Thank you Greg for your questions: the results of application of the idea of
responsibility to your historical knowledge.
If I understand you right the background thought of your message means
impossibility to make correct juridical judgement in the field of long-term
world history. I agree, but nobody appealed to initiate juridical
processes for historical blaming!
The specifics of MORAL historical responsibility is that only descendants
theirseves can and should make a moral choice, i.e. 1) to accept or to
reject responsibility for the historical harm brought by their ancestors to
other peoples,
2) if accept it, then how to compensate this harm to contemporaines
i.e.to those who still experience this harm or who are descendants of previous
victims.
From external viewpoint it seems quiet natural to expect such acceptance
of responsibility from strongest and richest nations (core, hegemonies of
modern world economy), because support and compensation need finances first
of all.
So it is not a question of 'just reparations' but a question of
understanding by new generations their moral historical duty.
I give one example. There already were dozens (maybe more, I dont know
exactly) of young Germans who went to Izrael and worked for free in kibutses
just because they wanted to compensate somehow the harm of their fathers and
grandfathers to Jewish people. Sic! Nobody judged them for this 'reparation'.
It was just a moral choice, worthy for respect, wasn't it?
As for your questions, I am not sure that many living now Anglo-Saxons can
strictly recognize, who were their ancestors: Angles or Saxes. But modern
Englishmen (also French, etc) as I think, can and should pose a question
of responsibility and compensation to at least most miserable parts of their
previous colonies.
Zaire itself now, as far as I know, has rather hard times. I am not an
expert in its history, but general principles allow to suppose that only
a very thin elit of Zairian empire had some profit from capture slaves
from Ephiopia (and from Zaire itself, I think). The very interprise, most
profit and most moral blame for slavery trade and exploitation belong to
Europeans and white Americans, am I not right?
But if (just imagine) Zaire becomes much more rich and
powerful than Ephiopia, it would not be absurd to expect some support from
Zaire where historical responsibility for capturing slaves from
Ephiopia centuries ago can be one of foundations. But it also cannot be a
matter of juridical judgement and reparation. Only free moral choice is
possible and needed.
In world-systemic and global-progressive perspective this seeming pure
ethical-philosophical question of historical responsibility can be
transformed into serious factor for new order of relations between core and
periphery in XXI century.
I would be grateful for directing me to other reasons for necessary
support, say, to poorest peoples of Africa, India, or South America.
East-Asia and China for US and Japan, maybe later Russia for Europe are
becoming quiet economically sufficient semiperipheries (I follow here
the prognosis by I.Wallerstein).
Who will care of peoples that seem to be thrown off from history?
Regards, Nikolai Rozov
> From: <gehrig@banyan.doc.gov> (Greg Ehrig)
> Is there a statute of limitations for historical crimes?
>
> For instance, do people of Anglo descent owe restitution to people of
> Saxon descent for the centuries of slavery and exploitation suffered
> by the former at the hands of the latter? How do you determine what
> reparations are "Just"? For a non-Eurocentric example, Do people
> of Ziaeran descent owe reparations to a) African-Americans of
> Eithiopian descent, or b)Ethiopians? (Zaire was one of the foremost
> empires which captured slaves from neighboring countries for trade
> to the Europeans; Rum being the medium of exchange)
> Nikolai S. Rozov
Professor of Philosophy
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