alt Hacker NewsThe Netherlands has returned some stolen artifacts to Indonesia
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> While some critics of repatriation have raised concerns over how poorer countries will care for their returned artifacts, Marieke van Bommel, director general of the National Museum of World Cultures, tells the New York Times’ Lynsey Chutel that “the thief cannot tell the rightful owners what to do with their property.”
But the government of the country the artifacts are being returned into isn’t the rightful owner. (I do think returning is the right thing to do, but it should be a bit more thought through.)
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.
I've stood in the Cairo museum and looked at a wooden sarcophagus that's had all of it's gold chiseled off of it. Something that was once a work of art reduced to a wooden box for the price of a few ounces of gold. I have mixed feelings about repatriation and the elephant in the room, the British.
Unfortunately artifacts returned to their origin country are often sold off to private collection or are otherwise lost. First world countries are better at preservation of such things and should keep it.
While these discussions are always loaded with sentimental intepretation, and complex questions of what "rightful owner" after hundreds or thousands of years even means, I think more of an emphasis should be put on impact for the population.
After all, the British Museum, the main example for restitutions, is located in a global city, given completely free access to its huge collection on display and pays for preservation. The global cultural value it adds is much larger than individual museums all over the would could provide.
> Marieke van Bommel, director general of the National Museum of World Cultures, tells the New York Times’ Lynsey Chutel that “the thief cannot tell the rightful owners what to do with their property.”
And in the meantime the academic establishment seem to ignore doing what's best for the artefacts or the public. Abused children are taken away from their parents, but artefact are to simply be given back to whatever state has jurisdiction over some area they were in way back?
There seems to not be a simple answer on when things should be given back or not, but at least some effort should be put into figuring out some triage criteria.
There is a great comedy sketch from James Acaster that sums up the situation in- and the stance most other Western countries take on this, unfortunately:
Having had a few interactions with the Indonesian government, the Netherlands should have just kept them.
The amount of pro-colonial sentiment in the thread here is baffling. The people that were colonized and stolen from have the right to do whatever they want with these artifacts, even if you believe they may not have the means, or will sell them to private collectors.
Perhaps not necessarily in this case, but something I do think about is, are not certain artifacts safer in the museums that can take care of them for future generations? There are many unstable countries in the world where that cannot happen, and I would want artifacts not destroyed due to wars or other sorts of fighting such as terrorism [0] such that future generations can see them. That is why I am not necessarily opposed to so called colonial governments continuing to hold on to relics, as the British Museum has stated.
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/feb/26/isis-fighters-...
Don't like the word "stolen" in this context, it sounds very newspeak-y compared to "plundered" or "looted". Ever heard of Vae victis?
Here is a take I haven't seen anywhere else: according to Wikipedia, when the Europeans took the Rosetta Stone it was nothing more than rock in some wall. The European then turned it into something truely special.
A hot take on this could be to just return a rock of equal size. It is not clear how all the information gathered should be factored into this.
As always, if these things weren't taken and put in a museum in the first place, today they wouldn't even exist.
How many countries does England have stuff to return to?
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The labeling of things in museums as "stolen" is lacking, IMO. In some cases, yes... straight up looted items are in museums. In other cases, though, the items could easily have ended up lost to time (or political, economic, social turmoil) if they had not been taken and put in museums outside of the places where they originated. Additionally some of these places would not have had the means to care for antiquities back in the day.
The discussion is important and the history of how these museums came to have the items they do is fraught with depredation but that is't the whole story. I feel like there is nuance around how many of these items that have ended up in the museums of the West and that nuance is paved over by labeling everything as stolen.