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