Malaysia: the making of a grand design

Anthony Stockwell is Professor of Imperial and Commonwealth History at Royal Holloway, University of London. He was President of the Royal Asiatic Society in 2002–2003 and is currently a Vice-President. His publications include British Policy and Malay Politics during the Malayan Union Experiment (1979) and, as editor, British Documents on End of Empire: Malaya, 1942–1957 (three parts, 1995). He has been joint editor of the Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History since 1990. This is a version of a lecture delivered to the Royal Society for Asian Affairs on 26 February 2003.     

When discourse trumps policy: Transitional justice in unified Germany

Attempts at realising transitional justice can be divided broadly into legal-administrative and truth-telling measures. Whereas criminal trials, vetting, and restitution procedures target specific groups and tend to be short-lived, history lessons try to shape historical and political identities, with long-term implications. Most literature on transitional justice tends to focus on either one or the other, but, using the example of the former East Germany, I call attention to their interaction, which is crucial for understanding the dynamics of dealing with the communist past. In the early 1990s, reckoning with the past turned into a major preoccupation, but, soon, demands for transitional justice were overwhelmed by demands for economic and social justice and matters of identity. The legal outcome was more moderate than could have been anticipated at the beginning of the process and was ultimately defied by an equally important and comprehensive political discourse; with time, history lessons claimed center stage. Their discourse privileged retribution over reconciliation and left more potent legacies than legal-administrative restraint.