In an article for the Financial Times (FT), writer and historian Simon Schama examines world conflict zones and the efforts to protect some of the world’s most vulnerable architectural and cultural sites. If history is a measure, then Schama's study of William “Basher” Dowsing - an Englishman who, in the winter of 1643, "made it his personal mission to obliterate as much as he possibly could of sacred art in the churches and colleges of East Anglia" in the name of religion - is pertinent now more than ever.
In the same article, the FT's correspondents (Borzou Daragahi, Erika Solomon, William Wallis, Heba Saleh, and Victor Mallet) weigh in on the extent and significance of the damage to built cultural assets in Iraq, Syria, Mali, Egypt, Afghanistan, and Libya.
Read the article in full here.
The Proliferation of "Cultural Genocide" in Areas of Conflict
