We live in an age of apology and recrimination. Over the past two decades, theworld has witnessed an unprecedented outpouring of expressions of contrition bypolitical leaders for past injustices their countries are held responsible for.At the same time, there has been an upsurge in demands for apologies,restitution, and a variety of forms of compensation on the behalf of groups andnations that feel they have been victimized. The Federal Republic of Germany maywell be the paradigmatic example of this trend. More than sixty years after theend of World War II, it continues to wrestle with the legacies of the ThirdReich, offering long-overdue compensation to the hundreds of thousands of formerslave laborers while arguing with the governments of Poland and the CzechRepublic over how to commemorate the millions of ethnic Germans who were drivenout of Eastern Europe in the aftermath of the war. Germany might seem a specialcase in this regard, burdened as it is by an especially terrible history. Yetother examples abound: the bitter disputes between Russia and its neighbors overhow to view the Soviet Union, the disagreement between Israelis and Palestiniansover whether the Arab population in Israel had fled or were driven from theirhomes in 1947, or repeated accusations in Asia that Japan has failed toapologize adequately for its history of atrocity and aggression before 1945, andthe list could well be extended almost ad infinitum.

That the past and how it is represented is of political importance is nothingnew. Rulers have long realized George Orwell's dictum, “Who controls thepast controls the future; who controls the present controls the past.”What is novel about the current situation, however, is the degree to whichhistory and memory have become contested, both domestically and internationally.In the past, states, by and large, have been able to promote laudatorydepictions of their history by suppressing or driving under ground dissident,critical narratives, at least in the realm of public discourse. Under the modernWestphalian system of juridically independent, sovereign states, governmentswere given the right to do so without interference from outside actors. Yet inmany liberal democracies, the dark and negative aspects of their nationalhistory have today become accepted, even required, parts of how the past isdepicted.