Empire, Guilt and Recompense

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Empire, Guilt and Recompense

In the previous century we have become aware of the evils of Empire. Slavery, economic exploitation, political oppression. With the invention of human rights we agreed that these behaviors can be marked as 'wrong'. Predominantly Western countries have been the perpetrators in the past 400 years. Victims are found in Latin America, Africa and large parts of Asia. Countries like China raise this issue from time to time and demand apologies from their former oppressors, even though most of the perpetrators are no longer alive. In some cases the apology is given, and in some cases not. The Dutch apologized to Indonesia for their 300 year long occupation. Japan still has difficulty recognizing any wrong doing during world war 2. Next to an apology, some countries and groups demand reparations. For instance, in the U.S. a debate is ongoing about reparations for descendants of slaves.

The following questions can be raised. Should former perpetrators apologize to former victims? Should there be recompense? While these first two are matters of opinion, more fundamental questions can be raised. Is there a clear moral ground for apology and for recompense? Is there a practical use for both? What would be the effect? Can guilt indeed be inherited?
Another relevant question is why the West is blamed for these crimes while no other part of the World is. Has the white race really been more savage than the rest? Is it to blame... more?

Moral grounds and practical use

 

Are there a clear moral grounds for an apology and recompensation? Well, yes and.... no.

The Apology
If both parties recognize freedom from oppression as a fundamental right, and oppression as a fundamental wrong, a wrongdoer should apologize in order to harmonize relations with the victim. Once accepted, a clear understanding is reached between the two that A:) the behavior is marked as 'wrong' by both parties, B:) the perpetrator recognizes the part it played giving the event a common reality, and C:) the perpetrator and victim agree that from now on future actions will be based on the common morality. This will result in enhanced potential for beneficial future relations. Instead of a potential enemy, a potential friend can be recognized in the opposite party.

Recompense
A wrongdoer should recompense the victim if again both parties agree on the moral rights and wrongs. Since by the act of the perpetrator damage occurred, the perpetrator should repair the damage as much as possible so the negative balance between the two parties can reach 0. The practical use is that from this position of balance future relations can be conducted with trust. Otherwise, every future endeavor is subject to mistrust based on potential re-occurrence of past wrongdoing and has a higher chance to fail.

Empire and Recompense

The logic of an apology is sound, no matter the size or structure of the parties involved. However the case of Empire is different when it comes to recompense. It has been proven by history that every race, people, religion, Empire and nation has at one time exploited another. It is a fundamental fault in mankind. The fact that we recently discovered, or rather decided, that exploitation is wrong, does not mean that those parties who were last involved with these practices have a larger obligation to recompense their victims than parties from a long time ago. In other words, being part of recent human memory does not make you more guilty or instill upon you a greater responsibility than for those who are part of a forgotten past.  You can not set a moral boundary on how far back you will go, only a pratical one. Since we the Romans can't recompense their British victims, whom they brutally oppressed, exploited and enslaved, we can not demand the British to recompense the people of India, unless we introduce some kind of experition date on crimes committed by Empires. Otherwise recompense can be asked in the case of the Mongols vs a whole lot of nations, the Ottomans vs the Middle East, the Chinese vs the Koreans, the Egyptians vs the Jews, etc. However, when introducting an expiration date, all the nations of the world should decide on this limit. It is folly to think that any nation, except the ones without guilt, can give an honest suggestion for an expiration date.
Next to this, it would be impractical if everybody would recompense any party they exploited. The Japanese should recompense the Dutch for their brutal oppression of the Dutch in Indonesia. The Dutch should recompense the Indonesians. The government of Indonesia should recompense the people of Atjeh and Papua New Guinea, and so on, and so on, and so on. 
There is moral ground that the perpetrator should recompense the victim, but no moral ground that one (recent) perpetrator should engage in this behavior while another is excused. Since we won't be able to decide what is recent, and it would be impractical, recompense is not viable in the case of Empire.
Of course any recompense given would be a show of decency and a genuine will to harmonize. You can never do wrong by giving back. A symbolic gesture would carry as much moral weight as any calculated amount.

Inherited guilt

A person can only be held responsible for her or his own actions. Since you can not alter the past actions of ancestors, no guilt can pass from father to son. This logic has not stopped people from blaming groups for past actions of those groups. Are these claims of guilt valid?
A group is greater than the sum of the individual lives of it's people. As individual cells form our bodies, and their sum is a person which carries out actions quite apart from the individual actions of the cells, so a nation is composed of people, and it carries out actions of war and peace, art and science, trade and architecture as a single entity, quite apart from the individual persons.
One might want to blame individuals, such as Hitler, for the actions of an entire group, but in fact the whole government of Germany, the brain, was directing the devastation during World War 2. The ''person'' named Germany is to blame for the holocaust in the same manner as you can be blamed for any crime you might have committed. However, individual Germans can never be blamed for the holocaust as a whole, only for their individual actions taken at the time, and no German born past 1945 can be faulted at all.
So... can guilt be inherited from one generation to the next? Since you can be held responsible for acts in your own life, a nation can be held responsible for acts in it's life, the nations history. The notion of inheritance simply does not apply, nor does the notion of guilt passing over from one generation to another, it's simply part of the life of the nation, no matter the generation.
For the Roman Empire it is no longer feasible to hold it responsible, since it no longer exists, even though the territories it once encompassed do, and the city of Rome does as well. The group entity 'The Roman Empire' is gone, dead and buried. The modern city is not the former Empire, nor is it the same entity as the old city. It's current occupants can not historically be linked to the group of people that created and ruled the Roman Empire. There have been massive changes in it's population and culture. For Germany, it is a different story, since the entity Germany still continues to exist in an unbroken line from the date of it's creation. Furthermore, Germany also claims it's complete history. If Germany had decided to call itself New Germany, and rejected all of its past, this new entity could not be blamed for the mistakes of it's ancestor. For Great Britain, The Netherlands and Turkey the same logic can be applied. These three nations consist of group entities that have existed continually from before their Empire days to this date. They are the same ''person''. No dutchman will ever tell you the Netherlands is a new place, and it's history is something some other nation that came before it lived through. Since we proudly claim our golden ages as our own, we continuous nations must also claim our mistakes.

Conclusions

 

Nations can indeed be held responsible for past mistakes, that happend within the lifetime of the nation. Individuals and generations can never be held responsible for the past mistakes of their nations, previous generations or individual ancestors.
The effect of both apologies and recompense would enhance relations between the nations of the Globe. For apologies there is both moral ground and practical use. There is no moral ground for demanding recompense from just the recent Empires. It's unlikely anyone would agree on a statue of limitations. The practice of recompense would be complicated if not impossible. Voluntary efforts however can benefit relations.

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