World War II memories constitute the backdrop of Chapter 3. The Auschwitz Trials presented a daily reminder of German crimes; and a stretch of 20-year anniversaries from D-Day to V-E Day provided numerous occasions to invoke the “politics of the past” in putting pressure on Erhard’s Germany. The USSR, Britain, and France all aimed to forestall the MLF project, blocking West German access to nuclear weapons. France also won significant concessions on EEC agricultural policy from Bonn, thanks to de Gaulle’s ability to mobilize “Gaullists” in the CDU/CSU against the chancellor. In the face of intense Israeli pressure, Erhard’s panicky decisionmaking created a Middle East debacle in spring 1965; Bonn canceled its tank deliveries but established diplomatic ties with Tel Aviv, prompting ten Arab states to break relations. West German leaders felt increasingly isolated. Even U.S. opinion wearied of West German rigidity, particularly when German cabinet ministers seemed to contest the territorial status quo in Poland or Czechoslovakia. Real interest in promoting German unity was waning among all of Bonn’s allies; Bonn was at an impasse.

This chapter provides the framework for the book’s analysis of the ICTR’s archive. First it establishes, theoretically, the link between archives, and the formation of community, as the archive is presented as a site where the themes of law, knowledge and governance coalesce. Second, it looks at other scholarly work on international courts for insights on the interrelationship between law, knowledge and governance and argues that this work has, to date, wrongly treated courts as sites of ‘knowledge deficit’, and further that there is a need to understand how the inner workings of the court contribute to the formation of particular types of community. Finally, drawing on Foucault and Ann Stoler’s work, it shows how the archive can function as an analytical and methodological tool to examine the politics of knowledge production in international courts.

Chapter 1 presents a social history of the great exodus. It argues that in late-1940s and early-1950s Taiwan, the influx of civil war refugees from China produced two forms of social dislocation or “social trauma” – one experienced by the mainland refugees themselves; the other experienced by the native Taiwanese population who resided in the island’s major cities. The mainlander social trauma is illustrated by both personal testimonies given decades later at the present time and historical evidence: population census, archival social data, and newspapers. The Taiwanese dislocation due to the social upheaval generated by the incursion of a large number of dispossessed mainlanders is not remembered collectively nowadays. It is nonetheless revealed by the same sets of documentary evidence that illustrate mainlander displacement. By highlighting the discrepancy between what is remembered and what is forgotten in today’s Taiwan with regard to the great exodus, the chapter illuminates the difference between history and memory. It underlines the methodological point of the book: scholars need to conduct historical research to put contemporary memories in perspective.