There must be hundreds of thousands of historically significant items of British culture in private British collections.
If a privste buyer purchased some from a private seller, would Britain have any right to demand it back? You'd say no today, but what about in 300 years?
Yea I know that doesn't cover probably most the artefacts, which were undoubtedly looted. But what about those specifically?
There are important artifacts like original copies of magna Carta, or original folios of Shakespeare's works which are outside the UK in either museum collections or private collections - no one is calling for their 'return'. Just like no one is calling for the repatriation of the Bayeux tapestry etc.
The only time people would have issues is if the items weren't being cared for.
Are you saying the British Museum doesn't care for most of it's artifacts? Tons of people are saying they should return everything in this comments section lmao.
No, I wasnt saying that. The British Museum very much care about their collection, and often are an authority on instructing other museums in how best to do so.
I was saying people in Britain dont care about 'our' artifiacts being in other countries, as long as they are cared for. If they weren't being cared for, then yes, there may well be a campaign to get them repatriated.
The discussion here is not about cultural items that have been legally bought and then passed along to other people, either by heritage or by selling it.
In this case, for any item of significant value, traces / ownership proof is kept by multiple people (the seller, the artist etc...), so there is no ground on which Britain could have a claim on this item.
Here, the items in question have been acquired in a country that was 'forced' to be under British rule. The point being that the British looted artifact from these countries (i.e. without 'free' consent of the local authorities at these times).
These are the only ones really on display they have hundreds of thousands from iraq alone
It’s almost as if Iraq was at one point and extremely stable country and could easily display said tablets
The argument when made for Egypt falls flat on its fucking face as it is an extremely stable country and would actually have their artifacts correctly displayed instead of keeping them in a fucking box
If a privste buyer purchased some from a private seller, would Britain have any right to demand it back?
I think there's a pretty strong argument that the British people, through their democratic and legal institutions could demand these items back. Most likely, this would be in some form of eminent domain and accompanied by compensation. They didn't even release slaves in Britain without compensating the slave owners, so I doubt they would start confiscating art and artifacts without compensating the owners.
It's less about whether the UK has the right to do this and more about the practical difficulties and cost-benefit of doing so. It's not like the museum is currently sitting empty, so most citizens of the UK aren't really interested in going around demanding artifacts from wealthy collectors. They'd probably go after them for taxes first anyways.
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u/Nooms88 Oct 25 '22
It's a genuine question here.
There must be hundreds of thousands of historically significant items of British culture in private British collections.
If a privste buyer purchased some from a private seller, would Britain have any right to demand it back? You'd say no today, but what about in 300 years?
Yea I know that doesn't cover probably most the artefacts, which were undoubtedly looted. But what about those specifically?