While at UCL in London, wandering round the British Museum was a
lunchtime treat. "Where we keep everybody else's stuff that we looted"
I would cynically say. Then I saw what ISIS, Taliban and our own
"allied" bombing did to world heritage. War has such a cost to
knowledge. I hope one day all these countries, like Syria, will have
their own museums to rival ours, and the peace and stability to enjoy
them for centuries too.
If you're in London don't skip the Brish Museum, which like all London
museums is free (voluntary donation).
> "Where we keep everybody else's stuff that we looted"
Also not true. Even certain items that get "returned" (to completely unrelated opportunists usually), were acquired through trade or accord. We've basically got to a point in history where something happened so long ago they don't care to read about what happened at the time because you can just overlay the modern synthetic moral narrative over it.
That's really not a fair account. Nobody in Egypt, Iraq or Iran was asked if they wanted Britain to run their country. British archaeologists took whatever they liked and did whatever they wanted with it, there was no trade or accord with the people of those countries. The Elgin Marbles may well have been destroyed if Elgin hadn't walked off with them, but that doesn't make it right to keep them.
As a Brit I take some solace from the fact that our imperial legacy is an awful lot less tainted that most, but I've no illusions about the reality of that sort of subjugation and oppression. Being one of the least worst imperial powers is hardly an accolade.
I have mixed feelings about the repatriation of artefacts. There are some clear cut cases where it would be the right thing to do, like the marbles. on the other hand if we just bulk shipped everything to their countries of origin, vast quantities of the material would just disappear. We might even end up having to buy a lot of it back to get it off the black market.
> I hope one day all these countries, like Syria, will have their own museums to rival ours, and the peace and stability to enjoy them for centuries too.
I find the British pretext that they're keeping (often stolen) artifacts for safety reasons to be really flimsy.
Greece is a safe country that has built a world class museum quite some years ago [1] and the Elgin marbles are still in London.
I think the argument is less about any one country specifically than it is one of redundancy. At the extreme a museum keeping all examples of a culture in one place is a single point of failure. Not just from disasters but also that museum‘s bureaucracy.
That however doesn’t excuse keeping what are often the best examples in their collection.
Most of history is lost to wars, ideologies and conquests. I think of the library of Alexandria, man, everything burnt of ancient knowledge in a pissing match.
That Alexandria burned is fairly uncontrovertial. It seems to have done so multiple times.
That it was deliberate, a single act, or independent of a long-term secular decline of the collection is far less well established.
The historiography of ancient literature gives far stronger credence to the notion of having multiple copies in independent locations to avoid similar erasures.
The several fires within the Library of Congress collection had a tremendous impact on the design and materials used in the Jefferson Building of the current US Library of Congress, in which stone, iron, and steel are principle materials to reduce the risks of fire. This is noted multiple times in the 19th century series of Librarian's reports to Congress.
The UCL Flinders petrie collection is small but beautifully formed and from memory has a collection of ancient weights and measures from Egyptian market/pay regulators.
The staff club used to have a pretty fine Stanley Spencer resurrection painting too, back in the 80s. Not sure the staff club even exists any more.
For non UCL staff, a spare head of Jeremey Bentham is in a pub across the road. A utilitarian always had two, just in case.
Hmm - but that is something of a self-serving argument - in my view.
ISIS and the Taliban didn't come out of nowhere. Eg -
the Taliban were created and armed by the Western countries to create the Mujahideen to fight the Russians in Afganistan. (Its a similar story for ISIS.) And they were 'radicalised' by Arabian money, which the Western countries also created in their setup of the Middle East.
So, there is a strong argument to say, that the Anglo-American empire went to various places, looted them, and created a sh*tshow behind them, which in itself provides a sort of retrospective justification for the looting.
PS Obviously the governments do not advertise their, ahem, "defensive" overseas actions - its understandable not to know, esp if you only follow government provided news services. But if you do know this info, calling the looting "good" on account of all the punishment that the looter then inflicts (or cause to be inflicted) on what is left behind, is perverse.
Yeah that's right, the only people with moral agency are Westerners. Everyone else just reacts from that. Nothing to think about here, just blame The West, we're always wrong. Do not apply the same historicism to Western history either.
Well, we can call it the West, or we can call it those with power.
I live in the West, by my country's actions are nothing to do with me. My leaders do not represent me. I want nothing to do with it.
What we are really talking about when we use phrases like 'the West', 'the US', etc is those elites that have manipulated the levers of power for whatever it is that they want to do. The individual people we meet in those countries are nothing to do with it.
I don't think parent's comment is meant to be a dissertation on the roots and origins of conflict, but a reflection on history in general.
Does HN always have to descend into a strong-systemiser race to the root cause?
If you're in London don't skip the Brish Museum, which like all London museums is free (voluntary donation).