical justice has become universal.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521876834
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	10/27/2008
Series:	Publications of the German Historical Institute
Pages:	332
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Manfred Berg, the Curt Engelhorn Professor of American History at the University of Heidelberg, is a specialist in the history of the African American civil rights movement. His book The Ticket to Freedom: The NAACP and the Struggle for Black Political Integration was published in
2005. In 2006 Manfred Berg received the David Thelen Award of the Organization of American Historians for the best essay in American history published in a language other than English. Professor Berg has published ten more monographs and edited volumes and roughly forty scholarly articles in both English and German. Before joining the Heidelberg faculty, he taught at the Free University of Berlin and was a research fellow at the German Historical Institute, Washington, D.C.

Bernd Schaefer specializes in international Cold War history and is a senior scholar with the Woodrow Wilson International Center's Cold War International History Project (CWIHP). Before joining the CWIHP, Dr Schaefer was a research fellow at the German Historical Institute in Washington, D.C. He has published extensively on the history of the German Democratic Republic and the aftermath of communist rule. He has lectured at universities in the United States, Europe, China, Vietnam, South Korea, New Zealand, and Australia. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Halle in Germany (1998) and a Master of Public Administration from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University (1991), where he was a John J. McCloy Scholar. His publications include North Korean 'Adventurism' and China's Long Shadow, 1966-1972 (2005) and American Détente and German Ostpolitik, 1969-1972 (2004). An English translation ofhis book Staat und katholische Kirche in der GDR, 1945-1989 (2nd edition 1999) is in preparation.

Table of Contents

Part I. The Politics of Restitution: 1. An avalanche of history: the 'collapse of the future' and the rise of reparations politics John Torpey; 2. Reparations, gender, and ethnicity: why, when and how democratic governments get involved Angelika von Wahl; Part II. Reparations and Restitution: 3. Historical continuity and counterfactual history in the debate over reparations for slavery Manfred Berg; 4. Disputed victims: the German discourse on restitution for Nazi victims Constantin Goschler; 5. Greenlanders displaced by the Cold War: relocation and compensation Svend Aage Christensen and Kristian Soby Kristensen; Part III. Memory and Recognition: 6. Apologizing for Vichy in contemporary France Julie Fette; 7. Limited rehabilitation? Historical observations on the legal rehabilitation of foreign citizens in today's Russia Andreas Hilger; 8. Politics, diplomacy, and accountability in Cambodia: severely limiting personal jurisdiction in prosecution of perpetrators of crimes against humanity Steve Heder; Part IV. Reconciliation: 9. Settling histories, unsettling pasts: reconciliation and historical justice in a settler society Bain Attwood; 10. Fitting Aotearoa into New Zealand: politico-cultural change in a modern bicultural nation Richard Hill and Brigitte Boenisch-Brednich; 11. The politics of judging the past: South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission Bronwyn Leebaw; Part V. Conclusion: 12. 'The issue that won't go away' James McAdams.

Editorial Reviews

"...this collection makes a valuable contribution to the growing body of scholarship on historical justice, which is precisely what it sets out to do." -Sarah Pinto, Canadian Journal of History

From the Publisher