ABSTRACT
The role of critical history Historians and others with specialist knowledge about the past, such as archaeologists or historical anthropologists, have failed to shape recent public debates about historical justice, but they have played a crucial role in providing detailed knowledge about past wrongs, and thus have contributed to satisfying the urge to know about past human rights violations. Truth commissions have relied on their expertise. They have provided briefings to governments ponderingwhether or not to issue an official apology. Historians have identified the exact extent towhich institutions and businesses have perpetrated wrongs or benefited from them. They have given evidence to parliamentary inquiries and have testified in court rooms; in fact, international criminal trials would now be unthinkable without some contextualisation provided by historians (see Wilson 2011, 20-23).
