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Comment by graemep | Hacker News Reader

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.

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> 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).

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