With the adoption and coming into force of the Second Hague Protocol and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, the international law on the protection of cultural property in armed conflict has assumed a shape that will probably remain unchanged for quite some time. Given this, it would be pointless for this book to prescribe reform. It would also be unwise: a period of consolidation is needed now.

Nor do the preceding chapters adopt a theoretical or critical approach. It is doubtful such a stance could do justice to the complexities, contradictions and quiddities of this (or any other) messy human endeavour. Moreover, this is a work of law, and law is, at some irreducible level, a practical undertaking.

Rather, this book sets itself a more limited task, but hopefully a useful one. In seeking to acquit it, it reveals the perhaps surprising degree of attention paid by states over the past two hundred years, mostly in good faith, to sparing cultural property from destruction and misappropriation in war, and it suggests that, while experience dictates caution, today's legal and technological conditions give grounds for sober optimism that such efforts stand a decent chance of success. The vision of cultural property as a shared heritage – shared by a people, shared by present humanity and shared with generations to come – has driven the evolution of international rules and institutions adherent to its logic, continues to inform how the rules are interpreted and applied, and serves as both an internal draw towards compliance and a conceptual framework for international mobilisation in defence of cultural treasures.