Compensation paid by one group of people to another in the name of
past wrongs is a timely topic. Whether talking about reparations
made to Jewish families by Swiss banks, the package of land and
fishing rights awarded to the Maori of New Zealand or the perennial
and thorny problems of appalling hardship and institutional racism
endured by African-Americans during the slavery era and since, the
issues go beyond mere transactions of cash or title deeds to
embrace issues of racism, conscience and philosophy. In today's
'compensation culture', it is easy to make the assumption that
economic restitution fulfils the function of paying individuals or
groups for their distress, and little else. Yet Eleazar Barkan
looks beyond the material to assess the benefits that restitution
has for those who are forced to pay for their historical wrongs.
Sometimes the process itself of admitting guilt, especially when
the collective consciousness has been one of denial - the Japanese
attitude towards the Korean 'comfort women' in the Second World
War, for example - has important consequences for global human
rightsand international relations. The author takes a close,
unsentimental look at the processes involved in determining
victimhood, and assesses how nations on both sides of the
restitution negotiations are redefined in terms of their global
identities. Races who have suffered genocide during war - and
peace; countries whose indigenous peoples have been dispossessed;
ethnic groups who have been suspected of treason and interned:
Barkan uses concrete examples of all of these to bring to life
abstract political and philosophical questions about right, wrong,
and our obligations to our countries and to the wider international
community. (Kirkus UK)
How do nations and aggrieved parties, in the wake of heinous
crimes and horrible injustices, make amends in a positive way to
acknowledge wrong-doings and redefine future interactions? How does
the growing practice of making restitution restore a sense of
morality and enhance prospects for world peace? Where has
restitution worked and where has it not?
Since the end of World War II, the victims of historical
injustices and crimes against humanity have increasingly turned to
restitution, financial and otherwise, as a means of remedying past
suffering. In "The Guilt of Nations," Elazar Barkan offers a
sweeping look at the idea of restitution and its impact on the
concept of human rights and the practice of both national and
international politics. Through in-depth explorations of reparation
demands for a wide variety of past wrongs--the Holocaust; Japanese
enslavement of "comfort women" in Korea and the Philippines; the
internment of Japanese Americans after Pearl Harbor; German art in
Russian museums and Nazi gold in Swiss banks; the oppression of
indigenous peoples in Australia, New Zealand, the U.S. mainland,
and Hawaii; and the enduring legacy of slavery and institutional
racism among African Americans--Barkan confronts the difficulties
in determining victims and assigning blame in the aftermath of such
events, understanding what might justly be restored through
restitutions, and assessing how these morally and politically
charged acknowledgments of guilt can redefine national histories
and identities.
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