AEMI

NONJA PETERS
of this essay, the phenomenon does however,
acknowledge the substantial degree
to which the sustainability of Europe’s
cultural heritage relied on the history
and artefact related to trade routes from
Antiquity; and its economies the remittances
sent from colonists who went to
work or settle in the foreign lands European’s
seized to establish Colonial States
in the Middle East and along the IOR.
Other Initiatives
A noteworthy development over the last
decade is the emergence of emigration
museums which in Europe have begun
to rival war and memory museums as
a attractions. These museums trace the
lives of those that left their country of
origin to make a better life elsewhere.
It is the first time an interest of this
sort has been shown. The hope is that
a wealthy benefactor (self-made immigrant)
will help support such museum
ventures. The opening of the Auswanderer
Haus (Bremerhaven) and Ballinstadt
(Hamburg) are examples. In
2007, Germany opened the Deutsches
Auswanderer Haus a German Emigration
Center theme museum in Bremerhaven.
At a cost of 21 million euros this
‘stellar center’ is dedicated to the seven
million emigrants who gathered in
Bremerhaven between 1830 and 1974
to board a ship headed for one or other
of the ‘new worlds’ (ie Australia, America,
Canada, Argentina, Brazil or South
Africa).
A few months later on 4 July 2007
the City of Hamburg launched Ballinstadt.
At a cost of 13 million euros,
is brief is to record the story of the five
million emigrants (Germans and Central
and Eastern Europeans) who left
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their homelands in search of a better
life across the Atlantic via the port of
Hamburg driven by dire poverty, hunger,
hopelessness, or political and religious
persecution. Like Prime Minister
Modi of India the idea behind the new
‘emigration’ focus is to lay the groundwork
to encourage and assist their sizeable
diaspora communities, which in the
case of the Indian diaspora is the second-largest
in the world at 25 million
people, will like earlier Italian communities,
be an effective international tool
for promoting homeland policies and
serve as a catalyst for increased intraand
inter regional integration. 64
Since the demise of colonialism
around the end of the 1940s, post
WWII, countries such as Indonesia and
India and other former colonial states
have had to rebuild their trade and
power structures within the context of a
rapidly globalising world economy. European
mobility into the IOR and other
parts of the world since the Age of Exploration
created the climate for their histories
and heritage to intersect, thereby
establishing a mutual heritage unit with
the possibility of related shared culture
activities. For example, the Netherlands
Ministry of Foreign Affairs recently formulated
‘mutual (common) heritage
policy’ has generated a plethora of material
and immaterial relics of the past
related to the States where the VOC
created trading settlements. 65 Its aims
are to preserve mutual cultural heritage
and utilize it as an instrument for sharing
expertise, building capacity for the
cultural field in the partner country(s),
stimulate cultural and economical development,
create public awareness and
increase knowledge of this heritage.