I wonder if the British Museum will do the right thing and return previously stolen artefacts?
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> then you visit the original country where it’s from and they themselves have nothing or very little left from that era.
You seem to generalize quite a lot in order to validate your view point that everything stolen should stay stolen.
Sometimes it's the entire opposite. It's not being shown anywhere, it's just hidden in a museum collection in the UK. In other cases it's exposed but with very little relevant information because it's not particularly relevant to the local culture or the colonizer is too ashamed of the real history of how this object got there that they fail to explain the true story of it.
Here's a great podcast that I hope will make you change your mind, lots of examples: https://www.cbc.ca/listen/cbc-podcasts/1030-stuff-the-britis...
I think you are misrepresenting GP & parent's comments.
Yes, absolutely, totally, Brits have a well-deserved reputation of colonisation.
But as a hypothetical conundrum, who would you return the relics from a long expired society to -- the current (arguably quite distinct, religiously & culturally) administrations of those lands?
What moral right is exercised (or exercisable) of relics of, say, Atenism, crafted 3 to 4 thousand years ago -- locals with an orthogonal religion & culture, or foreigners with an orthogonal religion and culture?
(Personally I instinctively lean towards your take, albeit a little less abruptly - but I think it's all quite complicated - partly with the bizarre 'cultural birthright' thing, partly curator cred, less so the accessibility claims.)
Has this ever been in doubt? With Egyptian artifacts, they’d go to Egypt, with looted Greek artifacts they’d go to Greece. With the heads of Māori warriors, New Zealand Maori.
Are there any real world situations where it’s confusing as to who they would be returned to?
Yes, many.
Artifacts whose creation predates the current dominant culture in a region (assuming nation state borders and names have morphed over the time), especially when that contemporary culture actively rejects those earlier cultures, are a prime example.
The Bamiyan Buddhas are a great example - or at least lead to a follow-up question to your question. If, say, the British Museum had transported artifacts of similar historical value (beauty, etc, whatever criteria you want to use) decades or centuries ago, but the ruling regime there now demanded their return, whilst making no secret of their intent to destroy those artifacts upon receipt -- what's would you advise the British Museum?
Beyond the dubious nature of geographical happenstance implying inarguable custodianship - another example of nuance to counter your 'everything is black and white' position would be around artifacts from pre-partition India (Pakistan), and who should own those, or more recently Yugoslav-era artifacts. There are myriad examples like these, of course.
Again, if you're happy to ignore the complexity and potential dubiousness of ancestry claims, or orthogonal religious / cultural values, etc - you're back to a geographical claim - 'there are people in roughly the same region as some different people, some time ago'.
I’m sure there are some examples where the location of the find is unknown, and yes, that would be a difficulty.
A lot of the heat would leave the debate if the blindingly obvious examples looting were resolved - The Elgin Marbles.
Yes, again you're conflating where with who, and that was the crux of my questions to you in the previous post.
Unknown source locations - are a bit of a (minor) edge case I think, but aren't a major problem.
I have no strong opinions on Elgin Marbles, and I haven't been following any debate around that one. In the abstract, I suspect resolving one claim of ownership wouldn't assist in resolving much of 'the debate', but as I say, a bit ignorance on that specific example you cite.