ABSTRACT
The historiography of cultural heritage protection in international law frequently repeats the narratives of “progress” and “juridification.” This chapter challenges these current approaches for the history of that legal field in three steps. First, the new task of a critical and global legal historiography is outlined. It is crucial to take into account the latest findings of the postcolonial studies, anthropology, and other historical and sociological disciplines. They demonstrate how carefully historians of international law shall use terms such as “progress” or “civilization” today. Second, three different and current approaches of writing the history of protecting cultural heritage in international law will be presented. Each narrative applies a distinct methodology on the history that comes with certain ambivalent corollaries. Third, I want to set these diverse histories of international law in contrast to the limitations that these approaches face. Therefore, the last part comprises some suggestions how to re-write the history of cultural heritage protection in international law. In particular, the chapter proposes to contextualize the normative developments with the colonial and imperial projects of Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries.
