Responsible History

Antoon De Baets, educated at the University of Ghent, Belgium, is a historian at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands. In recent years, he has written mainly on censorship of history and ethics of historians, including Censorship of Historical Thought: A World Guide, 1945–2000 (Greenwood Press, 2002). He co-ordinates the Network of Concerned Historians and has been published in seven languages.

• ForewordJürgen KockaA word of gratitudeAcknowledgmentsList of tables and appendixesIntroductionPART I: IRRESPONSIBLE HISTORYChapter 1. A theory of the abuse of historyChapter 2. The dictator’s secret archivesChapter 3. Defamation cases against historiansPART II: RESPONSIBLE HISTORYChapter 4. Duties of the living to the deadChapter 5. The rights to memory and historyChapter 6. A code of ethics for historiansEpilogueBibliographyBiographical noteIndex

“Antoon De Baets has [created] the most active platform devoted to compiling and denouncing cases of abuse and persecution of historians, defending human rights, and sensitizing the scientific community to those matters. In the present book, which provides a compelling summary of such initiatives, De Baets…draws very interesting and revealing conclusions for this fight against abusive history and in defence of human rights.” • Historiografias“[The author] examines the fine balance between the interests of destruction and preservation of dictators’ archives and between disclosure and the right to silence and privacy, and the related but subtly different natures of historical and legal truth. His presentation of these matters makes for lively ethical thinking about how to be a responsible historian when the past becomes an area for conflict.” • Canadian Journal of History/Annales canadiennes d’histoire“It is lucid, well-strung and yet not shorn of the scholarly bind and rigor: pleasant and compelling.” • Ranjan Ghosh, University of North Bengal, India.