Selective nostalgia: development through ‘shared heritage’ diplomacy in post-colonial Sri Lanka

Developing nations are increasingly inscribing urban heritage sites to UNESCO’s World Heritage List for global recognition, political legitimization, and economic development. Sri Lanka’s ‘Old Town of Galle’ is a colonial-era site inscribed to the List as an outstanding example of a fortified city built by Europeans in Asia. Although Galle Fort’s colonial-era heritage is attributed to three European traditions – Portuguese, Dutch, and British – its Dutch ancestry is prioritized by experts, the State and its residents. This “selective nostalgia” in the parsing of layered colonial pasts through heritage conservation reveals how heritage operates as a medium for pursuing diplomatic relations and developmental agendas. Using evidence from interviews, observational data, and documents, I show that through its production as World Heritage, colonial-era heritage is reinterpreted as a shared heritage to serve diverging diplomatic and developmental agendas. For the Dutch, the construction of a shared heritage narrative neutralizes this past by boosting colonial accomplishments while underemphasizing colonial exploitations. For Sri Lanka, Dutch-aided conservation of Galle Fort provides a marketable commodity that is a magnet for global tourism. However, the cultivation of ‘shared heritage’ is also restructuring the Fort’s socio-spatial fabric with rampant gentrification and touristification marginalizing the local community of this living heritage site.