Comment by angry_moose | Hacker News Reader

Comment by angry_moose | Hacker News Reader

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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?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_Britain

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:

https://youtu.be/x73PkUvArJY?si=eRB3RIuR7rjXvw_i

The UK government occasionally does give things back on the understanding that they can be returned for a bit when required...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_of_Scone

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.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mummy_brown

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.

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