The Role of Peace Museums in Promoting a Culture of Peace The
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259 THE ROLE OF PEACE MUSEUMS IN PROMOTING A CULTURE OF PEACE PETER VAN DEN DUNGEN The thesis that peace is the midwife of history, as expressed in the title of the present volume, can be regarded as provocative since this function is more commonly ascribed to war and revolution. Already Herodotus argued that ‘war is the father of all things’. The influence of war on shaping history cannot be denied although the view that human progress has been a consequence of war is much more debatable and has been roundly rejected, for instance, by the American economic historian, John U. Nef, in his War and human progress.1 With the invention and use of weapons of mass destruction (chemical, biological, and nuclear) in the 20th century, it seems that a new page in the book of history, and of war, has been turned. The continued proliferation of nuclear weapons and the half-hearted attempts of the world’s leading powers to bring about nuclear disarmament (despite clear legal obligations to do so, at least since the coming into force of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty signed in 1968) constitute a dangerous threat to the survival of civilisation as we know it. A certain kind of history may come to an end in the foreseeable future if the present perilous situation is allowed to continue. In the famous words of J.F. Kennedy, spoken half a century ago before the General Assembly of the United Nations in September 1961: ‘Mankind must put an end to war or war will put an end to mankind.’ At 1. NEF, J. (1963) War and human progress, New York, W.W. Norton. 260 PETER VAN DEN DUNGEN about the same time, another prominent American, Martin Luther King, expressed the same idea in an equally memorable phrase: ‘the choice is either nonviolence or non existence.’ Even if it were granted that in the past, history was driven and shaped by war, today war – waged with weapons of mass destruction – can only signify human history’s col- lapse. Henceforth, history must be driven by peaceful forces, and the transformation of what in many ways is a culture dominated by war and violence into a culture dominated by peace and nonviolence is an urgent imperative of our time. Five hundred years ago, at the beginnings of the modern era, the bar- barity, stupidity, and immorality of war was already forcefully argued by Erasmus at a time when the instruments of war and arsenals of destruction were in their infancy. In The Complaint of Peace, the most extensive of the many writings in which Erasmus condemned war and praised peace, he introduced peace as a person, who is despised and rejected everywhere she goes, even in the bosom of Christianity. Half a millennium later, how loud, how bitter, how fearful, how incomprehensible would be the complaint of Erasmus’s angel of peace in finding that she continues to be rejected, notwithstanding the fact that the costs and horrors of war have multiplied. And how relevant and topical remains also another book by the great humanist, In Praise of Folly. His most popular book, first published in 1511, also includes the practice of war and the profession of the soldier among the follies of human society. Erasmus’s enormous literary oeuvre, including his voluminous correspondence, contains a great number of writings which make him a pioneer of peace educa- tion, and of the building of a culture of peace, five centuries before these expressions entered the language.2 A new reading of history, from the standpoint of our own time, is likely to reveal many insights which cannot but help today’s and future generations in their efforts to avoid war and develop a culture of peace. History is taught, interpreted, and promoted in many different ways – from lessons in schools and textbooks, to public ceremonies and an- niversaries, the commissioning and display of statues, the naming of important streets and squares, the depiction of historical events and figures on coins and banknotes, etc. An analysis of these various ways and means 2. Cf. VAN DEN DUNGEN, P. (2009) «Erasmus: 16th century pioneer of peace educa- tion and a culture of peace», Journal of East Asia and International Law 2 (2): 409-431. THE ROLE OF PEACE MUSEUMS IN PROMOTING... 261 of presenting history easily confirms the traditional and almost universal prevalence of war over peace (and anti-war, nonviolence) in the collective consciousness (at least of the western world). The same pattern is also evident in another important domain of the cultural industry, namely the world of museums. They play a central role in the educational and cultural life of many countries, especially in the developed world. Indeed, the number and quality of a country’s museums is frequently used as a measure of its cultural standing and achievements. Increasingly, countries and cities aspire to house or attract museums which can confer fame and prestige – as well as income and profit, through the tourist industry.A s the repositories of significant artefacts hailing from all dimensions of human life (including the arts, social and political history, the natural and life sciences, sport, transport, etc.), museums are prime locations for education as well as entertainment. Although aspects of the theme of war and peace can be found in many museums, war constitutes the focus of the numerous war and military museums of which there is at least one in most countries. In countries such as the USA and the UK, there are hundreds of such museums, including those dedicated to the various branches of the armed forces (army, navy, air force) as well as regimental museums, and museums concerning aspects of war (e.g., in England, the Cabinet War Rooms in central London and the military intelligence and code-breaking installa- tions such as Bletchley Park in Milton Keynes, both concerning World War II). To this can be added certain buildings and structures such as arsenals, armouries, bunkers, fortresses and fortifications. Yet another important category to be considered here are the sites of battlefields (frequently with monuments and museums). A comprehensive guide to sites of military interest in Britain and Ireland identifies more than 750, consisting of over 250 museums, 400 fortifications, castles, bastions and airfields, and 100 battlefields.3 All these museums, structures and sites are testimony to the pervasiveness of war in society as well as the care taken to preserve its many physical legacies. Together, these places con- stitute an important part of the museum infrastructure in many countries which attracts a large number of both domestic and international visitors. The overall impression which is conveyed by these museums and other 3. EVANS, M.M. (2004) The military heritage of Britain & Ireland, London, Andre Deutsch. In addition, there are an estimated 100,000 war memorials in England. 262 PETER VAN DEN DUNGEN visitor sites is frequently one of the exciting and heroic nature of war, of its necessity and inevitability. The heart of such museums typically consists of a display of a great variety of the instruments of war, with relatively little attention paid to the consequences of their use, and also of the paraphernalia of the military profession (such as uniforms and medals). The visitor is therefore often presented with a romanticised and rather sanitised picture of war from which the human and social consequences are largely absent, as well as the large social forces responsible for promoting and perpetuating ideas and images which are fostering war (nationalism, imperialism, coloni- alism, militarism). This is well documented, for example, in Gerhard Roth’s detailed analysis of the contents and messages of the Army His- tory Museum in Vienna. In a most interesting and revealing 100-page essay, he asks, ‘Where are in this museum the POWs, who died in their hundreds of thousands? Where are those who committed suicide because they could no longer bear the war? Where are the crippled? Where are those who suffered from hunger in the cities?’4 Neither do these museums convey the nature of warfare today, or the perils involved in the continued deployment of weapons of mass destruc- tion, or the need for their abolition. These museums hardly display or discuss the reality of a war waged with nuclear weapons, as experienced in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. It seems that there are no large and permanent exhibitions on this topic in the world’s many war and military museums, including those of the nuclear weapons countries. Indeed, the plan to organise such an exhibition in the Smithsonian Institu- tion in Washington, D.C. in 1995, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, was strenuously opposed by U.S. veterans organisations, as well as by members of the U.S. Congress, resulting not only in the cancellation of the plan, but also the dismissal of the Smithsonian’s director. Only in Japan, the only country to have suffered atomic warfare, are its nature and consequences the subject of museums, first and foremost those inaugurated by the two cities ten years after their destruction. The sensitivity of this issue (out- 4. ROTH, G. (2010) Im Heeresgeschichtlichen Museum, in Eine Reise in das Innere von Wien. Essays, Frankfurt, Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 9th ed., pp. 181-284, quotation at 265. The essay‚ In the Army History Museum was first published in 1991.T he book A journey to the inside of Vienna is the seventh and last volume in the author’s acclaimed series Die Archive des Schweigens (The Archives of Silence). THE ROLE OF PEACE MUSEUMS IN PROMOTING..