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The Netherlands has returned some stolen artifacts to Indonesia
by Brajeshwar
The labeling of things in museums as "stolen" is lacking, IMO. In some cases, yes... straight up looted items are in museums. In other cases, though, the items could easily have ended up lost to time (or political, economic, social turmoil) if they had not been taken and put in museums outside of the places where they originated. Additionally some of these places would not have had the means to care for antiquities back in the day.
The discussion is important and the history of how these museums came to have the items they do is fraught with depredation but that is't the whole story. I feel like there is nuance around how many of these items that have ended up in the museums of the West and that nuance is paved over by labeling everything as stolen.
> In other cases, though, the items could easily have ended up lost to time (or political, economic, social turmoil)
That's a hard sell when the country that winds up with the artifacts was also the primary agitator of political, social and economic turmoil (you know, the usual colonial stuff). An arsonist shouldn't get to keep victims' heirlooms to "save them from the conflagration".
What did the Dutch do in Indonesia to spark social and economic turmoil? Genuinely curious.
Endless stamping of militarised boot on the neck of any that objected?
To clarify further, modern Indonesia includes some 17,000 islands that historically included almost as many different cultural variations.
The Dutch East Indies included (according to the Dutch) most of those islands and more.
The spice trade was a major revenue stream, so much so that one activity included destroying alternative sources of certain spices on islands that weren't part of the Dutch industrial spice pipeline - to avoid any chance of rivals from France, Germany, England, Spain, etc. sneaking in and getting their own cuttings to start rival plantations.
The VOC (under that name (or another later?)) were active in the region from 1600 - 1940 (ish) when the Japanese swept through and seized oil supplies, etc.
As for the rest; slavery, starting civil wars to divide and conquer, several waves of outright direct warring, destruction of libraries and buildings from local empires that went back centuries, .. the usual fun and games of colonial powers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_East_Indies gives a bief outline.
The Dutch Rubber slave plantations were the ones with all the fun "Meet your literally impossible quota or we chop off your child's hands" rules, and other utterly ruthless and disgusting methods of keeping control.
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>Most of these countries were colonized because they were in turmoil to begin with. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_of_the_Mughal_Empire
Wow, great justification for imperialism, you deserve a medal.
You do know India had other kindgoms besides the Mughals, right? Marathas, Sikhs, Kashmir, to name a few
It's entirely possible that Indonesia would not exist without Dutch colonisation. Indonesian nationalism was a response to colonialism.
So what? Maybe there would have been multiple island nations, maybe they all would have seen other countries and joined hands together. Why should the Dutch get any say in what modern Indonesia should look like?
Same goes for the parent comment about India. The decline of the Mughal empire and the possibility of multiple states arising instead of an unified India doesn't justify the British colonialism and in no way absolves them of their atrocities.
Why get worked up about one foreign empire coming in and replacing another foreign empire?
"Your house was already in bad condition when I torched it" isn't exactly a great defense.
>The labeling of things in museums as "stolen" is lacking, IMO. In some cases, yes... straight up looted items are in museums.
If the best place to hide a lie is between two truths then the best place to hide a stolen item is between two that were legitimately acquired. This debate always seems to acknowledge that there are items completely illigitmately acquired but then shrug shoulders that nothing can be done because there are other items that were legitmatley acquired and somehow that's supposed to be convicing.
It's an idictment against the British Museum and by extension the UK that these items we do agree are stolen simply aren't returned.
> Additionally some of these places would not have had the means to care for antiquities back in the day.
This is a bad argument, because it's irrelevant.
Imagine getting your car stolen, and the thief says it's justified because he is rich (partly due to stealing a lot of cars) and he can afford to send the car to the shop for maintenance more often.
The object belongs to the original owner. Even if that original owner would choose to destroy or damage their object on purpose that would be up to them.
I'm not very sympathetic with OP's positions, but I do think these analogies to individual theft are pretty weak. Who owns shared cultural artifacts? The government? The Ottoman government was in charge of Greece when they gave the Parthenon marbles to Lord Elgin. Was that stealing? If so, does the current Greek government have the authority to do what they want with them? And what's the difference? Both governments have supporters and detractors within Greece. There isn't nearly as clear of a distinction as most people want to think.
And in some cases, the items were lost because they were put in museums. Europe was not exactly a stable place in the 20th century. Many things were destroyed in the wars, and many items were stolen from museums by conquerors, individual soldiers, and looters.
Such as?
I don’t see a single missing artifact on this list that was taken by Europeans and lost in WWI or WWII: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_missing_treasures
Plenty lost in other parts of the world though!
Not in wartime, but in recent years, the British Museum, a prime holder of foreign antiques, reported they lost thousands of items. Some were found or recovered, but some were confirmed as stolen.
This list is terribly incomplete. It's missing all of the artifacts stolen by the Soviet Army during WWII, and still not accounted for.
The USSR systematically stole from all the areas they occupied. They stole the indexes and inventories, so it's not known what was taken.
Entire libraries and museums just vanished.
The Soviets implied they were destroyed in the war, but there is strong evidence the Soviet system of looting preserved much. In the early 1990s, some treasures started to leak out.
Wikipeia is good at some things, and terrible at others. Compiling a list of "missing treasures" is far beyond it's competency.
That is a very short list of particularly notable lost items. European museums had hundreds of millions of items in their collections, and many of them were lost. The number of documented pieces of art and artifacts lost in WW2 is in millions. The actual number is likely much higher, as the documents were often also lost. Nazis looted as a matter of policy. Soviets practiced wholesale destruction. Even Americans did widespread looting, often taking items that had first been stolen by Nazis.
For a more concrete example: The Colonial Collections Committee report behind the article discusses a total of 390 items. 10 of them were known to be lost before the 1990s. Further 17 were not found in an inventory at that time. One additional item was determined to be a loss that had been reported earlier. Two further items had been reportedly transferred somewhere else, but their current status is unknown.
I like how museums in Berlin look at this problem. Once I visited an exhibition that was fully dedicated to provenance research and it did label some items, although with less straightforward language (I don’t remember seeing the word „stolen“). https://www.smb.museum/en/research/provenance-research/
And of course this has happened: https://www.smb.museum/en/museums-institutions/ethnologische...
> political, economic, social turmoil
I can see a happy medium, where (ex)colonizers return artifacts to neutral safe harbor near the home country.
If Indonesia is unstable or if museums don't meet standards, then let artifacts be held in Australia. If Egypt is too unstable, then have the artifacts returned to Dubai. With the frequency of 'just stop oil' vandalism, I'm not sure if the west is the safest place for these artifacts anyway.
Alternatively, national embassies also make for great safe harbor. This way the artifacts are nominally returned to the home country, without needing to cross borders or jeopardizing the artifact's safety.
>In other cases, though, the items could easily have ended up lost to time (or political, economic, social turmoil) if they had not been taken and put in museums outside of the places where they originated. Additionally some of these places would not have had the means to care for antiquities back in the day.
You don't seem to be disputing that the items were stolen but rather claiming that some of the theft was justified.
> While some critics of repatriation have raised concerns over how poorer countries will care for their returned artifacts, Marieke van Bommel, director general of the National Museum of World Cultures, tells the New York Times’ Lynsey Chutel that “the thief cannot tell the rightful owners what to do with their property.”
But the government of the country the artifacts are being returned into isn’t the rightful owner. (I do think returning is the right thing to do, but it should be a bit more thought through.)
Many artifacts were stolen from legitimate kingdoms / village councils / etc that no longer exist, so for these artifacts returning it to the corresponding modern government is fairly appropriate.
Otherwise, unless there is a clear claim of individual/familial ownership vis descendancy, then returning artifacts to a legal national government is still a least bad option. In this case the artifact belongs to the people and is stewarded by the peoples' government - the government doesn't "own" it in the way King Charles owns the Crown Jewels. (Ideally this government would be democratic, but international legitimacy should be enough for the UK to hand over the goods.)
There are a ton of exceptions - Rohingya artifacts shouldn't be sent blindly into Myanmar - but I promise the people involved are taking this seriously. It seems condescending and arrogant van Bommel really failed to "think through" her usage of a metonymy.
> Otherwise, unless there is a clear claim of individual/familial ownership vis descendancy, then returning artifacts to a legal national government is still a least bad option.
How do you expect such a clean and clear historic record considering these artifacts were taken from places subjected to deep exploitation by the same countries that today possess the artifacts? Surely keeping records of historical artifacts for use centuries later, would have been a lower priority for the local population than survival.
> the government doesn't "own" it in the way King Charles owns the Crown Jewels
Would the Crown Jewels still be owned by Charles (or his heirs) if the UK ceased to be a monarchy? I hope not — when the monarchy falls all “royal” property should become public property.
Would make sense imo to auction them to the highest bidder and distribute it to the heirs. Or give the heirs shares of a corporation that holds the artifact.
I'm not sure about Indonesia government but I'm confident if my forefathers made artifacts and it got 'returned' to US gov what would happen is a bunch of rich city dwellers would get to see it in an exhibit somewhere, some director will see a fat salary and meanwhile I have no share or compensation nor practical ability to access the artifact.
This is spot on. Why should a “mosern country” be the owner of an artifact? I wonder honestly, I am not just whining.
Because they are more secure there. These are irreplaceable items. Pick your favorite cultural artifact, would you help move it to a more secure location if there was a lot of instability that could lead to it being destroyed? Even if that more secure location was a different country? I personally would.
I would recommend reading "Africa is Not a Country" that delves into this exact question. It is the pinnacle of self-serving arguments for European countries to first spend centuries colonising Africa, stolen its wealth and cultural artifacts, enriching themselves in the bargain, and dividing the continent in a way that would guarantee political instability, to then use that same instability as an excuse for not returning those cultural artifacts.
Of course this article is about Indonesia - that's not a country that screams instability in any case
Having been multiple times at the Chirac Quai Branly museums, it's pretty clear the argument is valid: most pieces seem totally forgettable and would likely have been discarded by their owners. Heck, even the "royal door of XXX king palace" is a 1-meter wooden door with carvings that aren't particularly fine. Those artifacts still exist and have value because they are exposed in a museum in Paris, otherwise nobody would care.
> Heck, even the "royal door of XXX king palace" is a 1-meter wooden door with carvings that aren't particularly fine
Perhaps your subjective standards are not universal when determining cultural/aesthetic significance of artifacts.
I saw a railroad spike in an American museum once, it wasn't decorative, or made of precious metal (just steel), but it meant something to the locals. I don't doubt the other adjacent pegs were scrapped or rusted away, but that peg was culturally significant due to the historical nature of the railroad itself.
The Netherlands has accumulated so much art and antiques in the last 200 years that most of it never sees the light of day. It sits in giant secured vaults.
To be honest, artifacts are not wealth. Resources are wealth and you do not use artifacts as resources. They can be a display of wealth but not the wealth itself.
Sorry: I must have explained myself badly. We agree (I preder the artifacts in, say, London rather than in modern “Egypt”).
I'm sure your keepsakes would be more secure in my safe deposit box but that doesn't give me the right to break into your house and take your shit.
You steal a mummy from egipt, take it to london, put it in a museum.
Who has more claim on the item... someone who stole it and kept it for 100, 150, 200 years? Or people of egypt represented by their government,living in an area where the mummy was stolen from?
Depending on the time period, anyone between the Egyptians, Hyksos, Nubians, Libyans, Persians, Assyrians and the Romans, and indeed the British, since they all at one point were the official rulers of Egypt.
I have no idea why citizens of modern Egypt, which didn’t get formed until 1953, would be more entitled to up to 3500 year old artifacts more than the then actual owners (agree with the means or not)
And in fact modern Egyptians are more Arabs — the Copts are closer to, but still very far from, the ancient Egyptians.
Therein lies the crux. In all these srories imperialism is a western power only thing. Meanwhile the region is constantly going back and forth in several imperialist waves. There is still imperialism active in dafur.
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Mummies are maybe a bad example, as one could argue, that bodies should be by their grave.
Graves generally aren't permanent; most plots are leased for a fixed term. What is done with the caskets and contents thereafter varies widely.
Is that really how pyramids worked? King Tut in the pyramid for 60 years then to the Nile his bones?
It sort of worked like that, though that wasn't the intention? By which I mean, as I understand it, all the pyramids were robbed a very long time ago, but Tutankhamun's tomb survived undisturbed until the 20th century because it wasn't in a pyramid.
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Or a perfect example - because there are extremely few cultures and circumstances in which very old human graves are moved when the government or rulers changed?
> Or people of egypt represented by their government,living in an area where the mummy was stolen from?
Whose culture and polity have no continuity with that of the people who made the mummy, but rather with that of later invaders.
What do you mean “stole”? From whom? They were literally abandoned.
>They were literally abandoned.
Interesting take. If they were abandoned then I dont see how anyone could claim ownership of it.
Abandoned property generally belongs to whoever finds it and claims it.
The act of stealing was buying it from a local trader who considered it part of the heathen past.
false dilemma, there are more options
the "most right" answer doesn't mean its the right answer. compromise results in wrong answers when there is a right answer. this isn't a standardized test.
Yeah but it gets absurd if enough time passes.
"Your ancestors wronged my ancestors 1000 years ago, so now modern you owes modern me"
This is I think a thing that is difficult for Americans to understand, because the only Americans who have a thousand years of family history in the place they currently live are also asking museums for their stuff back.
There’s a big difference between a culture that mostly ceased to exist in the past 200 years, because of the USA, and one that ceased to exist 3500 years ago.
Yes, and repay it by giving back said object. Egypt or those countries didn't ask for rent or back payments so let's stop imagining strawmen.
Repay what? The people of modern Egypt have no connection or inheritance claim to the ancient artifacts, other than their having been created in a similar place where the modern Egyptians are currently living. They don't even share a remotely similar culture. The same is true of many other places that had their artifacts collected, in that the people have no legal claim to the artifacts other than their having existed in a place in time nor do they often have any shared culture with the people who created the artifacts.
Indeed, it is even arguable whether they are even genetically similar to the ancient Egyptians, due to the migration of the Arabs from the peninsula when spreading Islam over time.
From what I've read, the Egyptian genetics are still relatively similar to Egyptians from several thousand years ago, due to the relatively small number of Arabs involved in the Arab conquest of Egypt. However, the only kinds of inheritance that I believe are strong are familial or cultural. I don't believe in broad umbrella genetic inheritance claims without any establishable familial connection. Beyond this, I think the idea of geographic artifact ownership claims, based solely on the geographic origin of artifacts, have little to no merit.
Beyond this, I think the idea of geographic artifact ownership claims, based solely on the geographic origin of artifacts, have little to no merit.
That's fine, but the world disagrees with you, by and large.
And it needs to have some way of adjudicating these claims. Granted, fine-grained aspects of "familial" vs. "genetic" inheritance (throwing in migrations and multiple waves of forced assimilation) might muddy the waters a bit.
But the vastly bigger point is -- to a first-order approximation, the criterion of "proximate geographic origin" provides at least some form of an objective basis of ownership, and a reasonably workable and intuitive one at that. Meanwhile, as of the 21st century, the consensus view is that the ownership "claims" of recent colonial powers who extracted these artifacts coercively have no merit or basis whatsoever.
Per what the world at large seems to think about these matters. You can disagree of course, and go stand in front of your local museum and hold up a sign stating so, if you like.
(And nevermind the "solely" part please. Yes, there are corner cases like Anatolia where one group comes in and basically genocides the groups living there, so why should the current population get ownership of everything buried underground? Interesting questions, but again corner cases -- and the current population of Egypt seems to be the very opposite of such a case, for the very reasons you stated).
> That's fine, but the world disagrees with you, by and large.
I honestly don't like the way I ended that last sentence. If I could re-write it I'd replace "merit" with "basis in cultural lineage". I would agree that most people in the world don't default to feeling this way, but I also don't think most people have a well thought out idea of why they disagree. If it is considered that the current geographic ownership claims are retroactive ownership claims based solely on the current owners of the geography, for items that existed on the land long before the current legal nations came into existence, the claims make much less sense.
> the criterion of "proximate geographic origin" provides at least some form of an objective basis of ownership
This is part of the reason why I don't like how I used "merit", as it could get confused with legal merit, which wasn't really my intended meaning. However, the problem with this argument is that many of the cultural objects that were collected in years past were collected prior to the modern nations existing in those places. Due to this, this argument really would have little legal merit for virtually all the countries where artifacts have been collected, as those countries did not exist when the British collected the artifacts, and their current claims are a retroactive idea of ownership over what was collected before the current nation came into existence.
>the consensus view is that the ownership "claims" of recent colonial powers who extracted these artifacts coercively have no merit or basis whatsoever
There may be a opinion in the popular consciousness about this general topic, but there can't be a legal consensus, as every claim has to be evaluated individually. Without documentation on the origin and the original owners of the artifacts, and documentation establishing that said artifacts were retrieved illegally, it is impossible to establish legally that the current owners do not actually have ownership over the artifacts.
>the current population of Egypt seems to be the very opposite of such a case, for the very reasons you stated
This is very much not what I stated. The civilization that created the ancient Egyptian artifacts is completely distinct from the current culture. Besides having genetic similarities, which all humans do to some extent, modern Egyptians have near zero cultural lineage tracing to the ancient Egyptian civilization.
especially when you consider the British Museum hasn't been great about preventing theft recently
> isn’t the rightful owner.
And who is qualified to determine the "rightful owner"? The current government of the nation from which the items were taken is the one in charge of policy regarding their cultural and historical artefacts.
There is no "nation from which the items were taken".
I’m not sure I follow - The items were taken from somewhere at some point in time and now there is a country on that territory.
Take an extreme hypothetical. Suppose in the 1500s the government of Spain had taken some artifacts relating to the indigenous peoples of New Mexico. Would the government of the United States really be the rightful owner of these artifacts?
For other countries it's not quite as extreme, but in general the link between ancient culture in place X and modern country in place X is less strong than people try to make out.
I don’t see the controversy of your example because since there was no UNESCO and other global agreements in the 1500s, the indigenous people of this area are still around and so it would be the local Native American tribes that can have a legitimate claim on their heritage.
Lots of native american tribes committed genocide and destroyed other tribes. If Tribe A made some artifacts, and then was genocided out of existence by Tribe B, which was then conquered by the Tribe C (USA). Would you want Tribe B to have ownership of the artifacts of tribe B?
Including your 'tribe C' (the USA) with two indigenous tribes (A & B) in your example is highly disingenuous. And self-serving to your contrived hypothetical.
It is an interesting theory, if I understand it. Is the Idea that controlling a geographic region makes one the rightful heir to any artifacts created by people and cultures previously in the region?
Does the USA have a claim to all indigenous Artifacts created in the US? It doesn't seem that different than Egypt laying claim to Egyptian artifacts.
I think it’s clear the spirit of my comment was to mean that the descendants of the original owners would be one of the parties with a claim to have their artefacts repatriated. It’s clearly not a strictly geographical problem.
Are we talking genetic ancestry? What if the genetic ancestors have little in common with the current geographic population What if the genetic ancestors themselves were brutal slavers and overlords who extracted the riches by force?
This is a very good point, which I brought up in another comment. Arguing on the basis of broad genetic ancestry to establish ownership of ancient artifacts can quickly get murky and nonsensical, when considering nations that exist today with similar genetic ancestry, and also those former nations which may have been antagonistic, yet have similar genetics.
The idea of a nation-state is surprisingly recent and not completely universal, right? Historically people might be organized along kinship, tribal, ethnic, religious, or some other lines. Then an empire could pop up and control various groups of those, often against their wills, sometimes via intermediaries (which might not even map well to the underlying peoples).
I do think the best thing to do is to return artifacts to their rightful owners, but figuring out who the rightful owners is, can be quite difficult.
I mean, if they stole some artifacts from a tribe, which was subsequently wiped out by a tribe of bitter rivals, do they give their artifacts back to the rival tribe that later went on to form a government? (Just as a hypothetical, hopefully this is general enough that it is clear that I’m not trying to describe any particular real situation).
Interesting thought. Perhaps the Egyptian relics should be repatriated to modern day practitioners of Egyptian polytheism. I believe the Kemetic Orthodoxy is currently headquartered in Illinois, USA.
Hah. I’m going to intentionally pass on that one, my main point was that it is hard to make these decisions. The existence of surprising edge cases like yours just goes to show that it is a hard problem.
Egypt abandoned monotheism for Christianity before surrendering to Muslims.
Stuff the British Stole is a really good podcast (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) that explores the difficulties of these situations:
https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/stuff-the-british-sto...
Things like:
- The current government in power may not allow the artifacts to be returned to the original people, but will accept them and place them in the national museum. In many of these cases; the original people actually oppose the "return" for now, and are waiting for the political situation to change.
- The current government actively blocks the return of artifacts as it would be victory for their opponents
- In some cases, the artifact would have been wholly unremarkable except for the fact it was taken by the British; that is it has a lot more significance as a "Thing the British Stole" and would have been lost to time otherwise
- Many artifacts require very intricate preservation activities that the receiving country isn't equipped for
- If the artifact involves human remains, there are all kinds of laws preventing the movement/transfer/relocation of human remains in both countries
In general I think returning them is a good thing, but more often than not there's an enormous legal/moral/ethical quagmire surrounding them
Edit: No judgement intended either way on this particular instance. I just wanted to provide a good resource if others are interested in learning more about the general situation.
- the artifact is likely to be seen by significantly more people and serves a much greater purpose to expose/educate those people (from other cultures) to/about the culture from which it came
That argument wears thin very quickly, especially when the people of the culture from which the artifact originates are not able to view it (because it now lives in London instead of their home country), and thereby learn about their own history. See for example the Benin Bronzes; imagine that the original US Constitution document were housed in a museum in Nigeria.
The Benin Bronzes if returned will go to the descendants of the original owners - the kings of a kingdom built on slavery.
I certainly know many people in countries from which these things were taken who think they are safer somewhere stable - I have heard exactly the comment that returning things will probably mean then end up stolen by politicians from Sri Lankans with regard to the things the Netherlands returned to Sri Lanka.
Also, consider what would have happened if the things from what is now Iraq had been there at the mercy of the likes of ISIS.
In many cases the people know occupying a territory have a different culture and history to the ancient people who made something. They may even have been the conquerors who destroyed the culture that made artifacts.
> the kings of a kingdom built on slavery.
You cannot put that as a reason to keep the artifacts in the UK, of all places.
Didn't the movement to stop slavery come from the UK? After that happened the African region refused to stop because it made them rich so England had to invade and created the Ivory Coast? England has a lot of credibility.
The idea of reparations has come up. Should the US be paying or the African countries who profited and kept it going for another 100 years.
The British were engaged in the slave trade, then worked to outlaw slavery but replaced it with indentured servitude that was basically like slavery with a trivial income. That and exploitative colonial government meant you don't need slavery to loot everything.
Reparations are a different topic and wouldn't necessarily solve the problems of slavery/colonization.
A great many countries were engaged in the slave trade, especially those where the slaves originated.
The British had the comparative advantage in shipping
Why not? The UK had being making huge military efforts to suppress the slave trade for ninety years at the time it seized the Bronzes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Africa_Squadron
That doesn't dispel that the kingdom has been built on slave trade. It's more about what happened from there.
And of course there's a lot to say about it, even taking the absolute most charitable view, that's 90 years of mild effort after 3 centuries of slave trade. Considering what the UK keeps doing at that time and for the century after, I also wouldn't take the a naively charitable read of it in the first place.
You lost me. Why not the UK of all places?
thanks for the link but still lost.
It looks incredibly simple and clear to me, so I'm pretty curious about what is getting you lost, if you'd be inclined to expand.
What makes the UK a unique place with regard to slavery, as your original post implies?
It doesn't need to be unique, you can't just look at a dispute between the UK and another country and dismiss that other country on the base of an history of slavery.
PS: my question would be how many other countries you think were ahead of the UK in terms of trade slave when it was all the rage for European countries ?
Spain was considerably more exploitative than Britain at first, in the South American gold & silver mining trade, to name one example.
> kingdom built on slavery
I’m not being facetious here, but isn’t the USA (and other nations) basically that? So much of the wealth was accrued through the “low” labor costs of early industry.
Serious economists almost universally agree that slavery makes a country poorer not richer because free people are far more productive than slaves.
> end up stolen by politicians from Sri Lankans with regard to the things the Netherlands returned to Sri Lanka.
I'm not sure if I understand what you're saying, but do you mean that Sri Lanka politicians stole the golden cannon or something else returned from Netherlands? Do you have a citation for that?
No, i am saying that a lot of Sri Lankans believe things are safer in the Netherlands because they risk being stolen if returned (also that they are less likely to be well looked after).
We should be thankful the British stole it!
You joke, but many of the artifacts in question would likely have been destroyed if it were not for the British stealing them.
Honestly, of all the empires that could have stolen I'm glad it was the British.
Cruel, destabilizing, more atrocities than any other empire, but somehow the royal class had a culture of conservation for (some) wildlife and historical artefacts.
They had/have a culture of conserving wealth. Attractive gardens and foreign treasures are just conspicuous displays of wealth.
Hey listen, I come from a country colonized by the British, and it was brutal. It's created generational poverty because they stole the most fertile land and have kept it until today, while sharing with a few corrupt Africans. But have you met the Belgians? Heard of King Leopold II? Now those guys know cruelty and atrocities.
> more atrocities than any other empire
This is an interesting example of survivor's bias. We know about the atrocities the British Empire committed because many of their victims survived. You should read about the Soviets, the Assyrians, or heck even just read the Bible. History has a lot of atrocities in it. As an empire goes the British were pretty run-of-the-mill, maybe a bit light on the genocide.
>>Cruel, destabilizing, more atrocities than any other empire
Lol, no. Not even close. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_under_the_Mongol_E...
Also, in a lot of cases people living there have no relation to people of culture that the artefact has originated from. And usually the way that happened was not much better than what British did with their colonisation of these countries later on.
That seems more like a judgement call that should be made by the legitimate owners of the artifacts (I liked in the other comment, that there was a focus on the problem of figuring out who the legitimate owners were, and the practicalities of getting them the artifacts).
The legitimate owners died a long time ago.
I must have contributed to it somehow, since conversations require two parties. But I have no idea how we got from the thoughtful comment that focused on the interesting part of the problem, to here, and so quickly.
And massive return of artifacts (as opposed to one or two once every decade) will open some very inconvenient flood gates, like the fact that Britain was not the only empire in the history. And some "non-western" countries were or are empires too. Imagine that after India get their stuff back, Afghanistan comes next to India and asks for their share. That would be very bad optics. While without actually receiving stolen or gifted stuff, countries can keep their moral high ground and common external enemy (which is conveniently very far away).
Acaster’s brilliant, funny bit on this:
The UK government occasionally does give things back on the understanding that they can be returned for a bit when required...
The Stone of Scone getting returned to Scotland is a bad example. Sure, it’s symbolic, but Scotland is in the UK and so this was really just moving something around within the UK borders.
>The Stone of Scone getting returned to Scotland is a bad example
The Stone of Scone is a good example of something else, though: if you declare that your king is coronated on a particular stone, when your neighbor conquers you what do you think your neighbor is going to do with the stone? Same thing you would do if you conquered them.
Anyway, James VI of Scotland became King James I of England, which merged the claims, and meant that from then on, claims to the Scottish throne and claims to the English throne would be the same thing.
I don't really see how that example is "giv[ing] things back." That stone is still the property of the British government and kept continuously on British territory.
It's Complicated(tm) - Scotland and England are, currently, both part of Britain. Historically, not so much. And they were often far-from-friendly, with wars fought and everything. In a referendum 10 years ago, ~45% of Scottish voters wanted to separate again.
They are both part of the United Kingdom (which is the union of the kingdoms of England and Scotland).
Great Britain the name of the island both are located upon. England and Scotland will always be a part of Britain, because that's a geographical area, not a political one.
>England and Scotland will always be a part of Britain
Not necessarily: they could dig a big canal across the island along the border.
Scotland and England has been the same country for far longer than say the USA has even existed.
And Scotland has been crowning Scottish kings with it since before England even existed, if you believe the legends ;)
Including James 6th, who then took over England.
1707 versus 1776 isn’t what I would describe as “far longer”.
In the context of crowning kings, the union of the crowns was 1603, before the mayflower, before new Amsterdam, even before Jamestown.
But even with 1707 you’re talking 30% of the age of the USA again.
Between 1714 and 1807, Britain was also in personal union with Hanover. That didn’t make Britain and Hanover the same country any more than England and Scotland were the same country during the 17th century.
My own reaction to the most recent Scottish independence referendum was pretty much "Oh well, at least we're still in the EU"...
I just learned about how in 1890 a ship filled with 19.5 tons of unwrapped cat mummies sailed from Alexandria to Liverpool, and the cargo was sold mostly as fertilizer.
Now I also learned that Egyptian authorities have since found even more mummified cats, perhaps even millions. But it's still a very striking example of the plundering mentality of the big naval powers.
https://www.bbc.com/reel/video/p0jr4z6k/why-tonnes-of-mummif...
That’s amazing. I’d heard of mummies being used for paint [1] but fertilizer is a new one. To be fair it’s not “plundering” because they purchased them from an Egyptian farmer who discovered them on his land. Very much a two party activity.
It's a complete disregard of a nation's heritage. Even if Egyptians were less focused on their legacy in the 19th century, they are today and have the means to preserve it now.
To be semantic it's not plundering, even slaves were purchased from locals.
I've stood in the Cairo museum and looked at a wooden sarcophagus that's had all of it's gold chiseled off of it. Something that was once a work of art reduced to a wooden box for the price of a few ounces of gold. I have mixed feelings about repatriation and the elephant in the room, the British.
There literally was an curator of the British Museum that stole 1800 artifacts and sold them for personal profit. Don't pretend this doesn't happen to the British.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/03/26/british-museum-s...
Seems to be a major bias in this perspective against the British. The contemporary Egyptians at the time of collection had even less interest in preservation.
Do you even know that the gold was removed by the British, and not some enterprising locals? The British were not cultural outliers in their graverobbing. They were outliers in that they saw historical value in items and chose to preserve them, instead of deconstructing them.
The amount of pro-colonial sentiment in the thread here is baffling. The people that were colonized and stolen from have the right to do whatever they want with these artifacts, even if you believe they may not have the means, or will sell them to private collectors.
Why not just accept the situation as part of the ebb and flow of history? They certainly weren’t the first empires in history. I think a lot of the objection is more about nationalistic sentiment than anything else and I don’t feel it needs to be done to reclaim cultural heritage.
> Why not just accept the situation as part of the ebb and flow of history?
Why would you? By calling it the 'ebb and flow of history' you seem to imply that the things we do to each other is beyond the control of humans.
But of course we're fully in control of what we do, so the question is rather: if we have the possibility to do good, and it comes at virtually no cost to us, then why not do good?
In my opinion it’s still more driven by nationalistic agendas than the ethical imperative and as others have said there are good reasons to leave the artifacts where they are. I’ve only ever seen people make heated demands based on past grievances. A lot of this stuff happened a long time ago now, anyone influential has died, it really is time to at least take the heat of these conversations.
I will never accept colonialism in whatever way, shape, or form.
Unification and Colonialism are two sides of the same coin. You think the former provinces, cities and then villages all willingly integrated in to country you live today?
Hacker News is comprised almost entirely of privileged people from colonizing cultures, and tech culture has been going through a neo-reactionary renaissance for a while, so it shouldn't be surprising. It is weird how aggressive this specific subject makes them, though.
There is a great comedy sketch from James Acaster that sums up the situation in- and the stance most other Western countries take on this, unfortunately:
Unfortunately artifacts returned to their origin country are often sold off to private collection or are otherwise lost. First world countries are better at preservation of such things and should keep it.
How often and can you give some examples in recent history?
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While these discussions are always loaded with sentimental intepretation, and complex questions of what "rightful owner" after hundreds or thousands of years even means, I think more of an emphasis should be put on impact for the population.
After all, the British Museum, the main example for restitutions, is located in a global city, given completely free access to its huge collection on display and pays for preservation. The global cultural value it adds is much larger than individual museums all over the would could provide.
> Marieke van Bommel, director general of the National Museum of World Cultures, tells the New York Times’ Lynsey Chutel that “the thief cannot tell the rightful owners what to do with their property.”
And in the meantime the academic establishment seem to ignore doing what's best for the artefacts or the public. Abused children are taken away from their parents, but artefact are to simply be given back to whatever state has jurisdiction over some area they were in way back?
There seems to not be a simple answer on when things should be given back or not, but at least some effort should be put into figuring out some triage criteria.
While London is indeed a global city, access is very much not equal.
Immigration/tourism requirements are always the strictest against the very countries who were plundered during colonial times, in comparison to rich countries with an imperial past/present.
Most of the world will never visit the UK. Most of the value that the British museum supplies goes back to the UK in the form of tourism and to close allies of the UK in terms of exposure to these artifacts.
Exactly. The majority of HN users have a privilege that they are not even aware of: visa-free/on arrival access to a large chunk of the world.
> Immigration/tourism requirements are always the strictest against the very countries who were plundered during colonial times
Trivially false. The UK has strict requirements for Russia, a former imperial power. The USA was formerly 13 British colonies and has few restrictions.
The USA wasn't plundered as a colony.
The USA is a current imperial power and built atop of a genocide against its native population. The US as an entity has no history that would be relevant to a historical plunder carried out by the British.
Russia is currently in direct conflict with the UK (specifically financial and indirect military support to Ukraine, obviously not with regards to a hot war). Whereas that is not the case with any African nations I am aware of, yet many of those nations face significant travel restrictions not faced by a pre Ukraine invasion Russian population.
What place is easier for 'most of the world' to visit?
Singapore allows visa-free travel to passport holders from 159 countries + many more with an e-visa or visa on arrival.
The UK allows only 83 countries' passport holders visa-free.
I picked Singapore at random. Probably some other country is even more visitor-friendly.
ChatGPT included Singapore and London in it's list of 'easiest' cities to visit, but picked Dubai as the main one because of centrality.
The “easiest” city to visit for the majority of the world depends on several factors, such as accessibility, flight connections, visa requirements, and infrastructure. However, based on these considerations, Dubai in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) is often cited as one of the easiest cities for global travelers to visit. Here’s why:
1. Geographical Location: Dubai is centrally located between Europe, Asia, and Africa, making it a natural hub for international travel. Most of the world’s population is within an 8-hour flight of Dubai. 2. Major International Airport: Dubai International Airport (DXB) is one of the busiest airports globally, with direct flights to over 240 cities across six continents. Emirates Airline, based in Dubai, has extensive routes connecting the world. 3. Visa Policies: The UAE has relatively flexible visa policies. Many nationalities can obtain a visa on arrival, while others have access to electronic visas or straightforward visa processes. 4. Tourism Infrastructure: Dubai is extremely tourist-friendly with world-class hotels, transport systems, and tourist attractions. 5. Political Stability and Safety: Dubai is considered a safe and politically stable city, which adds to its appeal for international visitors.
Other cities like Istanbul, Singapore, or London also offer excellent global connectivity and infrastructure, but Dubai’s visa policies and central location make it a standout.
Though you got lucky with Singapore, it is famously known to have the strongest passport and visa-free agreements are usually reciprocal.
This assumes global cultural value matters more than the native cultural value of the people to whom the artifacts belong.
I think the default should be to return to the native country wherever possible. Although it does beg the question of what to do if the native countries have changed significantly due to imperialism/colonization, idk.
But I do appreciate the value of cross cultural sharing so perhaps museums could have a rotating selection that they can borrow for some time from the native country, as long as the transport does not have negative impacts on the artifacts.
> British Museum, […], is located in a global city, given completely free access to its huge collection on display and pays for preservation.
It grants free access to British citizens and those few who can afford to travel to the UK. The grand majority of the world’s population cannot afford this.
Most important, the locals living in cities that were pillaged by the British can’t access cultural items at all. Sure, the museum entry might be free, but they can’t afford to travel to an island far far away.
> After all, the British Museum, the main example for restitutions, is located in a global city, given completely free access to its huge collection on display and pays for preservation. The global cultural value it adds is much larger than individual museums all over the would could provide.
Most of the collection of the British Museum is not on display at any given moment (if ever). They could lose 90% of their inventory and the display would be exactly the same.
But that's beside the point. Museum entry may be free, but London is pretty expensive to go to, especially if you are from a place where the items in question were plundered (ie poor third world countries). In some cases it may even be illegal. Most of the people whose cultures those items belong to cannot afford to go visit the museum.
Most of these third world countries also have some artefacts on their soil as well. Do they need literally all of them, and you'd have to visit the globe to see international artefacts? The most famous ones, like the Rosetta Stone, only became famous from their usage by Western archeologists.
As for London being expensive, well visiting any foreign country is expensive by non-natives. At least in London you can get a large set of cultural exposure in a single visit.
> Most of the people whose cultures those items belong to cannot afford to go visit the museum.
There is no ancient Greek or Egyptian alive today, those cultures are long dead. What claim do modern inhabitants of those regions have over these artefacts?
> At least in London you can get a large set of cultural exposure in a single visit.
So why not use this logic to extract all of The Hague's Mauritshuis (including The Girl With The Pearl Earring) to London? Let's include the most prized artifacts of other European countries too in this "large set of cultural exposure".
Modern Greeks and Egyptians have significant genetic and cultural continuity with the ancient peoples of those regions. (No, the Arabs did not displace the Egyptians.)
Genetic continuity, sure. But I can't see any cultural continuity at all. Why do you see one?
I agree with the sentiment, however in some ways it should be something that is permitted to move.
The UK has been very stable for a long time, however they are profiting indirectly from the museums, since it s a driver of tourism.
Should the UK become less stable, we should have a hard look at ensuring the continuity of the collection. As others have mentioned, a lot of these things would have been destroyed or forgotten had the British not decided it was important to keep it - and as time goes on, those things become even more irreplaceable.
If the UK became less stable, maybe someone like Germany could take custody and seize the collection, for UK's own good?
Or France, or Belgium, or Finland, or Netherlands.
That's quite a jump from discussing Germany taking custody of a museum collection. I don't think these countries would like being taken too.
If this is a joke I am perhaps too tired to understand it.
It was a pretty cheap and light-hearted aside shot at your comment meaning that Germany should, since we're talking about it taking the collection into custody, take those countries into custody as well. Nothing smart was missed - I wish you a good rest!
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Looting and pillaging is fine, as long as you build an entire economic / social system around it? Because that is the only semblance of logic I can take away from your statements. These museums didn't just pop into place for the artifacts to reside in; they were built to show off their spoils.
Take the Taliban example of destroying Buddhist culture in the 90s. They are/were the current people in power would you suggest returning items to be destroyed or carefully preserving them for future. Would you return items to a place incapable of taking care of them?
I love how an extreme example of one country doing this to their historical artifacts, is used to deny entire swathes of billions of people access to their artifacts. So all colonized countries must be damned by the record of Afghanistan (which itself owes a lot of its instability to meddling by colonial powers), while the British Museum must NOT be damned by it's own record of having hundreds of artifacts defaced and parts sold for scrap: https://edition.cnn.com/2023/12/13/style/artefacts-british-m...
Do you have any interest in talking about the British & American roles in funding, training, and arming the Taliban in the 70, 80s, and early 90s? Or would you prefer creating a hypothetical where we are burdened to take care of the people who just can't take care of themselves (after we wreak havoc on them)?
We can talk about the US and USSR proxy wars and how they trained and armed people on different sides because they did not want to engage directly. Doesn't change the fact that the Buddhist cultural items were being destroyed because it conflicted with their version of Islam. Handing them back would be unwise.
Well I don't want to talk about that first part, mainly because it's a very poor interpretation of history. You brought up the Taliban and I wanted to investigate that thought you had further. You seem to be trying to paint an ideological picture unrelated to the topic and insist on a leading question built on the assumption "if you give the artifact back, it will be destroyed".
> Would you return items to a place incapable of taking care of them?
Isn't this like saying "I'm not going to return what I stole because you clearly aren't capable of taking care of it, if you are it would never have been stolen"
I think there's a misunderstanding about the intention behind asking for return of stolen artifacts. It's not aleays about the artifacts themselves or how valuable they are or preserving them at all.
Returning items is like acknowledgment of historical mistakes and a signal that the other party is ready to make amends.
Merely acknowledging the mistake while holding onto the stolen artifacts is just a lip service that isn't even sincere.
It's like taking a pet fish from your friends house. He moves but you want to give it back to the new home owner who doesn't have tank. Not a good remedy. Neither is giving it back to your friend if he isn't allowed pets in his new home.
The fish should never been taken but trying to do the ideal thing will kill the fish. Be practical not idealist.
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> These museums didn't just pop into place for the artifacts to reside in; they were built to show off their spoils.
You have a very cynical and skewed view of things. These museums were built specifically for the public good, to show off things that were of no interest in their original countries at that time. The British didn't say they wanted to build public museums to increase tourism, that came later as an unintended consequence.
> to show off things that were of no interest in their original countries at that time
You have a very cynical and skewed view of things.
Please tell me how I'm wrong with arguments.
Was anyone in the Mesopotamian area interested about cuneiform tablets a century ago? Where locals doing any archeological digs at Ur or Uruk?
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It would be sort of interesting, maybe if there was some sort of right to visit these artifacts, the idea that the UK was preserving their cultures for these countries would be a little more defensible. What percentage of a country’s population should be given a museum-funded trip to the UK, before we can say the museum is actually living up to that promise, I wonder? Half or so?
> Abused children are taken away from their parents, but artefact are to simply be given back to whatever state has jurisdiction over some area they were in way back?
The reason why children are protected from abusive parents, is because they are protected by human right laws. A child is legally entitled to an upbringing safe from abuse, so a state is obligated to remove children from abusive housrholds.
Of course antiquities aren't people so they don't have any human rights. That is why it's stupid to compare artifacts to abused children.
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> complex questions of what "rightful owner" after hundreds or thousands of years even means
I think that's besides the point.
To me this means a goodhearted effort to right past wrongs.
https://mastodon.gamedev.place/@rygorous/113219189748801451
> art project idea: "The British Museum", which is housed somewhere outside the UK and will accept and display any donations from anonymous donors into its collection that were provably stolen from Great Britain
Well, in fairness, Britain would have the right to demand the artifacts be returned.
Please don't shoot the messenger here. I'm just saying hypocrisy doesn't negate legal rights. I'm American, so no dog in the fight, but the UK would have the right to take those artifacts back.
> After all, the British Museum, the main example for restitutions, is located in a global city, given completely free access to its huge collection on display and pays for preservation. The global cultural value it adds is much larger than individual museums all over the would could provide.
Firstly, as others have pointed out, the British Museum is not freely accessible to the vast majority of the world population. The world is larger than WEIRD countries and the richer sections of formerly colonised countries countries
Secondly, it is not the British Museum's decision to make about whether the cultural artifacts of other people is more valuable to "global culture" than it is to the culture it originated from. Let's take an example: India and China both have a population more than double that of the EU. Which means a museum located in either country provides visa-free access to billions of people with relatively cheap travel.
Would that be an argument to move the Girl With the Pearl Earring from The Hague's Mauritshuis to New Delhi or Beijing? Would it be an argument to move the painting to the British Museum? Indeed why not move the entire Mauritshuis to the British Museum? After all London receives far more visitors than The Hague does. Surely the global cultural value of those artifacts is greater than the value that the Dutch place on it.
Consider that you apply this logic to extract all Dutch artwork from that country and place it in a second country. Consider that the second country was largely responsible for such extraction, which included not only cultural artifacts but also wealth. Consider that the second country now places visa restrictions that make it harder for Dutch people to visit the country and even if they did, the cost of actually doing so would largely exclude most Dutch people. What effect would this extraction of cultural heritage have on the Dutch?
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There are alot of question marks around what actually happened with the library in Alexandria.
> Should we give everything back to them, a culture that seems hellbent on destroying everything they don’t like?
Not sure if I was unclear, but my thinking is that: no, nothing should be given back from the British Museum.
Having had a few interactions with the Indonesian government, the Netherlands should have just kept them.
Nice! I think about this every time i'm in an English museum
I know some of the museums aren’t the right place to keep some of the artifacts, but I also feel that in general they have been good stewards.
My counterpoint is wondering how many would have been destroyed by ISIS or civil unrest in some of the less stable regions of the world.
There's 2 separate Hague conventions establishing an international framework for how to protect heritage in conflict regions. They're not perfect (like pretty much any convention), but they address all the basic issues like sheltering artifacts abroad and dedicating military units to prevent destruction.
Also, western institutions have not been ideal stewards themselves, historically. The Pergamon kept the Ishtar gate through bombings in WW2 and the GDR. The British Museum has lost untold numbers of artifacts because they don't even have the resources to do a complete catalog of their collection, let alone properly conserve them.
>>There's 2 separate Hague conventions establishing an international framework for how to protect heritage in conflict regions.
It's not working well: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhas_of_Bamiyan#Destruction...
Speaking of the Pergamon Museum I think the actual Pergamon Altar might be better off back in the actual site of Pergamon - now in Turkey.
All good points! I did not realize military units were dedicated to this.
I’m personally saddened by all the artifacts destroyed recently in the Middle East over ideological differences.
>My counterpoint is wondering how many would have been destroyed by ISIS or civil unrest in some of the less stable regions of the world.
This line of thought is fascinating to me.
We should preserve them for all of humanity? Who chooses the custodian?
We want a more nationalist case for repatriation to country of origin? If they get destroyed, it’s not the self-professed custodian nation’s problem or loss.
Cynical, perhaps, but you need to balance self-determination with preservation. Maybe having their artifacts back will provide a drive to stability for the sake of heritage.
>Maybe having their artifacts back
The idea that modern Egyptians have any claim over the artifacts when they don't share a culture or civilization with those who created the artifacts is tenuous. The artifacts don't belong to the land itself. They belonged to people of a no longer existing civilization that once inhabited the land.
Consider this though.
In the case of Britain, they got the artifacts because they established a protectorate over Egypt and thus were able to excavate and do civil engineering.
However, the fact that the artifacts were there to be discovered in the first place was because the Arab and later Ottoman overlords left them there.
So who should rightfully claim them? One of the historical suzerains of Egypt? Or the current nation of Egypt who inhabit the ancient Egyptian territory?
I can’t think of the ‘right’ (ie just) answer to that question… only practical ones.
I’m actually not sold on my argument, but was rather playing devil’s advocate.
I can’t help but feel that all future generations should have the opportunity to learn from artifacts as well, but I’m saying that from a Western perspective.
I have no idea how one should fairly choose a custodian or determine what “stability” really means.
Maybe as humans touch all corners of the globe, we just accept that historical artifacts are ephemeral things and enjoy them while they last.
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Sounds good, we're using it just for show anyway. How would you like it delivered?
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Perhaps not necessarily in this case, but something I do think about is, are not certain artifacts safer in the museums that can take care of them for future generations? There are many unstable countries in the world where that cannot happen, and I would want artifacts not destroyed due to wars or other sorts of fighting such as terrorism [0] such that future generations can see them. That is why I am not necessarily opposed to so called colonial governments continuing to hold on to relics, as the British Museum has stated.
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/feb/26/isis-fighters-...
How many countries does England have stuff to return to?
Preservation is what gives artifacts value.
Here is a take I haven't seen anywhere else: according to Wikipedia, when the Europeans took the Rosetta Stone it was nothing more than rock in some wall. The European then turned it into something truely special.
A hot take on this could be to just return a rock of equal size. It is not clear how all the information gathered should be factored into this.
Don't like the word "stolen" in this context, it sounds very newspeak-y compared to "plundered" or "looted". Ever heard of Vae victis?
Even plundered and looted is often a misnomer.
In many cases, they could be replaced with collected, saved, and preserved.
Our current sense of historical preservation was not as pervasive in the past. In many places these materials would have been consumed or destroyed by locals who had more pragmatic concerns and no interest in the past.
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As always, if these things weren't taken and put in a museum in the first place, today they wouldn't even exist.
As always, the world doesn't owe you or anyone the artifacts of its cultures. They can be shared, but no one has the right to take them by force.
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Cry about what? I simply stated a fact.
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