this post was submitted on 04 Dec 2024
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Not to commit a high crime of having a nuanced take on a circle-jerked to death issue. But many of the "stolen" artifacts only exist today because they were safe guarded by the musuem. Many more would be at best, kept in complete private collections away from the public and historians. And plenty more don't have a direct modern day counterpart, or have split modern ancestry, so don't have a clear place to return them to if they wanted to return them.
And yes, there are some artifacts where none of that applies and they should be returned, but I would believe those to be the minority.
Ignoring the rest of your comme to focus on this part because I love it when people declare complex issues "simple" and give 1 dimensional solutions to it.
How do you determine if it doesn't belong to them?
For example I think most people would say if they bought the artifacts legitimately, then they belong to them right?
What about cases when they legitimately buy artifacts from people who themselves acquired them I legitimately? Or how do you even determine legitimacey? Is someone finding a historical object mean it belongs to them and they can do what they like with it? What if it's on public land? What if it's private land and they are working on it and find it? What about when ownership of the land is disputed?
What about cases like the rosetta stone, that was found ina rubble heap by French forces and eventually given to Britain as part of war confessions. Should that frenchman have left it in a pile, doomed to be destroyed because it doesn't belong to him?
It's not British museum but the koh-i-noor diamond that's part of the crown jewels, often claimed that the UK should give it back. Who do you give it back to?
Do you give it to India as the successor state of the kingdom of Punjab who handed over to the British after they lost a war? Do you give it back to Kashmir as the successor of Jammu who the Punabs stole it from? Do you give it to Pakistan as it was once the property of the Sikh empire? Or do you give it to Iran as it was first record in the possession of Nader Shah?
england should give the marbles to saudi arabia, who will pass them on to morocco. then while greece looks over hopefully, morocco will fling them over to ukraine, who will watch greece trudge hopelessly towards them before passing them back to england
While I would say the Elgin marbles are a case that err on the side of they should be returned, again reality is not as simple and black and white as people like you want it to be.
When Elgin took the marbles the entire area was, by all accounts, in shambles and people were burning pieces of these statues to aquire lime to build with. And that was one of the reasons Elgin decided to remove the marbles, so they are preserved today because they were removed.
Then there's also the argument that they do in fact legally belong to the UK, Elgin got permission from both the ottoman empire and local authorities in Athens to remove the sculptures. Then the actions were also ratified when Elgin was twice given permissions by the ottomans to ship the statues out of Athens. No historian worth there salt will tell you they are stolen. That is a position held by Greeks, people pressured by them and people that have seen a tumble post or reddit article about the marbles and gone full dunning-kruger, thinking they know the intricacies of the whole situation.
Yes, because do. The bayuex tapestry held by france. Henry VIII letters to Anne Boleyn held by the Vatican, the Vercelli book held In Italy, parts of old British warships kept by the Dutch, French and Spanish, The Codex Amiatinus, in Florence, most of Shakespeare's originals are in the US, Charles I art collection, several entire buildings like Agecroft hall and James Cook's house, even old London Bridge could fall under this category. And countless (and I really do mean countless) less import ones that have ended up in other countries, primarily the US, in state museums.
And a lot of those were acquired with much less legality than the Elgin marbles.
The fact that they were acquired legally with permission of the government of the time, now have history outside of their original ones in Greece, allow the teaching of its history to be spread to more people and be viewed in the wider context of global history.
And as I said before, if I was forced to chose, I would err on the side of them being returned. My point is to point out it isn't a simple and black and white case of the eeeeeevil British blatantly stealing things and refusing to give them back just to be cunts.
That's kind of the point. The UK typically doesn't feel the need to demand back it's artifacts
Some of those artifacts are contested
My entire series of comments is about the fact that these are not clear cut, but as is the case with every random chucklefuck on the internet that thinks they are an expert or an authority on something they have a surface level, at best, understanding of, you're taking an extreme position, arguing it's clearly the correct one and the situation is obvious and without nuance and then staunchly and irrationally refusing to anything that challenges your simple minded binary world view.
Imagine you bought something from someone fairly, then a day later they claim it has a lot of significance to them and demand you give it back without compensation. Are you going to give it to them? Does it still "belong" to them? Any rational person would say no.
Well basically every prominent historian who's weighed in on the matter thinks they hold water, so I'm not going to give much credence to random angry person on lemmy with little knowledge on the subject.
Bye
There’s a lot of well preserved stone feet across the world that might beg to differ
Interestingly enough, most cultures preserve their old historical artifacts…you know, because it’s their culture
Cool, many dont, and many that do dont give public access to their collections.
You mean like that time they destroyed an entire culture's history by taking the tablets it was recorded on and mixing them up?
What?