Since the end of the Cold War many countries have turned to historical commissions as a way to deal with the past. This project comparatively analyses four post-1989 European government-appointed historical commissions (the German ‘Enquete-kommision’, the Swiss ‘Bergier-commission’, the Dutch Srebrenica-inquiry, and the Belgian Lumumba-commission) which are from an empirical and a meta-historical perspective. I focus on three sets of research questions: concerning the occasion, timing, purpose, and effects of historical commissions; concerning the relation between these commissions and the field of jurisdiction; and concerning their relation with ‘traditional’ historiography.