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Edited by Berber Bevernage and Nico Wouters
The Palgrave Handbook of State-Sponsored History After 1945
Berber Bevernage · Nico Wouters Editors
The Palgrave Handbook of StateSponsored History After 1945
Editors
Berber Bevernage Department of History
Ghent University
Ghent, Belgium
Nico Wouters CEGESOMA (Belgian State Archives) Brussels, Belgium
ISBN 978-1-349-95305-9
ISBN 978-1-349-95306-6 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95306-6
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017950700
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018
The author(s) has/have asserted their right(s) to be identifed as the author(s) of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifcally the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microflms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specifc statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affliations.
Cover credit: © Sura Ark/Contributor/Getty Images
Printed on acid-free paper
This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature
The registered company is Macmillan Publishers Ltd.
The registered company address is: The Campus, 4 Crinan Street, London, N1 9XW, United Kingdom
Part II Archives and Libraries
Overview chapter:
7 Archives, Agency, and the State 139 Trudy Huskamp Peterson Case chapters:
8 Open Archives to Close the Past: Bulgarian Archival Disclosure on the Road to European Union Accession 161 Niké Wentholt
9 Archives and Post-Colonial State-Sponsored History: A Dual State Approach Using the Case of the “Migrated Archives” 177 Michael Karabinos
10 The “Cleansing” of Croatian Libraries in the 1990s and Beyond or How (Not) to Discard the Yugoslav Past 191 Dora Komnenović
Part III Research Institutes and Policies
Overview chapter:
11 State Authority and Historical Research: Institutional Settings and Trends Since 1945 209 Lutz Raphael Case chapters:
12 Offcial History Reconsidered: The Tadhana Project in the Philippines 237 Rommel A. Curaming
13 History Riding on the Waves of Government Coalitions: The First Fifteen Years of the Institute of National Remembrance in Poland (2001–2016) 255 Idesbald Goddeeris
Denise Bentrovato
The “National Dream” to Cultural Mosaic: State-Sponsored History in Canadian
Lynn Lemisko and Kurt Clausen
Cornelia Eisler
22 State Agency and the Defnition of Historical Events: The Case of the Museo de La Memoria Y Los Derechos Humanos in Santiago, Chile 415
Patrizia Violi
23 History Wars in Germany and Australia: National Museums and the Relegitimisation of Nationhood
Christian Wicke and Ben Wellings
Part VI Memorials, Monuments and Heritage
Overview chapter:
24 Memorials and State-Sponsored History
Shanti Sumartojo
Case chapters:
25 Spaces of Nationhood and Contested Soviet War Monuments in Poland: The Warsaw Monument to the Brotherhood in Arms 477
Ewa Ochman
26 Heritage Statecraft: Transcending Methodological Nationalism in the Russian Federation 495
Gertjan Plets
Part VII Courts, Tribunals and Judicial History
Overview chapter:
27 The State, the Courts, and the Lessons of History: An Overview, with Reference to Some Emblematic Cases 513
Richard J. Golsan
Case chapters:
28 The Historian’s Trial: John Demjanjuk and the Prosecution of Atrocity
Lawrence Douglas
29 Germany Versus Germany: Resistance Against Hitler, Postwar Judiciary and the 1952 Remer Case 551
Vladimir Petrović
30 Historical Testimony for the Government in US v. Philip Morris, et al. 567
Ramses Delafontaine
31 A One-Sided Coin: A Critical Analysis of the Legal Accounts of the Cypriot Conficts 583
Nasia Hadjigeorgiou
Part VIII Truth Commissions and Commissioned History
Overview chapter:
32 Truth Commissions and the Construction of History 599
Eric Wiebelhaus-Brahm
Case chapters:
33 Truth Commissions and the Politics of History: A Critical Appraisal 621
Stephan Scheuzger
34 The Brazilian National Truth Commission (2012–2014) as a State-Commissioned History Project 637
Nina Schneider and Gisele Iecker de Almeida
35 The 9/11 Commission Report: History Under the Sign of Memory 653
Oz Frankel
36 Truths of the Dictatorship: Chile’s Rettig and Valech Commissions as State-Sponsored History 669
Onur Bakiner
Part IX Historical Expert Commissions and Commissioned History
Overview chapter:
37 Historical Expert Commissions and Their Politics 687
Eva-Clarita Pettai
Case chapters:
38 Reconstituting the Dutch State in the NIOD Srebrenica Report 713
Erna Rijsdijk
39 Memory Institutions and Policies in Colombia: The Historical Memory Group and the Historical Commission on the Confict and Its Victims 727
Martha Cecilia Herrera, José Gabriel Cristancho Altuzarra and Carol Juliette Pertuz
40 Diversifed and Globalized Memories: The Limits of State-Sponsored History Commissions in East Asia 741
Seiko Mimaki
41 Switzerland’s Independent Commission of Experts: State-Sponsored History and the Challenges of Political Partisanship 757
Alexander Karn
Part X Offcial Apologies and Diplomatic History
Overview chapter:
42 Historical State Apologies 775
Ąžuolas Bagdonas Case chapters:
43 Apology Failures: Japan’s Strategies Towards China and Korea in Dealing with Its Imperialist Past 801
Torsten Weber
44 The “Apology to Australia’s Indigenous Peoples” in Its Historical Context 817
Francesca Dominello
45 Narrative Robustness, Post-Apology Conduct, and Canada’s 1998 and 2008 Residential Schools Apologies 831 Matt James Index 849
e ditors and C ontributors
About the Editors
Berber Bevernage is Associate Professor of Historical Theory at Ghent University (Belgium). His research focuses on the dissemination, attestation, and contestation of historical discourse and historical culture in postconfict situations. He has published in journals such as History and Theory, Rethinking History, Memory Studies, Social History, and History Workshop Journal. Together with colleagues Berber established the International Network for Theory of History (INTH) which aims to foster collaboration and the exchange of ideas among theorists of history around the world.
Nico Wouters is Director of the Belgian Centre for War and Society (Belgian State Archives), Guest Professor at Ghent University, Honorary Research Fellow at Kent University, co-editor in chief of the Journal of Belgian History, and editorial board member of the Low Countries Historical Review. His research interests include the Second World War, (state-sponsored) politics of memory, comparative history, and oral history.
Contributors
Ąžuolas Bagdonas completed his Ph.D. in Political Science at Central European University in Budapest in 2011 and worked as an assistant professor of International Relations at Fatih University in Istanbul until 2016. He is currently an independent researcher based in Copenhagen. His research interests focus on sovereignty, international society, and great power politics.
Onur Bakiner is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Seattle University. His research and teaching interests include transitional justice, human rights,
and judicial politics, particularly in Latin America and the Middle East. His book, Truth Commissions: Memory, Power, and Legitimacy, was published by the University of Pennsylvania Press in 2016. Currently he has been working on a research project examining judicial actors during prolonged internal confict in Colombia and Turkey. His articles have been published in the Journal of Law and Courts, the International Journal of Transitional Justice, Memory Studies, and Nationalities Papers.
Tomas Balkelis is a Senior Research Fellow at the Lithuanian Institute of History in Vilnius. He received his Ph.D. in History at the University of Toronto in 2004. Throughout 2014–2016, he led a Lithuanian Research Council funded team of historians based at Vilnius University working on the international project, “Population Displacement in Lithuania in the twentieth Century.” During 2009–2013, he was a European Research Council Postdoctoral Research Fellow at University College Dublin. He is the author of The Making of Modern Lithuania (Routledge, 2009) and co-editor of Population Displacement in Lithuania in the twentieth century (Brill, 2016).
Denise Bentrovato is a Research Fellow in the Department of Humanities Education at the University of Pretoria and co-director of the African Association for History Education, based in South Africa. Her research combines an interest in memory politics, transitional justice, and history education and primarily focuses on Africa. Dr. Bentrovato holds a Ph.D. in History and an M.A. in Confict Resolution. Among her recent publications are Narrating and Teaching the Nation: The Politics of Education in Pre- and Post-Genocide Rwanda (2015) and History Can Bite: History Education in Divided and Post-War Societies (with K. Korostelina and M. Schulze (eds.)) (2016).
Luigi Cajani , who is currently retired, has taught Early Modern History at the Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofa of the Sapienza University of Rome. He is Associated Scholar of the Georg-Eckert-Institut für international Schulbuchforschung in Braunschweig (Germany) and president of the International Research Association for History and Social Sciences Education (IRAHSSE). His research interests are the history of crime and criminal justice in Italy during the Ancien Régime, German–Italian relations during World War II, the history of historiography, and history education.
Kurt Clausen is a Professor at the Faculty of Education and past chair of Graduate Studies at Nipissing University, Ontario. Dr. Clausen’s work focuses on the changing educational system in Ontario from the post-war period onward. He has published almost 20 articles and book chapters on this subject, as well as spoken at almost 50 conferences. Most recently, he was a contributor to Case Studies in Educational Foundations: Canadian Perspectives (Oxford University Press) edited by David Mandzuk and Shelley Hasinoff. He is presently co-editing a polygraph with Dr. Glenda Black entitled The
Future of Action Research in Teacher Education: A Canadian Perspective for McGill-Queen’s University Press.
José Gabriel Cristancho Altuzarra holds a Ph.D. in Education and M.A. in Latin American Philosophy. He is a Professor and Researcher at the Universidad Pedagógica y Tecnológica de Colombia and the Universidad Pedagógica Nacional (Bogotá). He has published in various journals such as Cinemas D’Amerique Latine (v. 24, 2016), Educação & Sociedade (2016: 37 (135)), Imagofagia (2015), Cuadernos de Música, Artes Visuales y Artes Escénicas (214: 9 (2)), and Historia Crítica (2013: 50).
Rommel A. Curaming is Assistant Professor in History and Southeast Asian Studies at the University of Brunei Darussalam (UBD). He completed a Ph.D. at the Australian National University (ANU). Previously he was a postdoctoral fellow at the National University of Singapore (NUS) and La Trobe University. His research interests include history and memory of political violence, the politics of writing and public consumption of history, comparative historiography, heritage-making, and knowledge politics and state-intellectual relations in Southeast Asia. He has published articles in journals such as Critical Asian Studies, South East Asia Research, Time and Society, Sojourn, Philippine Studies, and the Journal of Southeast Asian Studies.
Violeta Davoliūtė received her Ph.D. from the University of Toronto. She is Senior Researcher at the Lithuanian Culture Research Institute, and Professor at the Institute of International Relations and Political Science, Vilnius University. She is the author of a critically acclaimed monograph, The Making and Breaking of Soviet Lithuania: Memory and Modernity in the Wake of War (Routledge, 2013). She has published extensively in journals such as Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas, Ab Imperio, and the Journal of Baltic Studies. Her research felds include social, cultural, and intellectual history, modernization, questions of resistance and collaboration under foreign rule, trauma theory and the politics of memory, and transitional justice.
Gisele Iecker de Almeida is a Ph.D. Researcher at the Department of History of Ghent University and a CAPES Fellow.
Antoon De Baets (Ph.D. 1988) is Professor of History, Ethics and Human Rights by Special Appointment of the Foundation Euroclio at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands. He is the author of more than 180 publications, mainly on the censorship of history and the ethics of historians. This includes several books, the latest of which in English is Responsible History (Berghahn Books, 2009). Since 1995, he has coordinated the Network of Concerned Historians. Furthermore, he is working on such issues as the relationship between historical writing and democracy, historians and archivists killed for political reasons, and the subversive power of historical parallels, among others.
Pierre-Olivier de Broux is Professor of Legal History and of History of Human Rights at the Université Saint-Louis–Bruxelles (USL-B) and associate professor at the Université catholique de Louvain (UCL). Being an historian as well as a lawyer, leading member of the Centre interdisciplinaire de recherches constitutionnelle (www.circ.usaintlouis.be) and of the Centre de recherches en histoire du droit et des institutions (www.crhidi.be), his research focuses on the history of human rights and on constitutional and administrative legal history, on Belgian, European, and international levels.
Ramses Delafontaine started his Ph.D. at the history department of Ghent University in 2014. His research is focused on the judicial use of historical argumentation with a special attention to the legal fgure of the historian as an expert witness in the courtroom. His primary focus is on tobacco litigation in the United States. His frst monograph is entitled Historians as Expert Judicial Witnesses in Tobacco Litigation: A Controversial Legal Practice (Springer, 2015). From 2015 to 2016 he was a Fulbright visiting researcher at Stanford University.
Francesca Dominello is a Lionel Murphy Scholar and lecturer in law at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia. She has a range of research interests that include Indigenous legal issues and politics, theories of justice, and gender and family law. She is a co-author of The Family in Law (Melbourne: University of Cambridge Press, 2017) and a co-editor of Forgiveness in Perspective (Oxford: Inter-Disciplinary Press, 2016).
Lawrence Douglas is the James J. Grosfeld Professor of Law, Jurisprudence and Social Thought, Amherst College, United States. He earned his J.D. at Yale Law School and his B.A. from Brown University. Douglas is the author of six books of nonfction and fction. His scholarly books include The Memory of Judgment: Making Law and History in the Trials of the Holocaust (Yale UP 2001) and The Right Wrong Man: John Demjanjuk and the Last Great Nazi War Crimes Trial (Princeton UP 2016). His work has appeared in numerous publications, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Guardian, the Irish Times, The New Yorker, the Times Literary Supplement, and Harper’s
Cornelia Eisler has a Ph.D. in European Ethnology/Cultural Anthropology and is Postdoctoral Associate at Kiel University, Germany. Her research interests focus on museum history, cultural heritage, anthropology of policy, migration, and minorities. Her book, Verwaltete Erinnerung–symbolische Politik. Die Heimatsammlungen der deutschen Flüchtlinge, Vertriebenen und Aussiedler (De Gruyter Oldenbourg), was published in 2015. She recently co-edited the volume Minderheiten im Europa der Zwischenkriegszeit (Minorities in interwar Europe; Waxmann 2017).
Oz Frankel is an Associate Professor of History at the New School for Social Research, New York. His felds of interest include historiography, US history,
American presence abroad, state formation, memory and commemoration, and knowledge and its transmission. He is now working on a book project on Israeli and American social, political, and cultural encounters between 1967 and 1973. Among his publications are “The Politics of the Radical Analogy: The Case of the Israeli Black Panthers,” in the anthology Black Power Beyond Borders (Palgrave) and the book, States of Inquiry: Social Investigations and Print Culture in Nineteenth Century Britain and the US (Johns Hopkins).
Idesbald Goddeeris is a Slavist and a historian. He is Associate Professor of History at the University of Leuven (Belgium) and teaches, inter alia, history of Poland. He has extensively published on Poland and the Cold War, such as the edited volume Solidarity with Solidarity: Western European Trade Unions and the Polish Crisis, 1980–1982 (Lanham: The Harvard Cold War studies book series, 2010, paperback 2013). He recently contributed to the Journal of Migration History (2017), Postcolonial Studies (2016), Journal of Contemporary History (2015), and Ethnicities (2014), and has also published in the leading Polish journals Dzieje Najnowsze and Pamięć i Sprawiedliwość.
Richard J. Golsan is University Distinguished Professor and Distinguished Professor of French. He is the director of the France/Texas A&M University Institute (Centre Pluridisciplinaire). His research interests include the history and memory of World War II in France and Europe and the political involvements of French and European writers and intellectuals with anti-democratic and extremist politics in the twentieth and twenty-frst centuries. His most recent book is The Vichy Past in France Today (Lexington, 2016).
Nasia Hadjigeorgiou is a Lecturer in Human Rights Law at the University of Central Lancashire. She holds degrees from University College London (LLB), the University of Cambridge (LLM), and King’s College London (Ph.D.). Her research focuses on the protection of human rights in post-confict and ethnically divided societies such as Cyprus, Bosnia and Herzegovina, South Africa, and Northern Ireland. She has published extensively in international peer-reviewed journals and book series. In addition, since 2016, Nasia has been acting as an expert consultant on Public International Law to the Attorney-General of the Republic of Cyprus.
Martha Cecilia Herrera holds a Ph.D. in Education and M.A. in History. She is a Professor at the Universidad Pedagógica Nacional (Bogotá). She has extensively published in scholarly journals such as Historia Crítica (2013), Revista Colombiana de Educación (2016), and Revista Nómadas (2014). In 2013 her book ¿Educar el nuevo príncipe: un asunto racial o de ciudadanía? was published by the Universidad Pedagógica Nacional (Bogotá).
Matt James is Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Victoria. He is a student of political apologies, reparations, regretful social memory, and transitional justice, focusing primarily on Canada. He is also interested more broadly in the reciprocal interaction
of social movements and constitutionalism. His work has been published in scholarly journals such as the International Journal of Transitional Justice and Citizenship Studies. In 2006 he published Misrecognized Materialists: Social Movements in Canadian Constitutional Politics (University of British Columbia Press).
Michael Karabinos is an Archival Theorist based in Amsterdam, and is currently a Research Fellow at the van Abbemuseum in Eindhoven, the Netherlands. He received his Ph.D. from Leiden University in 2015. Combining questions on the nature of archives with their role in the decolonization of Southeast Asia, he has published his work in the book, Displaced Archives (Routledge, 2017, James Lowry, ed.), as well as journals such as Archives & Manuscripts, Information & Culture, and The Journal of Contemporary Archival Science. He is a former visiting fellow at Nanyang Technological University (Singapore).
Alexander Karn is an Associate Professor of History and a faculty member in the peace and confict studies program at Colgate University (United States). He currently serves as a member of the steering committee for the Historical Dialogues, Justice, and Memory Research Network. He is the author of Amending the Past: Europe’s Holocaust Commissions and the Right to History (University of Wisconsin Press, 2015) and co-editor of Taking Wrongs Seriously: Apologies and Reconciliation (Stanford University Press, 2006).
Dora Komnenović is a Ph.D. candidate at Justus Liebig University, Giessen, Germany. She holds a B.A. in International Relations and Diplomacy (Trieste University, 2010) and an M.A. in Interdisciplinary Research and Studies on Eastern Europe (Bologna University, 2012). Her research interests revolve around Eastern European history and politics, with a special focus on the former Yugoslav region. Her current project deals with post-Yugoslav memory and ethnocultural exclusionism in the 1990s.
Lynn Lemisko holds a Ph.D. from the University of Calgary and is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Educational Foundations in the College of Education at the University of Saskatchewan. She is interested in educating for social justice. Her work has been published in journals such as the Canadian Journal of Education, Canadian Social Studies, Thinking Classroom/Peremena, and The International Journal of Learning and as chapters in edited collections. Dr. Lemisko’s current research includes the study of mentorship as support for beginning teachers, history of education as intellectual history, and the history of teacher education.
Stiina Löytömäki is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Helsinki. She has written her doctorate at the European University Institute on the entanglements of law and history in the French memory debates about colonialism. It was published as a book, Law and Politics of Memory: Confronting the Past (Routledge, 2014). Her most recent postdoctoral project concerned interwar regulation of forced labor.
Seiko Mimaki is an Associate Professor, Takasaki City University of Economics. She received her B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. from the University of Tokyo. After obtaining her Ph.D. in 2012, she was a lecturer at Waseda University, an academic associate at Harvard University (2013–2014), and fellow at Johns Hopkins University (2014). Since coming back to Japan in 2015, she has been an active member of various projects to promote East Asian regional co-operation. Her new articles appear in Research in Peace and Reconciliation, PacNet Newsletter, and Diplomat Magazine.
Gotelind Müller-Saini is Full Professor of Chinese Studies at the University of Heidelberg, Germany. Her felds of research are history and history of ideas in China and East Asia with a focus on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, paying particular attention to Sino-Japanese, SinoWestern, and Sino-Russian cultural exchange processes. She has published on education and the generation of history consciousness in China and co-authored teaching material on East Asian history for German history teachers (Wochenschau, 2014). She has published several books, most recently Documentary, World History, and National Power in the PRC. Global Rise in Chinese Eyes (Routledge, 2013, pb 2015). (http://www.zo.uni-heidelberg.de/sinologie/institute/staff/mueller-saini/publications.html)
Ewa Ochman is Senior Lecturer in East European Studies and Director of Postgraduate Research for Language Based Area Studies at the University of Manchester. She is a member of the Centre for Jewish Studies. Her research interests are mainly focused on the twentieth-century history of central and eastern Europe and deal broadly with state-sponsored history, remembrance of war, decommunization of public space, population displacement, borderlands, and ethnic minorities. She has published several books as well as articles for Nationalities Papers, East European Politics and Societies, Contemporary European History, History and Memory, Cold War History, and Memory Studies.
Carol Juliette Pertuz holds a Masters degree in Childhood Studies and a Graduate degree in Psychology and Pedagogy. She is Professor and Researcher at the Universidad Pedagógica Nacional (UPN, Bogotá) and Fellow of the Young Researchers and Innovators Colciencias program. She has published extensively in Spanish, most recently with C. Pertuz Educación y políticas de la memoria en América Latina: por una pedagogía más allá del paradigma del sujeto víctima.Bogotá (2016).
Trudy Huskamp Peterson is an Archival Consultant and Certifed Archivist with a Ph.D. in History from the University of Iowa. She spent 24 years with the US National Archives, including more than two years as Acting Archivist of the United States. She was the founding Executive Director of the Open Society Archives in Budapest, Hungary, and then the Director of Archives and Records Management for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. She is a past president of the International Conference of
the Round Table on Archives (1993–1995) and the Society of American Archivists (1990–1991) and chaired the International Council on Archives’ Human Rights Working Group (2009–2016). She consulted with truth commissions in South Africa and Honduras, the Special Court for Sierra Leone, the Nuclear Claims Tribunal of the Republic of the Marshall Islands, and the police archives in Guatemala.
Vladimir Petrović is a Senior Researcher at the Institute of Contemporary History in Belgrade and a Visting Research Professor at Boston University. He earned his M.A. and Ph.D. at the Central European University, Budapest in 2009. Petrović has published extensively, including one monograph in English (The Emergence of Historical Forensic Expertise: Clio Takes the Stand, Routledge, 2017). He is editing a collection of sources, The End of Yugoslavia, currently consisting of six volumes. His current research interests are in the feld of transitional justice, particularly in examining the role of historical narratives in war crimes trials.
Eva-Clarita Pettai has a Ph.D. in Political Science from Free University of Berlin and is Senior Research Associate at the Imre Kertész Kolleg, FriedrichSchiller-University of Jena in Germany. She has published extensively on the politics of memory and transitional justice in post-Soviet Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. In her research she explores the relationship between history, memory, and law as well as memory conficts and resolution. Pettai has authored two books, Transitional and Retrospective Justice in the Baltic States (Cambridge UP, 2015) and Democratizing History in Latvia (Krämer, 2003) as well as edited the volume Memory and Pluralism in the Baltic States (Routledge, 2011).
Gertjan Plets is an Assistant Professor in Cultural Heritage studies at the Department of History and Art History at Utrecht University. He holds a Ph.D. from Ghent University and obtained postdoctoral training in Global Heritage Studies at the Department of Anthropology at Stanford University. Ethnography and anthropological theory stand central in his study of the imbrications between past, present, and politics. Previous publications have investigated heritage politics in the Russian Federation and the role bureaucratic procedures and digital administrative technologies (digital archives, heritage databases, etc.) play in the selective ordering of the past.
Ilaria Porciani teaches Modern and Contemporary History and the History of the Historiography at the University of Bologna. She has been a visiting scholar at Harvard, Berkeley, Berlin, Tübingen, and Fernand Braudel at the European University Institute and fellow of the Italian Academy at Columbia. She has authored over 100 scholarly publications, including two monographs, 13 edited and co-edited volumes and articles in the feld of cultural and intellectual history, history of the universities and of education, nationalism, gender, historiography, and museums. She currently directs the Bologna team of the EU Horizon 2020 research project CoHERE, on food as heritage.
Lutz Raphael is Professor of Contemporary History at the University of Trier. His recent research focuses on the contemporary history of historiography in the time of globalization and the social history of deindustrialization in Western Europe since the 1970s. His recent publications include: (editor and co-author): Poverty and Welfare in Modern German history (New German Historical Perspectives vol. 7, Oxford 2017); together with Beate Althammer and Tamara Stazic-Wendt (eds.): Rescuing the Vulnerable. Poverty, Welfare and Social Ties in Modern Europe (Oxford, 2015).
Erna Rijsdijk holds a Ph.D. from the VU Amsterdam on the topic Lost in Srebrenica: Responsibility and Subjectivity in the Reconstructions of a Failed Peacekeeping Mission. She is currently Lecturer at the Faculty of Military Sciences of the Netherlands Defence Academy. She has published extensively on the memory of Srebrenica and is currently involved in research projects on the memory of Srebrenica, ethics and global politics, and image warfare.
Achim Rohde is a Middle East Historian and Scientifc Coordinator of the research network “Re-Confgurations. History, Remembrance and Transformation Processes in the Middle East and North Africa” (the Centre for Near and Middle Eastern Studies at Philipps-Universität Marburg). Rohde’s research focuses on the contemporary history of the Middle East, specifcally in the feld of education. He is the author of Change and Continuity in Arab Iraqi Education: Sunni and Shi’I Discourses in Iraqi Textbooks Before and After 2003 (2013) and co-editor of The Politics of Education Reform in the Middle East: Self and Other in Textbooks and Curricula (2012).
Stephan Scheuzger is Research Professor of the Swiss National Science Foundation at the Department of History of the University of Bern. He holds a Ph.D. in History from the University of Bern and was habilitated by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. His research interests lie in the feld of global history from the nineteenth to the twenty-frst century, particularly in the areas of the history of human rights and dealing with the past, the history of social control and penal regimes, the history of ethnicity and cultural contacts, the history of Marxism and communism, the history of the relationship between countercultures and politics, and the theory and history of historiography.
Nina Schneider is a Senior Research Fellow at the Global South Study Center (GSSC) at the University of Cologne, and the author of Brazilian Propaganda: Legitimizing an Authoritarian Regime (University Press of Florida, 2014).
Peter Seixas (Ph.D., History, UCLA) is Professor Emeritus in the Faculty of Education at the University of British Columbia. He was the founding director of UBC’s Centre for the Study of Historical Consciousness. His leadership of the pan-Canadian Historical Thinking Project sparked major
changes in provincial school curricula, shaped new history textbooks, and reformed teachers’ professional development practices across Canada and beyond. He has published extensively, including many edited volumes, and received international recognition, including the Canada Research Chair in Historical Consciousness, NCSS’ Exemplary Research Award and its Grambs Career Research Award, the American Studies Association’s Constance Rourke Award, the American Historical Association’s William Gilbert Award, the National Leadership Award of the Ontario History and Social Science Teachers’ Association, UBC’s Killam Faculty Teaching Prize, and (last but not least) the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal for Service to Canada.
Dorothea Staes holds a Master’s degree in law (2008), an advanced Master’s in international relations and diplomacy (2010), and a European Master’s degree from the European Programme in Human Rights and Democratisation in Venice (2011). She is a researcher at the ULB Centre Perelman de Philosophie du Droit and has been at the USL-B Centre interdisciplinaire de recherches constitutionnelles (CIRC) since 2012. In April 2017, she submitted her doctoral thesis, “When the European Court of Human Rights refers to External Instruments. Mapping and Justifcations.” Previous publications concern the ECtHR’s case law and techniques of legal reasoning.
Pietro Sullo is a Visiting Lecturer in International law at the University of Kent (BSIS) and a research associate at the University of Leuven. His main areas of expertise include international human rights law, transitional justice, international criminal law, constitutional transitions, and international refugee law. Dr. Sullo has worked at the Max-Planck-Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law in Heidelberg as a senior researcher in the Sudan Team and as a co-ordinator of the International Research School on Retaliation, Mediation and Punishment. He was the Director of the European Master’s Programme in Human Rights and Democratization (E.MA) in Venice from 2013 to 2015. In 2016 he fnalized a study on the implementation of the EU Dublin III Regulation for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. He has also worked for international NGOs and as a consultant on human rights and transitional justice for the Libya Constitution Drafting Assembly.
Shanti Sumartojo is Vice Chancellor’s Research Fellow in the School of Media and Communication at RMIT University (Melbourne, Australia). Her research investigates how people experience their spatial surroundings, including both material and immaterial aspects, using digital and sensory ethnography and creative practice methodologies. With a particular focus on the built environment and urban public space, this includes ongoing work on memorials and commemorative sites. She is the author of Trafalgar Square and the Narration of Britishness (2013), and co-editor of Nation, Memory,
and Great War Commemoration (2014) and Commemorating Race and Empire in the Great War Centenary (2017).
Patrizia Violi is Full Professor of Semiotics at the University of Bologna, Department of Philosophy and Communication, and Coordinator of the Ph.D. Program in Semiotics. She is the Director of the School of Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the University of Bologna and the Director of TRAME, Interdisciplinary Centre for the Study of Memory and Cultural Traumas (www.trame.unibo.it) at the University of Bologna. Her main areas of research include text analysis, language and gender, semantic theory, and cultural semiotics and traumatic memory, in particular on memorials and memory museums.
Torsten Weber is a historian of modern East Asia and a Senior Research Fellow at the German Institute for Japanese Studies (DIJ Tokyo) where he is Head of the Humanities Section. He holds an M.A. in Chinese Studies from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS, University of London) and a Ph.D. in Japanese Studies from Heidelberg University. His research focuses on the history of Japanese–Chinese relations and interactions from the modern to the contemporary era, including the politics of history and memory. His publications include several articles and book chapters on Japanese and Chinese conceptions of Asia from the nineteenth to the twentyfrst centuries. He is the author of Embracing ‘Asia’ in China and Japan. Asianism Discourse and the Contest for Hegemony, 1912–1933 (Palgrave, 2017).
Ben Wellings is Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Relations at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia and Deputy-Director of the Monash European and EU Centre. His current research interests focus on the international politics of First World War commemoration and the relationship between nationalism, Euroscepticism, and the Anglosphere in the United Kingdom. He is, amongst others, the author of English Nationalism and Euroscepticism: Losing the Peace (Bern: Peter Lang, 2012). Along with Shanti Sumartojo he is co-editor of Nation, Memory and Great War Commemoration: Mobilizing the Past in Europe, Australia and New Zealand (Bern: Peter Lang, 2014).
Niké Wentholt holds a Master of Science degree in Russian and East European Studies from the University of Oxford. She is currently a Ph.D. Researcher at the University of Groningen. Her academic interests range from peace and confict studies to theory of history. Her current Ph.D. project, fnishing in 2019, balances between these by studying how political parties in Bulgaria and Serbia have dealt with the violent past in the context of the European Union accession process in the years 1998–2012.
Christian Wicke is Assistant Professor in Political History at Utrecht University. He is the author of Helmut Kohl’s Quest for Normality: His
Representation of the German Nation and Himself (New York: Berghahn, 2015). He is currently editing a special issue of The Public Historian as well as a Routledge volume on heritage and identity (both with Stefan Berger and Jana Golombek). His most recent publication is “Urban Movement á la Ruhr? The Initiatives for the Preservation of Workers’ Settlements in the 1970s” in Contested Cities (…) edited by Martin Baumeister, Dieter Schott, and Bruno Bonomo (Frankfurt: Campus, 2017).
Eric Wiebelhaus-Brahm earned his Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Colorado at Boulder and is Assistant Professor in the School of Public Affairs and Middle Eastern Studies Coordinator at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. His research interests include transitional justice, human rights, post-confict reconstruction, and democratization. In particular, he is interested in the evaluation of transitional justice mechanisms. His publications have appeared in journals such as the International Journal of Transitional Justice, Journal of Human Rights, and International Studies Perspectives. His most recent book is Truth Commissions and Transitional Societies (2010).
State-Sponsored History After 1945: An Introduction
Berber Bevernage and Nico Wouters
Presenting the handbook
State-sponsored history is not a widely used academic concept or an established feld of study. When used, it is mostly considered in a narrow sense, for example, in a standard association with ‘offcial history.’ With this handbook, we aim to introduce state-sponsored history as a much more diverse and complex series of processes and outcomes of direct and indirect state infuence on the construction of history and public memory (Bodnar 1992). In doing so, we aim to provide the frst systematic integrated analysis of the role that states or state actors have played in these processes since 1945. Engaging the past through diverse practices and institutions has been a constitutive aspect of the phenomenology of the modern state. Managing the circulation of information and ideas about history and even conjuring up the past through public activities such as commemorative rituals, re-enactments or the creation of monuments, often has served to cement the relationship between the state and the nation. In order to analyse this close relationship in a broad sense, we take into account the legislative, executive and judicial functions of the state. Such a broader take on state-sponsored history allows
B. Bevernage (*) Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium
N. Wouters
Belgian Centre for War and Society, Brussels, Belgium
© The Author(s) 2018
B. Bevernage and N. Wouters (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of State-Sponsored History After 1945, https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-349-95306-6_1
us to connect diverse phenomena as well as separate strands of literature related to history and public memory that we believe belong together. This handbook therefore aims to contribute to the study of history and public memory by combining elements of state-focused research in separate felds of study. Looking at the memorial capacities of modern states furthermore allows us to contribute to the study of the state itself. Looking at the state through its broad memorialising capacities adds an analytical perspective that is not often found in classical studies of the state. In order to fulfl this ambition, the handbook has a broad geographical focus and analyses cases from different regions around the world. We mainly look at democratic contexts, although dictatorial regimes are not excluded.
State-Sponsored History?
Offcial history in the narrow sense refers to forms of offcially sanctioned history, often written by historians working in state departments or public functions. The bourgeoning feld of public history, for example, owes a lot to historians working for governments or in public functions (Tyrrell 2005, pp. 153–155; Jordanova 2006, p. 137). In the United States, historians working for the federal government have their own professional society and journal (Society for History in the Federal Government; see Leopold 1977; Hewlett 1978; Kammen 1980, pp. 44–45; Reuss 1986; Graham 1993). In New Zealand state(-related) agencies offer a major source of employment for historians (Dalley and Phillips 2001, p. 10; Dalley 2009). Topics of offcial histories can greatly differ, ranging from military history, histories of government agencies and policies to more general themes of (perceived) public interest. Historians working on offcial histories tend to receive the criticism that they merely execute political agendas. Yet, some have claimed that offcial histories can be intellectually innovative. Offcial military histories in the United States, for example, according to Jeffrey Grey (2003, p. xi), focused on the roles of women and Afro-Americans well before these subjects were studied in mainstream historiography (Grey 2003). Supporters argue that offcial historians sometimes enjoy relatively extensive intellectual autonomy and have the leeway to voice opinions other than those of their employers (Reuss 1986).
Despite the continuing importance of offcial history, state-sponsored history is much broader, varied and, we argue, important. Modern states delegate parts of their functions and responsibilities to individuals and groups which cannot be considered state offcials or personnel. ‘The modern state,’ Matthew Flinders (2006, p. 223) argues, ‘could not function without delegation,’ and this also applies to state-sponsored history. The relation between the modern state and the writing of (national) history has always involved forms of delegation including public–private partnerships. In some states it has been commonplace to leave crucial aspects of the collective relations to the past—including national commemorations, heritage conservation and
archival practices—to private initiative. In these cases the state provides fnancial aid or symbolic sanction rather than taking the direct initiative. The history of the relations between historians and the state in the United States provides an important example (Tyrrell 2005, p. 155). Yet, delegation also occurs in countries with long traditions of state intervention. A prime example is the socalled historical expert commission (see Part IX of this Handbook, Historical Expert Commissions and Commissioned History), often created when states are confronted with diffcult historical issues which demand state initiative but where offcial history would be suspect and counter-productive. Another prime example is the common fnancial and logistical arrangement between the state and universities or research institutes (see Part III of this Handbook, Research Institutes and Policies). To study state-sponsored history we have to include the blurry boundaries between the public and the private and the more indirect, ‘arm’s length,’ forms of governance.
In addition to offcial history, state-sponsored history is also often associated with censorship or offcial denial. State-sanctioned censorship of history has been a widespread phenomenon in the past and there are few indications that this will change in the near future (see De Baets 2002). Censorship, certainly when enforced through intimidation and violence, is arguably the most blunt and disabling way in which states commonly intervene in the formation of history and public memory. In its most clear-cut form we encounter this in authoritarian or totalitarian regimes. Yet, as complex a phenomenon as statesponsored history should not be reduced entirely to its most extreme manifestations. Indeed, forms of (self-)censorship, for strategic reasons of funding, for example, are quite common in democratic regimes as well.
In its broad approach, this handbook addresses restraining or disabling as well as constructive or enabling aspects of state-sponsored history. States can indeed be deeply involved in politics of historical denial and can severely violate academic freedom. Yet, states also have been, and still are, of crucial importance in the creation and protection of academic freedom or autonomy through legislation, funding and logistics. This can shelter academics from the direct demands by market forces, ruling classes or partisan groups. Investments by states in academic research and higher education, of course, also often come with demands and therefore with a price. As Pierre Bourdieu (1994, p. 3) argues for the social sciences (and by extension for the humanities):
History attests that the social sciences can increase their independence from the pressures of social demand … only by increasing their reliance upon the state. And thus they run the risk of losing their autonomy from the state, unless they are prepared to use against the state the (relative) freedom that it grants them.1
The autonomy of academia vis-à-vis the state is always relative and differs from case to case (Neave 1982; Neave and Van Vught 1991). Yet, because
most modern states claim to impartially represent the general interests of their citizens (rather than the specifc interests of any particular group), they often have a certain ‘interest to disinterestedness’ (Bourdieu 1994, p. 18), even if only nominally. This can be used as leverage by academics to stress the social and political importance for the state of their profession, which they often claim to be based on the values of autonomy, impartiality and disinterested objectivity. Keeping a close relationship with the state can in many cases be attractive to academics, because they want to share in its authority, access its resources or contribute to the perceived general interest.
States can also deploy their enabling capacities in policies of counterdenial. They can do this, for example, by offcially acknowledging certain events or even by actively granting a specifc moral status to particular pasts. Contemporary victim or survivor groups, indeed, frequently turn towards the state in their struggles for memory and against denial. Memory activists often demand offcial acknowledgment, the offcial recognition by states or stateactors of specifc knowledge or value claims.2 As Peter Gray and Oliver Kendrick (2001, p. 13) argue, the state ‘remains for many the ultimate arbiter of the status of a particular memory.’
In short, one who considers the complex relationship between academia and the state merely in terms of a ‘freedom versus servitude,’ or the equally complex relationship between memory activists and the state merely in terms of ‘resistance versus domination,’ will miss important dimensions of statesponsored history.
Finally, state-sponsored history can be approached in very general terms as both a mechanism or process and as the outcome or product of this. This handbook focuses on both dimensions. As a process, state-sponsored history refers to a complex series of practices that can take multiple shapes in different regime types. It occurs when different levels of state power or state actors actively (but not necessarily overtly) initiate or intervene in the construction of history and public memory. We could call this the memorialising state.
As a product, state-sponsored history refers frst to the concrete and direct (intended or unintended) results yielded by state initiatives, intervention or infuence. Such a direct result can be anything, ranging from textbooks and historical publications to memory laws, memorials and public apologies. Second, it also refers to the more indirect (intended or unintended) results, which manifest themselves in less concretely visible but often also more durable forms of historical (meta)narratives (Somers 1994) or memory regimes (Kubik and Bernhard 2014). These (meta)narratives and memory regimes are not only sponsored by the state but are also regularly about the state, in the sense that they actively construct or reinforce certain representations of the state. This we can call the memorialised state.3
Some Preliminary Comments on the Concept of the State
This volume is not a contribution to state theory and does not aim to offer a defnition or an overarching theory about the nature, boundaries and
workings of the state. However, some preliminary conceptual remarks about how we use the concept of state are necessary. Defning ‘the state’ remains notoriously diffcult. As Bob Jessop (2013, p. 339) writes:
Is the state best defned by its legal form, its coercive capacities, its institutional composition and boundaries, its internal operations and modes of calculation, its declared aims, its functions for the broader society or its sovereign place in the international system? Is it a thing, a subject, a social relation, or simply a construct which helps to orientate political action?
Many scholars have declared the retreat of the state (Strange 1996) in the context of neoliberal politics and economic globalisation. The globalised world after 1945, according to some commentators, has been an era in which states and state-actors were ‘overgrown by other forms of organisation: issue‐based networks, collective security arrangements, global markets, new political forms such as the EU, and political processes segmented by policy arenas’ (Warren 2008, p. 384). Undoubtedly, the power of states and their infuence on social relations have become less clear after 1945. State functions and powers have been delegated upwards (supranational institutions), sideways (civil society organisations, the market) and downwards (subnational levels and organisations; Biebricher 2013). Appropriating the language of Michel Foucault, some have defended a shift in research focus from states and governments to more decentred forms of ‘governmentality’ (as discussed in Dean and Villadsen 2016). They stress that distinctions between state and other social spheres are neither natural nor static. Some have even questioned whether it still makes sense to use the concept of ‘the state’ in societies with such highly dispersed power relations.
This handbook starts from the premise that the state should indeed not be treated as a ‘thing’ with clearly defned and fxed boundaries. Rather it should be seen as a loose set of entities and practices which can function in profoundly different ways depending on the historical, sociocultural or institutional context. Modern states include (or exclude) different apparatuses, spheres and people with different aims (Biebricher 2013). When using the term ‘the state’, we refer to this diversity of entities and practices. Yet, despite this ‘polymorphous’ and ‘polycontextual’ nature of the modern state (Jessop 2015, p. 44) the central claim of this handbook is that states and state actors continued to play an important role in the production of history and public memory after 1945, perhaps even increasingly so, and they therefore remain viable objects of academic study. In short, this handbook does not dwell on the question of what the state actually is or how it should be defned. Rather we focus on particular state capacities and functions. Our focus is both on the memorialising state, or the various ways in which states, successfully or unsuccessfully, mobilise their power and resources to create particular histories and memory regimes as well as on the memorialised state, or the multiple results and outcomes of these state interventions and
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Vse 1. This may serve to informe us, not to think that wicked and profane and Atheisticall men do speak from any reason or judgement, when they scoffe at religion. For they are beasts in their life, and therefore they have also beastly imaginations, which they are wont to bring forth under a shew of reason.
2. To admonish us, in shunning profane and blasphemous opinions and imaginations, to beware especially of a wicked life, because it makes way for all wicked opinions.
Doctrine ♦5. That is proper to wicked and prophane men, in some sort to deny the comming of the Lord, and his judgement.
♦ “V” replaced with “5” for consistency
This is gathered from verse 4. at the beginning.
Reason. Because the expectation of judgement is a strong bridle to restraine and keep in the wickednesse of men, which ungodly and profane men do most of all desire to shake off.
Vse. This may serve to admonish us, by all means to take heed, that we be not any way partakers of that impiety: which comes to passe not only then when we do utterly deny his comming, but also when we do either make any doubt of it, or apprehend it as a thing far off from us, or do ineffectually think of it, not edifying our selves in faith and obedience.
Doctrine 6. The fallacy wherewith wicked and profane men do deceive themselves, consists therein, that they will believe nothing above their senses, and do oppose their sense against the testimony of God.
This is gathered verse 4. at the end. For since the Fathers, &c.
Reason. Because they are sensuall men, Iude, verse 19. and are led by sense and sensible things, like as bruit beasts.
Vse 1 This may serve for information: hence we may understand that the contradictions of profane men are void of all reason, and therefore are to be contemned with detestation. Nothing can be more contrary or mad, then to consult with nature about supernaturall things, and to fetch the judgement of spirituall things from sense.
2. To admonish us, not to attribute any thing to our senses in matters of faith. For it is all one, as if we should seek the judgement of reason amongst bruit beasts.
Verse 5. For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water, and in the water,
Verse 6. Whereby the world, that then was, being overflowed with water, perished.
Verse 7. But the heavens and the earth which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgement, and perdition of ungodly men.
The Analysis.
In the refutation of this profane opinion, the Apostle doth first reprove the ignorance of these profane men, verse 5,6,7. Secondly, he doth instruct the faithfull touching the comming of the Lord in those things, that did most pertaine to the confirmation of them in the truth against such temptations that might arise from such humane cavillings, verse 8,9,10. The Apostle reproves their ignorance, 1. From the cause, that it was voluntary or affected ignorance. 2. From the object, namely that truth, which they willingly were ignorant of, and did oppugne. Now that truth which is affirmed contradicts that assertion, whereby these men would confirme their opinion. For when they had said it, and had brought it for an argument, that all things did continue in the same estate from the beginning of the creation, the Apostle denies this, and shewes the contrary by the history of the flood, verse 6. then by comparing
things alike, he gathers that the same also is to be expected concerning the destruction of the world by fire at the comming of the Lord, that was before in some sort performed by the destruction of it in water, verse 7. 3. The reason of this consequence is taken from the common cause of creation, preservation, and both destructions of the world, namely, the word & will of God, verse 5,7. 4. He doth illustrate the conclusion it selfe concerning the destruction of the world by the end thereof, that it may withall be applyed unto those wicked ones, with whom he now dealt, verse 7. at the end, while he cals the day of the Lord the day of judgement, and perdition of ungodly men. For in these words he threatens eternall damnation unto those profane men, that denied his comming, wᶜʰ must certainly be expected at the comming of the Lord.
The Doctrines arising herehence.
Doctrine 1. It is the property of wicked men to be willingly ignorant of all things, that crosse their lusts.
This is gathered from these words: They willingly are ignorant of. All men are ignorant of many things, but the faithfull are not ignorant of those things that are necessary for them unto salvation, nor do they please themselves in the ignorance of any truth, much lesse in the ignorance of those things that pertaine unto the practise of religion: nay they do very much labour for this knowledge, whereby they may be brought unto eternall life: but the wicked, although they do very much desire to know other things, yea and are too curious in it, yet they love to be ignorant of those things that pertaine to the bridling of their lusts and reproving of their sins. This is that ignorance which is called voluntary and affected.
Reason 1. Because they affect those vices whereunto this knowledge is repugnant. Therefore they eschew knowledge as a thing that is evill unto them, and makes against them; and affect ignorance as a thing that is good for them and very well agreeing with them. For he that hath resolved with himselfe to give his mind unto sin, and to continue therein, seekes to have peace and
quietnesse in that condition, and therefore abhorres that truth which convinceth his conscience of sin, and suffers him not to sleep in it.
2. Because he is given unto those lusts that stop up the way unto saving knowledge, and hold him ensnared and intangled so that he cannot freely endeavour and labour for true knowledge: therefore he affects ignorance in this respect, not so much in it selfe, as in the cause of it.
Vse 1. This may serve to convince those, that please themselves in the ignorance of holy things, because this is the property of a wicked man.
2. To admonish us, never to shut our eyes against the light of the truth.
3. To exhort us, on the contrary to use all our endeavour and give all diligence to gaine knowledge, especially in those things that pertaine to our own practise and life.
Doctrine 2. It makes verie much for the taking away or lessening of our ignorance, to look upon the works of God that are past, that from them we may gather the works that are to come.
This is gathered from the comparison that is here made, verse 5,6,7.
Reason. Because the works of God are as looking-glasses, wherein Gods sufficiency and efficiency are proposed unto us to behold.
Vse. This may serve to admonish us, not to look slightly upon the works of God, nor to read the histories of them as we read humane histories, but so, that we may alwayes behold God in them.
Doctrine 3. Those publick works of God, the creation, preservation, and destruction of the world, first by water, secondly by
fire, are often to be meditated upon, and compared one with the other.
This is gathered from the same comparison.
Reason. Because God hath proposed those, as very remarkable arguments, to worke some sense at least of religion in mens minds.
Vse. This may serve to exhort us, to exercise our selves in these meditations, which God hath commended unto all sorts of men.
Doctrine 4. In all such works of God, that is especially to be considered, that they are by the word of God, and do depend thereupon.
This is gathered from verse 5,7.
Reason. Because we can receive no benefit by meditating upon Gods works, unlesse we do behold the perfection of God in them. Now the perfection of God in his works doth very much appeare therein, that all things are done by his word and according to his will.
Vse. This may serve to admonish us, to turne our eyes from all second causes, and to acknowledge God and his word in all things. For thence it comes to passe, that men often times attribute those things unto fortune, which are done by God, because they are ignorant of the power of Gods word. And such an opposition there seems to be in the text, betwixt the words of the wicked, (when they say that all things continue, making no mention in the mean time of God, by whose power they continue; but rather closely attributing this continuance to fortune or second causes,) and that assertion of the Apostle, whereby he affirmes that the world was at first by Gods word, and is kept by the same word:
Doctrine 5. Every consideration of the works of God should be applyed to the comfort of the faithfull, and terrour of the wicked.
This is gathered from verse 7. at the end.
Verse 8. But (beloved) be not ignorant of this one thing, that one day is with the Lord as a thousand yeares, and a thousand yeares as one day.
Verse 9. The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, (as some men count slacknesse) but is long-suffering to us ward, not willing that any should perish; but that all should come to repentance.
Verse 10. But the day of the Lord will come as a thiefe in the night, in the which the heavens shall passe away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also; and the works that are therein shall be burnt up.
The Analysis.
In this other ♦part of the refutation the Apostle propoundeth unto the godly and faithfull those things that might establish and confirme their hearts in the truth, touching the comming of the Lord. 1. Therefore he perswades them to understanding and knowledge, contrary to the ignorance of the wicked. For whereas he had spoken before of the wicked, this they are willingly ignorant of, now turning to the faithfull he exhorts them unto the contrary. But be not you ignorant of this one thing. 2. He propounds the thing it selfe, which he would have them in a speciall manner to understand and observe, which containes two things. 1. That the prolonging of the Lords comming is not with that slacknesse, which should be a stumbling-block to any man, both because it is not to be judged of according to our sense, but by the eternity of God, in respect whereof that space of time, which seemes very long unto us, is but as one day, verse 8. and also because the end of this prolonging is the conversion and salvation of sinners: and therefore this prolonging proceeds not so much from slacknesse, as from patience, verse 9. 2. That the manner of his comming, (both because it shall be sudden, and also because it shall be with majesty and great terrour,) is such, that it should rather make men carefull to prepare
themselves for it, then to be curious in inquiring about the time it selfe, or to complaine of slacknesse.
♦ “patt” replaced with “part”
The Doctrines arising herehence.
Doctrine 1. When wicked and profane men are reproved, refuted and condemned in Scripture, this is done for the faithfull and elects sake, whose edification and salvation God hath respect unto, even when he seemes to speak unto others.
This is gathered from the beginning of verse 8. where the Apostle turning himselfe directly unto the faithfull, shewes that these wicked men were refuted for their good. So 2 Thessalonians 2.13. Iude verse 20. 1 Timothy 6.11. 2 Timothy 3.14.
Reason 1. Because the whole Scripture and all the meanes of salvation do by a speciall kind or propriety belong unto the faithfull.
2. Because God will not have his word to passe without some fruit: Now wicked men are oftentimes so fore-lorne, that no congruous fruit can be expected in them, but only in the faithfull.
Vse 1. This may serve to informe us, to judge aright of Gods intention in those things that he doth about men that are past all hope and incorrigible. For as the Apostle saith of Oxen, that God taketh not care for Oxen, but for men; so should we think that God taketh not care so much for these bestiall men, as for the faithfull and elect whom he doth chiefly speak unto even when he seemes to speak unto others.
2. To admonish us, not to neglect or despise such rebukings of the wicked, as if they did nothing belong unto us, but wisely to turne it to our own use.
Doctrine 2. The faithfull do then profit by the word of God, which is against the wicked, when they are become much unlike the wicked.
This is gathered therehence, that whereas the Apostle did reprove the wicked of ignorance, he doth now exhort the faithfull to knowledge, Proverbs 1.15.
Reason. Because the courses and fashions of the wicked are therefore set forth unto us, that we might avoid them.
Vse. This may serve to admonish us, not to suffer our selves to be led away by the example of the wicked multitude. For God doth not propose it as a thing to be followed, but to be shunned and avoided.
Doctrine 3. We should in a singular manner differ from the wicked therein, that we judge of the wayes of God not according to the sense of the flesh, but according to the nature of God.
This is gathered from these words: One day with the Lord. With men it is otherwise.
Reason. Because spirituall things are to be judged of spiritually. Now all the wayes of God are in some sort spirituall and divine.
Vse. This may serve to reprove those, that in such examinations are wont to consult with flesh and blood, and not with the word of God.
Doctrine 4. The end of all Gods wayes, as they have respect unto men, is the repentance and salvation of the godly.
This is gathered from verse 9. Now here ariseth a question.
Question. Whether all and every particular man be meant thereby, when it is said, that God is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance?
Answer The patience of God according to its nature hath that use and end, to lead all sinners unto repentance, Romans 2.4. and in that sense might their interpretation be admitted, who understand these words and the like of all and every particular man: But that the Apostle in this place hath speciall reference to the elect, it appears thereby, that he speaking of the beloved of God, verse 8. and reckoning himselfe amongst the number of us, saith, that God is long-suffering to us-ward, that is, towards those beloved, and is not willing that any should perish, that is, any of them: because Gods principall work towards men is the salvation of the faithfull, and therefore all his wayes tend thereunto, as unto the scope and mark whereunto they are directed.
Vse 1. This may serve to reprove the madnesse of those men that blame those things in God, which make most for their use and good, as these men do in the slacknesse of the Lords comming.
2. To admonish us, not to pervert these right wayes of God, but alwayes to apply them unto that use whereunto they tend, that is, to the furtherance of our own repentance and salvation.
Doctrine 5. The way of the Lord, when he commeth to judgement, shall be with swiftnesse, majesty and terrour.
This is gathered from verse 10.
First, it shall be sudden, because the houre and day thereof is not revealed, and because the most part of men expect no such thing. And it shall be full of majestie and terror, because it is the comming of the Lord not in humility, as his first comming was, but in glory.
Use. This may serve to admonish us, to prepare our selves accordingly against this comming of the Lord. For this use the Apostle presseth and exhorteth us unto in the rest of the chapter.
Verse 11. Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and
godlinesse,
Verse 12. Looking for, and hasting unto the comming of the day of God, wherein the heavens being on fire, shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat?
Verse 13. Neverthelesse, we according to his promise, looke for new heavens, and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousnesse.
Verse 14. Wherefore (beloved) seeing that ye look for such things, be diligent, that ye may be found of him in peace, without spot, and blamelesse.
Verse 15. And account, that the long suffering of the Lord is salvation, even as our beloved brother Paul also, according to the wisdome given unto him, hath written unto you.
Verse 16. As also in all his Epistles, speaking in them of these things, in which are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned, and unstable, wrest, as they do also the other Scriptures, unto their own destruction.
Verse 17. Ye therefore beloved, seeing ye know these things before, beware lest ye also being led away with the error of the wicked, fall from your own stedfastnesse.
Verse 18. But grow in grace, and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ: to him be glory, both now and for ever, Amen.
The Analysis.
In these verses is contained an application of the doctrine, that was before propounded concerning the Lords comming, to the use and edification of the faithfull. Now this application is made by an exhortation to piety and holinesse, which is first of all propounded, verse 11. Secondly, confirmed by the doctrine that was before proposed concerning the manner of the Lords comming, verse
12,13. Thirdly, it is againe repeated and pressed, verse 14. Fourthly it is againe confirmed by the doctrine that was before proposed concerning the patience and long-suffering of God, verse 15. begin. which is in this place confirmed by the testimony of the Apostle Paul: whose testimony is illustrated, 1. Thereby, that he was frequent in such testimonies, verse 16. begin. 2. By a preoccupation, whereby the faithfull are admonished not rashly to wrest any thing that Paul spake concerning such things, to a contrary sense, because although he spake some things that are hard to be understood, yet they are such that they are not wont to be wrested, but by some perverse men, who wrest the other Scriptures also unto their own destruction. From all these he inferres in the last place a conclusion both of the fore-going exhortation, and also of the whole Epistle, which is, to have a care to be stedfast, verse 17. and to labour for growth, verse 18. The end whereof is shewed to be the glory of Christ in that doxology, wherewith the whole Epistle is closed up.
The Doctrines arising herehence.
Doctrine 1. All Scripture must be applyed unto a practicall use, that it may advance holinesse and piety.
This is gathered from verse 11. Now not only in this place is this order of instruction observed, but in all the Epistles and Sermons that are propounded in Scripture.
Reason 1. Because the end of all Theologicall doctrine is to live well.
2. Because a bare apprehension and speculation of the truth, and a meere assent thereunto, is nothing worth, if it be separated from the practise. For this is found in some sort in the devils themselves.
3. Because the temptations of the Devill tend chiefly thereunto, that if he cannot hide the truth, yet so to choak it, that it can bring forth no fruit in the life; and thereupon he takes occasion to mock and deride men.
Use. This may serve to admonish us all, to labour for this both in private and in publike, in preaching, hearing, reading, and meditating upon Gods word; and never think that we know any thing as we ought to know, unlesse we know it unto piety and holinesse.
Doctrine 2. In piety and holinesse we must alwayes aime at and labour for the highest perfection.
This is gathered 1. From the question, What manner of persons ought ye to be? 2. From the plurall number, which is used in the originall, ἐν ἀναστροφαῖς, in your conversations, that is, in all piety and holinesse.
Reason 1. Because every degree of piety and holinesse is as desirable in it selfe as the first is.
2. Our desire and affection towards the highest degree of holinesse and piety is a part of the very first degree. For there is no true holinesse without a desire of perfect holinesse.
3. Because we are called unto perfect holinesse, neither can we see God without it.
Vse. This may serve to reprove those, that rest in a kind of lukewarme profession, or in a partiall practise of piety and holinesse.
Doctrine 3. It makes much for the advancing of piety; to look for and hasten unto the ♦comming of the day of the Lord.
♦ “commming” replaced with “comming”
This is gathered from verses 12,14. So Philippians 3.20.
Reason 1. Because it takes off our minds from all those things, that belong unto this present world.
2. Because it makes us to prepare our selves for the world to come, 1 Iohn 3.3.
Use. This may serve to exhort us, to raise up our minds, as much as may be unto this spirituall looking for the Lord.
Doctrine 4. Our chiefest care touching the comming of the Lord, should be, to be found of him in peace.
This is gathered from verse 14. Now by peace is meant that condition which is pleasing unto God and approved of him; whereupon not the anger, but the goodnesse and grace of the Lord is shewed in communicating all happinesse.
Reason 1. Because the Lord is looked for, as the supreme Judge, whose anger is to be flyed from and avoided, and his approbation and good liking greatly to be sought for.
2. Because unlesse peace be then had, afterwards it cannot be had for ever.
Vse. This may serve to exhort us, while we live here, continually to seek to confirme our peace with God, and in our own consciences. Now this is done by raising up in our selves a lively faith and confidence, establishing our hearts with all assurance of salvation, and following all those means whereby our calling and election is made sure.
Doctrine 5. From the long-suffering of God we must gather those things which make for the promoting of our peace and salvation.
This is gathered from verse 15. For when the Apostle tels us, that we should account, that the long suffering of the Lord is salvation, he means that we should so think ♦with our selves and dispute of these things, that we should gather nothing else from thence, but that God aimes at our salvation, and therefore we also should take great care of it.
♦ “wich” replaced with “with”
Reason. Because by these meditations we should confirme and increase both our faith and our sanctification. For our reasonings and disputes, when they are rightly directed either by the word, or by the works of God, as by a third argument, to the strengthning of our faith and increase of holinesse, as unto a conclusion drawne from thence; they are those morall means whereby we work out our salvation with feare and trembling.
Vse. This may serve to exhort us, to exercise our selves more and more in such meditations: for being accustomed thereunto, from them we shall gather honey and medicine, whence others suck poyson; as we may see in this example, wherefrom the Lords prolonging of his comming the wicked men did conclude those things whereby they might confirme their profane opinions; but the faithfull are taught on the contrary, by the same argument to conclude those things, which make much for their salvation. Such is the Apostles admonition, Romans 6.12.
Doctrine 6. In the writings of the Apostles and Prophets, Christians must have a speciall heed to those things, which do most direct them to such connexions or conclusions.
This is gathered from verse 15. Where Pauls testimony is cited to confirme & illustrate this connexion, & not to prove other things, which might easily be proved out of his writings.
Reason 1. Because these are most necessary for us to know, and of perpetuall use.
2. Because that was the wisdome of God communicated to the Apostles and Prophets, that they might explaine these truths unto us most frequently, and clearly, which is the reason of that elogy which is given unto Paul in the text, according to the wisdome given unto him he hath written unto us.
Vse. This may serve to reprove those, that doe more willingly by far give heed unto those things, which do little or nothing at all touch the conscience of a man, or the practise of his life. The inward inclination and disposition of a man appeares manifestly by those things which he doth chiefly heed in his reading and hearing: As if a man be given only to the tongues, he will observe nothing but the words and phrases: If he be a lover of Chronology, he will take notice of nothing but the things that have beene done, and the moments of time wherein they were done: If he be a Disputer, one that seeketh praise by arguing, he will marke nothing, but those things which make for controversies: so a godly man, although he will not neglect other things, which serve for his use, yet he doth chiefly fix his mind upon those things, which do most directly tend unto godlinesse.
Doctrine 7. We must understand all these things so, as if they were directly written unto us.
This is gathered from these words, Hath written unto us. So Hebrews 12.5.
Reason 1. Because such was the wisdome of God, which spake in these holy men, that they wrote those things which do belong unto us as well as unto those that lived at that time.
2. Because God would have the Scripture to be the publick instrument of the Church, not of one age only, but of all ages. Therefore every part of it is the rule of life both to me and thee, as well as unto those to whom it was first given.
Vse 1. This may serve to admonish us, not so much to meddle in the Scriptures, as if we were in another mans ground, or in those things which belong unto others, and not unto our selves.
2. To exhort us, to raise up our minds to receive the word of God with a congruous affection. We may easily think with our selves how our minds would be affected, if we should receive a letter that was written by the hand of God in heaven, and directed unto us by name,
and sent unto us by one of his Angels: after the same manner should we be affected in reading and hearing the written word of God.
Doctrine 8. In other truths that are lesse necessary for us to know, there are some things hard to be understood.
This is gathered from verse 16. He doth not say this of all Pauls Epistles, nor of any one whole Epistle, much lesse of the whole Scripture, (as the Patrons of traditions, and Enemies of Scripture would have it,) but of some few things. And he seemes to point chiefly at some of those things, which Paul wrote concerning the comming of the Lord, because he speaks of that in this place, & therefore it is very likely that he hath reference unto those things which are spoken of, 2 Thessalonians 2.2.
Reason 1. Because there are some divine mysteries so farre remote from us, that in what words soever they be expressed, they will alwayes be hard to be understood.
2. Because God would have some things, that are not of so generall and necessary a use, out of his singular wisdome to be more obscurely propounded: which seemes to be the proper reason, why those things of Antichrist, 2 Thessalonians 2. were in the Primitive Church hard to be understood. For God would for just causes, that Antichrist should come, and that most men should be ignorant who he was, untill he did come.
3. God would exercise the industry and diligence of the faithfull in searching the Scriptures, and finding out the sense and meaning of them, not to deter men from reading them, as the Papists use to do, by wresting this argument amisse. For Peter in this place doth not discourage so much as the ♦ common sort of the faithfull from reading the Scriptures, but rather stirs them up to read all the Epistles of Paul, although he tels them that there are some things in them that must be read warily.
♦ “comon” replaced with “common”
Vse 1. This may serve to admonish us, not to think it sufficient that we know the words of the Scripture, but to give all diligence and labour to find out the true sense and meaning of them.
2. To comfort us, that we should not be too much cast down, if we do not fully understand some things in the Scripture, because we are told that there are some things hard to be understood.
Doctrine 9. They are unlearned and unstable men, that wrest the Scripture to maintaine their impiety.
For that the Apostle means, when he saith that they wrest the Scriptures to their own destruction; not that it is such an exceeding dangerous thing to interpret some place of Scripture otherwise then it should be, but that it is the property of a very wicked man to argue out of the word of God against God, or against his will. Now they are called unlearned, not because they have no skill in the tongues or arts, wherein such pestiferous men may sometimes excell; but because they never effectually learned or were taught those things which pertaine unto religion: And in the like manner are they called unstable, because in that knowledge of the truth which they had and professed, they were not grounded and rooted, but as men not grounded nor setled they are easily turned from their profession.
Vse. This may serve for admonition, that the people should not therefore be deterred from reading the Scriptures, as the Papists would have it, (who in this very thing shew themselves to be unlearned and unstable, because they do mischievously wrest this place, where they are expresly told, with how great danger it is wont to be done:) but that we should labour to cast off all ignorance and unsteadfastnesse, that so we may be made fit to read the Scriptures with profit. For this is the scope of the admonition, as the Apostle useth it in this place.
Doctrine 10. The end and scope of all divine information and instruction in respect of the faithfull is, that they may be stablished and grow in that grace which they have received.
This is gathered therehence, that this is the conclusion of this generall Epistle, as it was of the former; which holds good also in all other Epistles and Sermons, in respect of those that are now faithfull:
Reason. Because by their effectual calling they have faith, hope, and charity begotten in them, so that they have the principle of all grace in them, nor can any thing be wanting besides the continuation, confirmation, and increase of the same grace.
Doctrine 11. To obtaine stedfastnesse in grace there is required a fore-knowledge of those things that tend to the confirming and strengthening of our minds.
This is gathered from these words: Seeing ye know these things before.
Reason. Because although our stedfastnes depends upon God, and the effectuall operation of his Spirit, as it is in the conclusion of the 1 Peter 5.10. Yet God worketh in us not only by a reall efficacy, but also agreeable to an intelligent nature, by teaching and perswading. Now nothing can be wrought by this morall way, unlesse knowledge go before, and so it must be wrought by knowledge, as it is in the text.
Vse 1. This may serve to refute the Papists, who maintaine ignorance and commend it in the common people: they are sufficiently refuted by him, from whom they boast that they have received the Chaire, free from all error. For Peter in this place, 1. Requires knowledge of all the faithfull, yea, and fore-knowledge too of those things whereby they might be confirmed against profane men and false teachers. 2. He presupposeth that all that were truly faithfull to whom this Epistle came, were already endued with this knowledge. 3. He presupposeth that his Epistles were so cleare and so easie to be understood that all the faithfull which should read
them with godly minds, might understand out of them, and consequently out of the Scriptures, those things, whereby they being forewarned, might be fore-armed against those false deceivers whereof he spake.
2. To admonish us, not so to look for our confirmation, and strengthening from God, as that we should in the meane time neglect the knowledge of those things that tend thereunto, but to use all our endeavour both in generall to know those things that are absolutely necessary unto salvation, and in particular, those things that are necessary for us in our practise upon occasion of any temptation.
Doctrine 12. Besides knowledge there is required also unto the stedfastnesse of grace a continuall and vigilant heed.
This is gathered from this word, Beware
Reason 1. Because knowledge is unprofitable, if it be not reduced to practise. Now practise in difficult things cannot be had without care and heed.
2. Because many are the fallacies wherewith we are assaulted, both in the Devill and his instruments that are without us, and in our selves also, by reason of that marvellous deceitfulnesse of our hearts, such as cannot be expressed.
Vse. This may serve to exhort us, above all to take notice of our selves, and those things that tend to the strengthning and stablishing of us in grace.
Doctrine 13. It should be an argument to the faithfull to beware of the errors of some men, because they are wicked men, ungodly, and profane.
This is gathered from that title, the error of the wicked.
Reason. Because all those things that have any agreement with ungodlinesse are to be shunned and avoided. Now those things that are in a speciall manner approved of by profane men, must necessarily have an agreement with profane ungodlinesse.
Vse. This may serve to admonish us, by this means amongst others to strengthen our selves against divers errors, that are most pleasing to profane men.
Doctrine 14. ♦Stedfastnesse and increase of grace are joyned together.
♦ “Sedfastnesse” replaced with “Stedfastnesse”
This is gathered from the connexion of verse 17. with the 18.
Reason 1. Because like as trees and all plants, and also living creatures, from which this metaphor is taken, are corroborated by growth, while they acquire greater and perfecter strength, so also do the faithfull.
2. Because the stedfastnesse of grace consists not therein, that it continues in the same degree, but that it is formed in its nature, one property whereof of is, to grow untill it come to perfection.
Use. This may serve to exhort us, to labour therefore to be so stablished, that we may also grow and increase in all grace.
Doctrine 15. They grow in grace, that grow in the effectuall knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Iesus Christ.
See Chapter 1. Verse 2.
Doctrine 16. Our end and desire in all things, even in those things that pertaine to our own salvation, should be the eternall glory of God in Christ.
