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Whether it was Napoleon III looking to rebuild Paris, Mussolini, and his everlasting dream to restore the glory of Rome, or even Hitler who tried to annihilate Paris to build a new world capital, they are all powerless to resist fate, and once they fall from grace, they cannot escape the fate of being destroyed by life. Their rise and fall are all in vain in the end, nothing more than a memory. Whether it is the historical achievements carved on these stone pillars, the vaguely visible revolutionary slogans, or the construction sites with tens of millions of cranes working day and night, history will destroy all of it.
In ancient Rome, the most terrible punishment for an emperor who made mistakes was not death, but his removal from history. Damnatio memoriae. All the historical merits and mistakes of this emperor and all the memories of his existence would be obliterated. Not only would the heads of his sculptures be destroyed, but also the records of his brilliant thoughts. Books, stone tablets, stone pillars, and even the heads on coins would be wiped from history.
The same happens in the modern day whether it is the removal of the statues of Confederate leaders in Richmond or of King Leopold II, these once-respected leaders in past societies are removed from their pedestals of honor as they are branded as racists and genociders in the modern day. This destruction was a victory for all those who have suffered at the hands of these people, most certainly if you were to see it from the Roman perspective. Watching them pay for their cruel misdoings by suffering a fate worse than death. But this practice also raises a lot of questions.
History should be honest and complete, meaning that societies should acknowledge not only its accomplishments but also its failures. Denying these mistakes would only lead to harm rather than good. Instead, these symbols of a wrongful past can be a point of education and conversation, where people are reminded of the consequences of hateful ideas so they can ensure it will never happen in the future. After all, if all bad characters of history were to be erased how would we know the difference between the actions of Stalin and Columbus? How would we know how the seeds were planted to form the root causes of hatred today?
Take the case of Edward Colston, a prominent English merchant and slave trader, whose statue was pushed into the Bristol Harbor during the 2020 Black Lives Matter protest. Looking at people toppling and vandalizing the statue, people wondered if this damnation of the past would bring actual change to society. After all, as historian Juan Pan-Montojo once said, “erasing traces of the past does not reform the present.”
In response to these actions, the city’s mayor, who is of Jamaican descent, announced that the statue would be kept in a museum so that people could have conversations about the history of the city as a major slave trading port. The statue now lives a new life, one away from its previous life of honor, where people re-interpret it now and in the future.
An important thing to remember is that the events in history are fact, you may form opinions about it or question it but you cannot change or erase it. Even if you try, you will never succeed. Take the Pharaohs Hatshepsut and Akhenaten, why do we know who they ate? After all, their names were completely removed from the king's list and a whole kingdom worked to erase them from history under the orders of succeeding pharaohs. They remained successful in this task for over 3,000 years but inevitably in the 19th century their existence and contributions to the world were uncovered, giving us the knowledge we have about Egyptian succession today.
Edward Colston's Statue being dumped into Bristol Harbor
"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past" - George Orwell
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