Dethroning historical reputations: universities, museums and the commemoration of benefactors

The campaigns in universities across the world to reject,rename and remove historic benefactions have brought the present into collisionwith the past. In Britain the attempt to remove a statue of one of Oxford'smost famous benefactors, the imperialist Cecil Rhodes, has spread to otheruniversities and their benefactors, and now also affects civic monuments andstatues in towns and cities across the country. In the United States, memorialsto leaders of the Confederacy in the American Civil War and to otherslaveholders have been the subject of intense dispute. Should we continue tohonour benefactors and historic figures whose actions are now deemed ethicallyunacceptable? How can we reconcile the views held by our ancestors with thosewe now hold today? Should we even try, acknowledging, in the words of thenovelist L. P. Hartley, that `the past is another country; they do thingsdifferently there'? The essays in this interdisciplinary collection are drawnfrom a conference at the Institute of Historical Research in the University ofLondon. Historians, fundraisers, a sociologist and a museum director examinethese current issues from different perspectives, with an introductory essay bySir David Cannadine, president of the British Academy. Together they explore anemerging conflict between the past and present, history and ideology, andbenefactors and their critics.