The campaigns in universities across the world to reject,
rename and remove historic benefactions have brought the present into collision
with the past. In Britain the attempt to remove a statue of one of Oxford's
most famous benefactors, the imperialist Cecil Rhodes, has spread to other
universities and their benefactors, and now also affects civic monuments and
statues in towns and cities across the country. In the United States, memorials
to leaders of the Confederacy in the American Civil War and to other
slaveholders have been the subject of intense dispute. Should we continue to
honour benefactors and historic figures whose actions are now deemed ethically
unacceptable? How can we reconcile the views held by our ancestors with those
we now hold today? Should we even try, acknowledging, in the words of the
novelist L. P. Hartley, that 'the past is another country; they do things
differently there'?
The essays in this interdisciplinary collection are drawn
from a conference at the Institute of Historical Research in the University of
London. Historians, fundraisers, a sociologist and a museum director examine
these current issues from different perspectives, with an introductory essay by
Sir David Cannadine, president of the British Academy. Together they explore an
emerging conflict between the past and present, history and ideology, and
benefactors and their critics.
