Antoon De Baets
Biographic Data
| ID | 542623 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Antoon De Baets |
| GIVEN NAMES | Antoon |
| FAMILY NAME | De Baets |
| SIGNATURE | DE BAETS A |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Groningen |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-5734-8193 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 26 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 10 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 26 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1988 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Preambular History
This article claims that the preambles of foundational human rights instruments, taken together, articulate a consistent view of the past. This view is firmly rooted in historical processes, embedded in metaphysical truths, and enacted in service of the future. Part 1 assesses the strengths and weaknesses of the "preambular approach to history" and selects four instruments from a group of twenty-two: the United Nations Charter, the Universal Decl…
Historians Resisting Tyranny
Since time immemorial, dictators have censored the writing of history and persecuted its practitioners. This policy of history censorship has had many effects, some of which were unintended, such as the development of strategies to counter the distortion of history. This essay therefore opens with a summary overview of the intended and unintended effects of the censorship of the science of history. Against this backdrop, the essay then focuses on…
Open Letters in Closed Societies
This article explores a question of practical ethics: To which values do historians appeal when they come under sustained attack from political power? An important instrument of historians living in closed societies to express their values is the open letter, defined as an unauthorized public statement cast in epistolary form and addressed to either political leaders or fellow historians, but always with the general public as a silent reader in t…
Anthropology of Violent Death
The view of the past in international humanitarian law (1860–2020)
This essay explores how the drafters of international humanitarian law (IHL) incorporated the past into their work between 1860 and 2020, and how they approached time, memory and history as indicators for this view of the past. Its sources consist of the complete series of general conventional and customary IHL instruments as well as the leading commentaries on them. For the IHL view of time, the impact of legal principles on the perception of ti…
Historians Killed for Political Reasons in Ibero-America (1920-2020)
This essay examines the Ibero-American history producers who were killed for political reasons during the past century. It presents sixty victims from eight countries. Of these, 83% were killed by state forces, 17% by non-state forces. Dictatorships had the worst scores (58% of the victims), while flawed democracies also saw considerable casualties (32%), in contrast to emergent (7%) and stable democracies (3%). Much evidence was found for the th…
De bijzondere geschiedenis van de historische paragrafen uit de Universele Verklaring van de Rechten van de Mens
van amper 1995 woorden en die bevat hoofdzakelijk aspiraties over de rechten die alle mensen zouden moeten hebben. En toch is dat een grote denkfout. De discussies die tot de Universele Verklaring hebben geleid en bijna twee jaar duurden, zijn volledig bewaard en zij tonen aan dat de opstellers voortdurend aan de geschiedenis hebben gedacht bij het schrijven van de opeenvolgende versies -zeven in totaal. 1 Daarnaast is hun woordenschat diep gekle…
The Censorship of History and Fact-Finding in Brazil (1964–2018)
The subversive power of historical analogies
This chapter explores only the subset of historical analogies created for political purposes. Obviously, the general attitude of the censorship apparatus – the ears and eyes of the autocrat – to subversive historical analogies is inimical because of their potentially destructive impact on the regime they serve. Drawing historical analogies is the historian’s second nature. The mere chronological dimension of history begs for comparison over time …
Censorship and History since 1945
This chapter discusses the classification of types of censorship as they have developed since 1945. Censorship of history has been practiced in all modes, genres, fields, categories, and periods of history, and in all countries. To begin with, it ranges over all modes of the historiographical operation. Pre-censorship, often invisible to the public, attempts to regulate research: archives are cleansed or kept secret, and manuscripts are rewritten…
Crimes Against History
Crimes against History takes a global approach to the extreme forms of censorship to which history and historians have been subjected through the ages. The book opens by considering the varieties of censorship, from suppression, dismissal, and defamation to persecution and murder. Part I, "Kill switch," tells the tragic story of how the censorship of history has sometimes turned into deadly crimes against history, with chapters looking at topics …
Human Rights, History of
Post-Conflict History Education Moratoria
This article deals with post-conflict history education moratoria: the temporary suspension of history education or its recent history segment, including its textbooks, with the aim of aligning it to the goals of a transition to peace and democracy. I present fifteen cases arranged under four types: moratoria after the defeat of the Axis powers in international war (the successor states of Nazi Germany, Anschluss Austria, Fascist Italy, and Imper…
Uma teoria do abuso da História
Este ensaio pretende esboçar uma teoria coerente sobre o abuso e o uso irresponsável da história. Ainda não existe de forma acabada uma teoria como essa, com a qual historiadores possam identificar, provar, explicar e avaliar abusos da história. O texto começa com uma discussão sobre a delimitação do problema, ou seja, como distinguir uma história irresponsável e abusiva, de um lado, de uma história perigosa, não científica, incompetente, nociva …
Conceptualising Historical Crimes
no abstract
Does Inhumanity Breed Humanity? Investigation of a Paradox
This essay investigates the thesis that inhumanity breeds humanity. Many questions arise when we try to corroborate it: Can we say anything at all about the inhumanity of human beings? Why did large-scale inhumanity occurring before 1700 not elicit a human rights regime? Was the human rights take-off from 1760 to 1800 triggered by instances of inhumanity, and why did the take-off not last? Why did the human rights idea eclipse after 1800 only to …
O impacto da Declaração Universal dos Direitos Humanos no estudo da História
Talvez não exista nenhum outro texto com mais amplo impacto sobre nossas vidas do que a Declaração Universal dos Direitos Humanos (DUDH) de 1948. É curioso, portanto, que os historiadores tenham dado tão pouca atenção à DUDH. Declaro que seu potencial impacto sobre o estudo da história é profundo. Depois de questionar se a DUDH contém uma visão geral da história, trato das consequências da DUDH para os direitos e deveres dos historiadores e expli…
The Impact of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on the Study of History
There is perhaps no text with a broader impact on our lives than the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). It is strange, therefore, that historians have paid so little attention to the UDHR. I argue that its potential impact on the study of history is profound. After asking whether the UDHR contains a general view of history, I address the consequences of the UDHR for the rights and duties of historians, and explain how it deals wit…
A Successful Utopia
no abstract
The network of Concerned Historians A Decade of Campaigning
A decade ago, the Network of Concerned Historians (NCH) was established. Its purpose was and still is to provide a bridge between international human-rights organisations campaigning for censored or persecuted historians and others concerned with the past on the one hand and the global community of historians on the other. The essay gives an overview of these campaigns and of the Annual Reports that NCH has produced. NCH’s work amply demonstrates…
Exile and Acculturation
Beneficial tended. Within the domain of historical writing, both exist. A famous example of intended historiographical contact was the arrival of the German historian Ludwig Riess (1861-1928), a student of Leopold von Ranke, in Japan. On the recommendation of the director of the bureau of historiography, Shigeno Yasutsugu, Riess began to lecture at the Imperial University (renamed Tokyo Imperial University in 1897) in 1887. He spoke about the Ran…
A Declaration of the Responsibilities of Present Generations Toward Past Generations
Historians study the living and the dead. If we can identify the rights of the living and their responsibilities to the dead, we may be able to formulate a solid ethical infrastructure for historians. A short and generally accepted answer to the question of what the rights of the living are can be found in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The central idea of human rights is that the living possess dignity and therefore deserve respect. …
Defamation Cases against Historians
Defamation is the act of damaging another's reputation. According to recent legal research, defamation laws may be improperly used in many ways. Some of these uses profoundly affect the historian's work: first, when defamation laws protect reputations of states or nations as such; second, when they prevent legitimate criticism of officials; and, third, when they protect the reputations of deceased persons. The present essay offers two tests of th…
A Organização Do Esquecimento. Historiadores Perseguidos E Censurados Na África, Ásia E América Latina
Este relatorio inclui informacoes sobre a censura da historia e o destino de 360 historiadores perseguidos em quase 70 paises no periodo de 1945-1995. Deve ser visto como um instrumento contra duas formas de esquecimento. Os historiadores precisam 1er cm mente a coragem que muitos de seus colegas demonstram quando tentam se dedicar a escrita da historia sob a egide de um poder tirânico que deseja impor sua visao do passado, a custa da supressao d…
Images of Non-Western Cultures. The influence of history textbooks on public opinion in Dutch-speaking Belgium 1945- 1984
The This Ph.D. study tries to answer the question "Do history textbooks have an impact on people's ideas about other cultures?", by comparing the contents of a large sample of in- fluential history textbooks and curricula (covering 1945- 1984) with the results of a wide array of public opinion surveys about the Third World and immigrants (covering 1949- 1987). The theoretical part reviews ethnocentrism, cultural relativism and racism as dimension…
Uma teoria do abuso da História
Este ensaio pretende esboçar uma teoria coerente sobre o abuso e o uso irresponsável da história. Ainda não existe de forma acabada uma teoria como essa, com a qual historiadores possam identificar, provar, explicar e avaliar abusos da história. O texto começa com uma discussão sobre a delimitação do problema, ou seja, como distinguir uma história irresponsável e abusiva, de um lado, de uma história perigosa, não científica, incompetente, nociva …
A Declaration of the Responsibilities of Present Generations Toward Past Generations
Historians study the living and the dead. If we can identify the rights of the living and their responsibilities to the dead, we may be able to formulate a solid ethical infrastructure for historians. A short and generally accepted answer to the question of what the rights of the living are can be found in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The central idea of human rights is that the living possess dignity and therefore deserve respect. …
The view of the past in international humanitarian law (1860–2020)
This essay explores how the drafters of international humanitarian law (IHL) incorporated the past into their work between 1860 and 2020, and how they approached time, memory and history as indicators for this view of the past. Its sources consist of the complete series of general conventional and customary IHL instruments as well as the leading commentaries on them. For the IHL view of time, the impact of legal principles on the perception of ti…
O impacto da Declaração Universal dos Direitos Humanos no estudo da História
Talvez não exista nenhum outro texto com mais amplo impacto sobre nossas vidas do que a Declaração Universal dos Direitos Humanos (DUDH) de 1948. É curioso, portanto, que os historiadores tenham dado tão pouca atenção à DUDH. Declaro que seu potencial impacto sobre o estudo da história é profundo. Depois de questionar se a DUDH contém uma visão geral da história, trato das consequências da DUDH para os direitos e deveres dos historiadores e expli…
Exile and Acculturation
Beneficial tended. Within the domain of historical writing, both exist. A famous example of intended historiographical contact was the arrival of the German historian Ludwig Riess (1861-1928), a student of Leopold von Ranke, in Japan. On the recommendation of the director of the bureau of historiography, Shigeno Yasutsugu, Riess began to lecture at the Imperial University (renamed Tokyo Imperial University in 1897) in 1887. He spoke about the Ran…
Images of Non-Western Cultures. The influence of history textbooks on public opinion in Dutch-speaking Belgium 1945- 1984
The This Ph.D. study tries to answer the question "Do history textbooks have an impact on people's ideas about other cultures?", by comparing the contents of a large sample of in- fluential history textbooks and curricula (covering 1945- 1984) with the results of a wide array of public opinion surveys about the Third World and immigrants (covering 1949- 1987). The theoretical part reviews ethnocentrism, cultural relativism and racism as dimension…
La Creation de L’image des Cultures Non-Occidentales
Images of Non-Western Cultures. The influence of history textbooks on public opinion in Dutch-speaking Belgium 1945-1984. This Ph.D. study tries to answer the question “Do history textbooks have an impact on people’s ideas about other cultures?”, by comparing the contents of a large sample of influential history textbooks and curricula (covering 1945-1984) with the results of a wide array of public opinion surveys about the Third World and immigr…
A Organização Do Esquecimento. Historiadores Perseguidos E Censurados Na África, Ásia E América Latina
Este relatorio inclui informacoes sobre a censura da historia e o destino de 360 historiadores perseguidos em quase 70 paises no periodo de 1945-1995. Deve ser visto como um instrumento contra duas formas de esquecimento. Os historiadores precisam 1er cm mente a coragem que muitos de seus colegas demonstram quando tentam se dedicar a escrita da historia sob a egide de um poder tirânico que deseja impor sua visao do passado, a custa da supressao d…
Defamation Cases against Historians
Defamation is the act of damaging another's reputation. According to recent legal research, defamation laws may be improperly used in many ways. Some of these uses profoundly affect the historian's work: first, when defamation laws protect reputations of states or nations as such; second, when they prevent legitimate criticism of officials; and, third, when they protect the reputations of deceased persons. The present essay offers two tests of th…
A Declaration of the Responsibilities of Present Generations Toward Past Generations
Historians study the living and the dead. If we can identify the rights of the living and their responsibilities to the dead, we may be able to formulate a solid ethical infrastructure for historians. A short and generally accepted answer to the question of what the rights of the living are can be found in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The central idea of human rights is that the living possess dignity and therefore deserve respect. …
The network of Concerned Historians A Decade of Campaigning
A decade ago, the Network of Concerned Historians (NCH) was established. Its purpose was and still is to provide a bridge between international human-rights organisations campaigning for censored or persecuted historians and others concerned with the past on the one hand and the global community of historians on the other. The essay gives an overview of these campaigns and of the Annual Reports that NCH has produced. NCH’s work amply demonstrates…
Exile and Acculturation
Beneficial tended. Within the domain of historical writing, both exist. A famous example of intended historiographical contact was the arrival of the German historian Ludwig Riess (1861-1928), a student of Leopold von Ranke, in Japan. On the recommendation of the director of the bureau of historiography, Shigeno Yasutsugu, Riess began to lecture at the Imperial University (renamed Tokyo Imperial University in 1897) in 1887. He spoke about the Ran…
A Successful Utopia
no abstract
The Impact of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights on the Study of History
There is perhaps no text with a broader impact on our lives than the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). It is strange, therefore, that historians have paid so little attention to the UDHR. I argue that its potential impact on the study of history is profound. After asking whether the UDHR contains a general view of history, I address the consequences of the UDHR for the rights and duties of historians, and explain how it deals wit…
O impacto da Declaração Universal dos Direitos Humanos no estudo da História
Talvez não exista nenhum outro texto com mais amplo impacto sobre nossas vidas do que a Declaração Universal dos Direitos Humanos (DUDH) de 1948. É curioso, portanto, que os historiadores tenham dado tão pouca atenção à DUDH. Declaro que seu potencial impacto sobre o estudo da história é profundo. Depois de questionar se a DUDH contém uma visão geral da história, trato das consequências da DUDH para os direitos e deveres dos historiadores e expli…
Conceptualising Historical Crimes
no abstract
Does Inhumanity Breed Humanity? Investigation of a Paradox
This essay investigates the thesis that inhumanity breeds humanity. Many questions arise when we try to corroborate it: Can we say anything at all about the inhumanity of human beings? Why did large-scale inhumanity occurring before 1700 not elicit a human rights regime? Was the human rights take-off from 1760 to 1800 triggered by instances of inhumanity, and why did the take-off not last? Why did the human rights idea eclipse after 1800 only to …
Uma teoria do abuso da História
Este ensaio pretende esboçar uma teoria coerente sobre o abuso e o uso irresponsável da história. Ainda não existe de forma acabada uma teoria como essa, com a qual historiadores possam identificar, provar, explicar e avaliar abusos da história. O texto começa com uma discussão sobre a delimitação do problema, ou seja, como distinguir uma história irresponsável e abusiva, de um lado, de uma história perigosa, não científica, incompetente, nociva …
Human Rights, History of
Post-Conflict History Education Moratoria
This article deals with post-conflict history education moratoria: the temporary suspension of history education or its recent history segment, including its textbooks, with the aim of aligning it to the goals of a transition to peace and democracy. I present fifteen cases arranged under four types: moratoria after the defeat of the Axis powers in international war (the successor states of Nazi Germany, Anschluss Austria, Fascist Italy, and Imper…
Censorship and History since 1945
This chapter discusses the classification of types of censorship as they have developed since 1945. Censorship of history has been practiced in all modes, genres, fields, categories, and periods of history, and in all countries. To begin with, it ranges over all modes of the historiographical operation. Pre-censorship, often invisible to the public, attempts to regulate research: archives are cleansed or kept secret, and manuscripts are rewritten…
Crimes Against History
Crimes against History takes a global approach to the extreme forms of censorship to which history and historians have been subjected through the ages. The book opens by considering the varieties of censorship, from suppression, dismissal, and defamation to persecution and murder. Part I, "Kill switch," tells the tragic story of how the censorship of history has sometimes turned into deadly crimes against history, with chapters looking at topics …
The Censorship of History and Fact-Finding in Brazil (1964–2018)
The subversive power of historical analogies
This chapter explores only the subset of historical analogies created for political purposes. Obviously, the general attitude of the censorship apparatus – the ears and eyes of the autocrat – to subversive historical analogies is inimical because of their potentially destructive impact on the regime they serve. Drawing historical analogies is the historian’s second nature. The mere chronological dimension of history begs for comparison over time …
De bijzondere geschiedenis van de historische paragrafen uit de Universele Verklaring van de Rechten van de Mens
van amper 1995 woorden en die bevat hoofdzakelijk aspiraties over de rechten die alle mensen zouden moeten hebben. En toch is dat een grote denkfout. De discussies die tot de Universele Verklaring hebben geleid en bijna twee jaar duurden, zijn volledig bewaard en zij tonen aan dat de opstellers voortdurend aan de geschiedenis hebben gedacht bij het schrijven van de opeenvolgende versies -zeven in totaal. 1 Daarnaast is hun woordenschat diep gekle…
Historians Killed for Political Reasons in Ibero-America (1920-2020)
This essay examines the Ibero-American history producers who were killed for political reasons during the past century. It presents sixty victims from eight countries. Of these, 83% were killed by state forces, 17% by non-state forces. Dictatorships had the worst scores (58% of the victims), while flawed democracies also saw considerable casualties (32%), in contrast to emergent (7%) and stable democracies (3%). Much evidence was found for the th…
The view of the past in international humanitarian law (1860–2020)
This essay explores how the drafters of international humanitarian law (IHL) incorporated the past into their work between 1860 and 2020, and how they approached time, memory and history as indicators for this view of the past. Its sources consist of the complete series of general conventional and customary IHL instruments as well as the leading commentaries on them. For the IHL view of time, the impact of legal principles on the perception of ti…
Anthropology of Violent Death
Historians Resisting Tyranny
Since time immemorial, dictators have censored the writing of history and persecuted its practitioners. This policy of history censorship has had many effects, some of which were unintended, such as the development of strategies to counter the distortion of history. This essay therefore opens with a summary overview of the intended and unintended effects of the censorship of the science of history. Against this backdrop, the essay then focuses on…
Open Letters in Closed Societies
This article explores a question of practical ethics: To which values do historians appeal when they come under sustained attack from political power? An important instrument of historians living in closed societies to express their values is the open letter, defined as an unauthorized public statement cast in epistolary form and addressed to either political leaders or fellow historians, but always with the general public as a silent reader in t…
Political science (18 works) · Law (15 works) · Sociology (15 works) · History (13 works) · Philosophy (12 works) · Historical and Contemporary Political Dynamics (9 works) · Epistemology (6 works) · Human rights (6 works) · International Law and Human Rights (6 works) · Law (6 works)