The Guilt of Nations: Restitution and Negotiating Historical Injustices

The Guilt of Nations: Restitution and Negotiating Historical Injustices, Elazar Barkan (New York: W. W. Norton, 2000), 464 pp., $29.95 cloth.

Can "victims and perpetrators collaborate in searching for an exit from the bonds of history"? Elazar Barkan, a historian at Claremont University, thinks so. They can because they do, in increasing numbers across the modern world of nations.

We are on the cusp of an evolving new international morality, says Barkan. It is no longer easy for politicians to get away with telling aggrieved constituents to forget the injustices imposed upon their ancestors. There is something to be done about their grievances: restitution, the name that Barkan gives to a complex of collective actions that include apologies, return of stolen lands, money, new legal statuses, new official interpretations of history, and other measures.

There are two famous ways to dismiss restitution as a political wild goose chase. Some argue that since past wrongs cannot be changed, we should simply get on with the future. Though American culture generally approves of this pragmatism, for many, to quote William Faulkner, "the past is not dead and gone; it isn't even past." Events like the massacre at Wounded Knee and the Armenian genocide instill memories in victims that bear upon their participation in-or alienation from-the political culture of the majority. Still others argue that the idea of restitution is not really about rectifying past wrongs, but is just a political contest of collective powers in the service of collective interests. This latter argument, however, poses an important question: What if moral claims can exert political power?

That is what they exert in the dozen or so cases...