The king of the Netherlands, Willem-Alexander, apologised in July 2023 for his ancestors’ function within the colonial slave commerce.
He isn’t alone in expressing regret for previous wrongs. In 2021, France returned 26 artworks seized by French colonial troopers in Africa – the biggest restitution France has ever made to a former colony. In the identical 12 months, Germany formally apologised for its 1904-’08 genocide of the Herero and Nama individuals of Namibia and paid reparations.
That is, some political scientists have noticed, the “age of apology” for previous wrongs. Reams of articles, significantly in Western media, are dedicated to former coloniser international locations and whether or not they have enacted redress – returned museum artifacts, paid reparations or apologised for previous wrongs.
But that is not often the results of official requests. Actually, only a few former colonies have formally – that’s, authorities to authorities – pressed perpetrators to redress previous injustices.
My evaluation discovered that governments in 78% of such circumstances haven’t requested to be compensated for historic acts of injustice in opposition to them. As a scholar of worldwide relations who has studied the impact of colonialism on the present-day overseas coverage of nations affected, I discovered this puzzling. Why don’t extra sufferer states press for intercountry redress?
The reply lies in the truth that colonial pasts and atoning for injustices are controversial – not simply in what had been perpetrator international locations, but in addition of their victims. What to ask redress for, from whom and for whom are sophisticated questions with no simple solutions. And there are sometimes divergent narratives inside sufferer international locations about the right way to view previous colonial historical past, additional hampering redress.
Concentrate on perpetrator nation
There’s a disproportionate quantity of consideration paid as to whether perpetrator international locations – that’s, former colonisers who established extractive and exploitative governments in colony states – supply redress. They’re lauded once they enact redress and shamed when they don’t.
The processes pertaining to redress inside sufferer international locations – the former colonies – will get much less consideration. This, I imagine, has the impact of constructing these international locations peripheral to a dialog during which they needs to be central.
This issues – success or failure of redress can rely upon whether or not sufferer international locations formally push for it.
Take the experiences of two previously colonised international locations that I studied in depth in relation to the query of redress: India and Namibia.
The Indian expertise
It’s tough for a rustic, significantly a poor creating nation, to take a former coloniser, often a a lot richer nation, to the Worldwide Court docket of Justice to ask for redress for the complete expertise of colonialism.
However most former colonies have by no means formally requested for some type of redress – be it apology, reparations or restitution, even for particular acts of injustice.
India is an instance of the issue in constructing consensus for official redress. Take the Jallianwala Bagh bloodbath of 1919, during which British troops killed lots of of peaceable protesters, together with girls and youngsters.
The Indian authorities has by no means formally requested for an apology from the UK over the incident.
A part of the issue is totally different teams inside India have totally different narratives about the 200 years of British colonial rule. Nobody disputes that the Raj was exploitative and violent. However which acts of violence to emphasize? How a lot accountability needs to be assigned to the British? And will any optimistic attributes of the Raj be highlighted? These are all debated.
Such factors of divergence are mirrored in India’s federal and state-issued historical past textbooks, in keeping with my evaluation.
The bloody Partition of India in 1947 and the following creation of Pakistan, for instance, are blamed on the British in federal and plenty of state textbooks. However it deserves only a small paragraph in Gujarati textbooks, the place it’s blamed totally on the Muslim League, the founding social gathering of Pakistan. Within the state of Tamil Nadu, Partition is talked about with none description of both the horrors that adopted or the place accountability lay.
Completely different narratives additionally seem within the Indian Parliament. When the concern of redress got here up in 1997 – the fiftieth 12 months of Indian independence and simply earlier than Queen Elizabeth II visited India – politicians agreed that India’s emergence from what politician Somnath Chatterjee described as “a strangulating and dehumanising slavery beneath a colonial imperialist energy” was value celebrating. However on the difficulty of whether or not Elizabeth ought to apologise for the Jallianwala Bagh bloodbath, there was little settlement. Calls from some politicians for an apology had been drowned out by others who jabbed on the ruling Bharatiya Janata Social gathering, mentioning its allies had by no means apologised for assassinating Mahatma Gandhi.
As of this writing, the UK has expressed remorse for the bloodbath however by no means apologised, infuriating many Indians.
Namibian lengthy, drawn-out case
Namibia is an unusual case of redress the place the federal government has formally pushed for an apology and reparations from its former colonizer, Germany. However even then it was a painful, complicated and time-consuming course of dogged by lots of the themes which have prevented India and others from in search of formal redress.
Between 1884 and 1919, Namibia was a German colony, with some communities systematically dispossessed of their conventional lands. In 1904, one in all these communities, the Herero, rebelled, adopted in 1905 by the Nama. In response, German troops slaughtered hundreds in a massacre that’s right this moment broadly acknowledged to be a genocide. Survivors, together with girls and youngsters, had been herded into horrific focus camps and subjected to compelled labor and medical experiments.
The wrestle to carry Germany accountable started many years in the past, with people from the Herero and Nama communities calling for accountability and reparations. Germany rebuffed them repeatedly, exactly as a result of the Namibian authorities didn’t take up their name. Solely in 2015, after the Namibian authorities formally requested redress, did Germany acquiesce.
In Could 2021, Germany lastly agreed to recognise the genocide, apologise and set up a fund of US$1.35 billion towards reconstruction and growth initiatives in Herero- and Nama-dominated areas.
Why did it take so lengthy? For the Herero and Nama, the genocide and lack of conventional lands had been at all times forefront. However for others in Namibia – notably, the dominant political social gathering, the South West Africa Individuals’s Group, or SWAPO, which consists largely of members of the Ovambo ethnic neighborhood – uniting Namibians to come back collectively in a nationwide, anti-colonial wrestle for independence was deemed extra essential than specializing in the wrongs suffered by anyone neighborhood.
After independence, the ruling SWAPO prioritised nation-building and unity and cultivated ties with the German authorities, hoping for overseas assist and financial growth. Complicating issues, the Ovambo had not misplaced their very own conventional lands to colonialism in the identical approach because the Herero and Nama.
For years, government-approved college historical past textbooks utilized in Namibian colleges mirrored the SWAPO narrative. One Ovambo former college historical past instructor informed me that Namibian youngsters realized in regards to the “warfare of nationwide resistance” and the way exploitative colonialism had necessitated that warfare. However the phrase “genocide” was by no means used, and there had been no mentions of the struggling of affected communities.
Round 2010, Namibian activists, nonprofit employees and authorities officers from all communities started to seek for widespread floor to reconcile the totally different narratives. Some makes an attempt failed. A 2014 museum exhibition on the genocide collapsed after its financier, the Finnish embassy, withdrew funding – allegedly beneath strain, one Namibian knowledgeable informed me, from the German authorities. However others succeeded. The Nationwide Archives of Namibia launched a mission to gather educational papers on divergent narratives of the liberation wrestle and colonial historical past.
As reconciling narratives progressed, historical past textbooks had been revised to honor not simply SWAPO’s model of historical past, but in addition spotlight the brutalities suffered by the Herero and Nama. They included frank discussions of genocide and colonial atrocities. In opposition to this backdrop, the Namibian authorities formally initiated a request for redress from Germany. Each governments appointed groups to discover a decision, ensuing within the 2021 reparation fund.
Redress between international locations is uncommon. Profitable redress much more so. However the instance of Namibia exhibits that it may be completed when the governments of sufferer international locations provoke redress. By focusing solely on perpetrator states, we miss a chance to look at their victims as brokers of change, and thereby perpetuate redress as an uncommon phenomenon.
Manjari Chatterjee Miller is Senior Fellow, Council on Overseas Relations/Affiliate Professor of Worldwide Relations, Boston College.
This text was first printed on The Dialog.