It's not about innocence or guilt.

It's about, if you have a piece in your museum, and you know in its chain of ownership, it was looted from, say, France during, say, the German occupation in WWII. Even if all the parties involved are now dead, there's a case to be made to transfer the artifact from a German museum to a French museum.

And this argument holds some weight and can be extrapolated to many other scenarios.

In your case if items exist in the museum looted from a nation that no longer exists (and isn't like Czechoslovakia which was split up into currently existing nations) and the nations in that same land aren't culturally connected or caring to have the artifacts, fine. Nothing else can be done

You're correct! I do need a better example :D

In the south east of England. It's not really clear it was stolen by anyone. The only people in even slightly recorded history to really steal it buggered off a few hundred years later because they missed olive oil and hated the climate. Everyone else pretty much just turned up to run it better, like slightly violent management consultants.

The point is that commenters arguing a museum should give stuff back from where they took it are often arguing from a country that has documentary records in its current legislative body that it faux-legalistically stole the very land it is on.

In many cases, the USA stole that land well after the British Museum (which is older than the USA) acquired some of its objects. It's astonishingly well-documented.

If the argument is that all land has changed hands at some point in history and that excuses the documented way the USA murdered people, used biological warfare, and walked them to their deaths off their own land, then I'm not sure what all the po-faced American social media fuss is about the Elgin Marbles.

(Personally I think the Marbles should go home)

In many cases, the USA knows the names and families of the people it stole land from. Knows their lineage. Even has photographs of some of them!

In historical terms it is a recent, deliberate, judicially-supported, documented theft. Not some undocumented invasion in hazy pre-history. Acts of Congress were passed to do it.

The British Museum (along with the V&A) has some stuff (well looked-after) that people want back. Currently the law literally prevents it being returned, and these organisations are in many cases trying to find ways to work around that law so that it is long-loaned back forever, until the law is changed. There's no simple intransigence; there is dialogue and politics.

The British Empire did some amazing things, and many, many ugly things. You won't find a person in the UK who doesn't understand that now, and there are all sorts of reparation campaigns, restitution campaigns, history projects, etc. etc.; nationally we rub our own noses in it so often that there's a right-wing backlash.

So it's tedious in the extreme the way Americans keep prattling on about British museums as if there is only stonewalling, and as if there is no appropriation from native culture in its post-independence history. It's literally on paper.

Well, the USA was completely stolen, every single square inch, and the natives genocided. Whereas the Basques for example, if they stole their land, did it in deep prehistory.

Brits had all sorts of European forces on their lands and each brought cultural artifacts with them