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Comment by bradley13 | Hacker News Reader

History happened. The British Empire was. In the historical context of the time, the objects were legitimate acquisitions.

It's much like the historical fact of nations going to war and conquering and enslaving each other. If someone wants to return parts of the US to the Cherokee, then we should also return much of Europe to the Picts. How far back do you go? Somehow, though, we only have this existential anguish about the last couple of rounds of conquest.

History happened. Let it be. If conquest doesn't match our modern values, then we can choose to avoid starting any new wars of conquest. Sadly, human nature doesn't seem to have actually changed: Wikipedia currently lists 56 ongoing armed conflicts.

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> If someone wants to return parts of the US to the Cherokee, then we should also return much of Europe to the Picts

1. Land is not an object held in a museum

2. There are over 300,000 enrolled tribal members of the Cherokee Nation (per Wikipedia). There are ~0 Picts, as far as I know.

Obviously the effects of more recent rounds of conquest are more apparent and felt more keenly by those suffering as a result.

> History happened. Let it be.

Sure, but if someone wants to let it be, how long before we let the present turn into history? It's just raising the same question you dismissed!

>2. There are over 300,000 enrolled tribal members of the Cherokee Nation (per Wikipedia). There are ~0 Picts, as far as I know.

Be careful with that logic! If we agree as a species that surviving conquered people have a right to reclaim their land and assets, but extinct ones don't, then the obvious course of action for the conquering force is to simply exterminate every native mercilessly.

.. and that has happened more times than we talk about

> If we agree as a species that surviving conquered people have a right to reclaim their land and assets, but extinct ones don't

If?

>There are over 300,000 enrolled tribal members of the Cherokee Nation (per Wikipedia). There are ~0 Picts, as far as I know.

So what part of the US do we return to the Cherokee? The parts the US gave them when they forced them out of the South East? Or their original territory? My hometown was originally populated by a separate tribe. The Cherokee came later. How do we split the land between the Eastern and Western bands of Cherokee?

To a large extent, the borders of the various tribes that are still existent today are a result of their interactions with the European colonial powers. So the "political map" of the US in 1794, looks vastly different than it did in 1720. The current map is entirely arbitrary and unfairly benefits some groups over others. But picking any other historical map is also entirely arbitrary. There's no way to go back and pick the "correct" one.

> There's no way to go back and pick the "correct" one.

Yes, exactly. All that’s left is politics: we have to make a choice, or a negotiation on how to proceed.

My point is that pretending it’s all just “history” is just putting your head in the sand.

> In the historical context of the time, the objects were legitimate acquisitions.

Nonsense.

Many of the historic aquisitions by "collectors" were as sketchy AF in the context of the times.

The Elgin marbles, for example, were removed from Greece by an English lord and an Italian painter while Greece was under Ottoman rule ..

The legality of this was questionable at best and a House of Commons Select Committee held public hearings on whether Elgin had acted within the law - many considered he had not. Given this hearing ocuurred well after the fact, the damage was done, and the booty was now in England being sold for a song it was all rather swept under the carpet.

A thief is a thief ... unless they are a Lord.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elgin_Marbles#Acquisition

The Benin Bronzes and other related artifacts were straight up targeted theft as a by product of war - if might makes right then they were legitimate, otherwise they're on the same footing as objects stolen by armed invaders that kill half your family and set your house on fire.

https://www.nationalgeographic.co.uk/travel/2022/09/benin-br...

According to the Wikipedia article, he did get approval from state officials although it is hard to interpret if he went beyond the approval. However, the Committee you mentioned

> cleared Elgin of all allegations that he had acquired the marbles illegally or had misused his powers as ambassador

As I said, the legality was sketchy AF.

Dodgy enough that a pubic inquiry was held, and sketchy in that a British Lord and ambassador was cleared when anybody else would be facing punishment.

>> Thief is a thief ... unless they are a Lord.

So he wasnt a thief. The laws of the time ebbed and flowed based on the social standing of the alleged perpetrators. That was the then accepted rule. It is less true today but not absolutely. Who are we to ignore the actions of a past select committee? Are we to revisit every not-guilty decisison on the basis that a modern investigation would have acted differently? By way of example, women were in the past treated very badly. Revisiting every historic legal determination that stripped a woman of her propery would render all modern property rights suspect.

There are contemporary first person reports from the people who collected/stole the artefacts in museums. Michael Leiris collected items - some of them ritual items made from coagulated blood - that are still on display in the Musée Quay Branly in Paris. His description from 1931 seems honest, hair-raising and hardly morally ambiguous… https://www.modernghana.com/amp/news/800468/who-is-afraid-of...

Tons of contemporaries of Lord Elgin called him a thief; Lord Byron being the most famous.

And the result of trails are not objective truth. There's been tons of them where the outcome was considered unjust by any standard; there's even terms for this: "kangaroo court", "mismarriage of justice", "show trial", etc.

And whether Elgin was or wasn't a "thief" is actually not very important; what is important is that in any modern reasonable context it would be considered theft and that it's actually not even a hard thing to correct this historical mistake.

> Many of the historic aquisitions by "collectors" were as sketchy AF in the context of the times.

This is the slippery slope that makes most of these cases hard to take seriously. Aside from obvious cases of wartime looting, a lot of the objections are just that the legal approval at the time doesn’t meet modern standards imposed anachronistically on history, or more frequently that the provenance just isn’t known to the degree expected by modern standards.

Some people, like the author of this article, want us to think that everything should be returned unless it’s perfectly documented without any possible objections. Scrap the Louvre and send all those pottery scraps and fragments back to the country they came from because we can’t be perfectly sure it’s all perfectly handled under modern standards that weren’t the historical norm.

It’s tiring. Aside from obvious cases of theft like the Benin Bronzes, the blanket argument that museums shouldn’t be allowed to hold artifacts from other locations and cultures without perfect documentation isn’t really practical.

Greece had been under Ottoman rule for about 400 years, when the marbles were taken you'd have to go back 13 generations before you get to greek owned Greece.

If you do make that 13 generation jump, the Greeks who owned it at that time period were themselves descendants of conquerors — none of the people in this story are the owners of the marbles, if we choose to tar everyone with this brush equally.

Additionally, the Ottoman empire made documentation legitimising Elgin's movements of the marbles, the fact that the original receipt is missing and they had a hearing for that is moot in light of the rest. The ottomans issued orders to the city to allow his movements and they issued notice to the docks that he'd be moving marbles out via boat.

"When they wish to take away some pieces of stone with old inscriptions and figures, no opposition be made."

There was no such country as "Greece" in 1801. Athens was a city in the Ottoman Empire and "Greece" referred to a country that hadn't existed for nearly 2000 years.

"Greece" stopped existing as a country in 146 BC, when the Romans defeated its last city state, Corinth. The former country was then merely a region of the Roman Empire, followed by the Byzantine Empire, followed by the Ottoman Empire.

If you want to give the marbles back, which is a popular sentiment these days, you should give them back to the legal successor of the Ottoman Empire, which is Turkey. The marbles have never belonged to the modern Greek state established in 1821. Once Turkey gets their marbles back, they could put them in the Acropolis museum if they think it appropriate.

And of course even in 146 BCE there wasn't a "country called greece", it was a collection of independent states with different names, rulers and even cultures, albeit ruled by a central power at that specific moment in history.

One of my ancestors was involved with the “acquisition” of the Elgin marbles, I believe he might have been a secretary to Elgin.

Amusingly, he was also involved in the restoration of artefacts looted by Napoleon during his conquests. So much so that the sculptor, Antonio Canova gifted him with one of 4 Ideal Heads as a thanks for returning works to the Vatican. The bust remained in our family until the mid 90’s and can now be seen in the Ashmolean in Oxford.

Coooool.

I'm about to dive into this rabbit hole, and if an Ideal Head doesn't say "Time is. Time was. Time is past." I'm going to be severely disappointed.

(Edit: Ok, seriously, what's the story behind the donation? If I had my grubby mitts on something that exquisite, I'd never give it up, doubly so if it was "by descent").

It's the usual stuff, family member dies, stuff has to be split up between siblings, taxes are due, auction house cheats family members, etc.

The Benin Bronzes are a bit different. Returning them to Benin means returning them to the heirs of an extremely nasty and oppressive state:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dahomey#Slavery

One of the purposes of the expedition was the abolition of slavery in Benin, and objective it achieved.

> The Benin Bronzes and other related artifacts were straight up targeted theft as a by product of war

"Looted". Make no bones about it, the word is looted. But they were created off the back of slavery, so... choose your poison.

This is an interesting link that pulls aside the curtain a little on trade, art and Africa: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/apr/05/benin-bronzes-...

Personally I think we should focus on the repatriation of human remains. Once we've got that sorted out, we can start worrying about mere stuff.

This is not about land ownership, but historical artifacts. Acts of good will can go a long way towards strengthening the friendly relationships between two peoples.

Also, should protestant countries return "stolen" goods back to the Catholic church? Art, churches, monasteries, land, cathedrals, relics, ...

I think you're missing the point - the reasons to return stuff like these are not practical but symbolic

Should ISIS not give back all the historical Christian artifacts that they looted?

ISIS largely destroyed artifacts with explosives and bulldozers and the Christian sites were almost the least of it;

    In 2014, media reported destruction of multiple religious buildings belonging to both Sunni and Shia sects throughout areas captured by IS.

    Among them were the tomb of Ibn al-Athir, Imam Abbas Mosque in Mosul, the Sheikh Jawad Al-Sadiq Mosque, Tomb of Sayyid Ar-Mamut Baba, Qaddo Mosque, Martyrs' Mosque, Saad Ibn Aqeel Shrine in Tal Afar, the Sufi Ahmed al-Rifai Shrine and Sheikh Ibrahim's shrine in Mahlabiya District.

Very old pre Christian sites were also destroyed, but more often looted to sell to collectors to raise money:

    In May 2014, IS members smashed a 3,000-year-old neo-Assyrian statue from Tel Ajaja. Later reports indicated that over 40% of the artifacts at Tel Ajaja (Saddikanni) were looted by IS.

There's a pretty sizable list of what they destroyed and looted in:

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

     the group released photos of militants rigging the 1,900-year-old Temple of Baalshamin with explosives and blowing it up. It was one of Palmyra’s best-preserved buildings, originally dedicated to a Phoenician storm god. Now it is nothing but rubble.

https://www.nationalgeographic.co.uk/history-and-civilisatio...

So, the question is, if some usurper takes over a region and becomes de-facto government in that region... and you have artifacts _from_ that region that you took with the legal authority of the previous government... would you hand the artifacts over to the usurpers?

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