UK Politics Thread

The British Museum would hardly be empty. Off the top of my head:

The European galleries will be fine, the Roman ones, the British ones, the Japanese and Korean galleries, I think probably the Mexican one. Most of the Greek ones. Which is like 80% of the floor space. Like the European and Japanese stuff is all just bought through trade.

Then there's the blatantly nicked by the British stuff. The Benin Bronzes, probably some of the China gallery coming from the sack of the Summer Palace, various Native American/Polynesian things where they dug up graves (though New Labour introduced a law for re-patriating the actual bodies). Kind of the Rosetta Stone, it was nicked off the French but Napoleon probably didn't get it in a legit way.

Then there's the dodgy area of contracts being ones you wouldn't expect to be valid these days. Elgin Marbles, a bunch of the Mesopotamian/Egyptian/Greek galleries. Where there were valid contracts to go do some archaeology and the findings got split/kept by the British. But yknow where you could argue either the Ottomans weren't really the people to protect Iraqi culture, or the Khedive of Egypt being in hock to the British it wasn't an entirely fair deal. But the Roman stuff similar contracts would have been written with the various Italian authorities for joint archaeology digs, but you'd expect them to be less 1 sided so are probably fine.

I saw an interesting talk by the curators recently. They've got a lot of good record keeping and receipts, but also lots of rejections where they thought the art dealer was suspect (lots of Chinese ones they rejected because the provenance couldn't be proven as not stolen). But that only really seems to start in the late 19th century (1880s, 1890s?). So stuff from before then is like the Elgin Marbles or Rosetta Stone tend to come under the might makes right property law.

Also for context the first time people actually started with this is after World War 2. Almost every war in history before that adding reparations on the loser of money+jewels+art was standard practice for everyone. The Koh-i-nor itself was signed over when Britain defeated the Sikh Empire. Who themselves got it from the Afghan Empire, offering the fleeing royals safe passage for the diamond. Who themselves stole it off the Iranian Empire of the time as it collapsed, I think due to late payment as mercenaries. Who got it after they sacked the Mughal Court and nicked the Peacock Throne. Who came into possession of it because they invaded India from the Iranian plateau. Which isn't to say it couldn't be given back, but basically everyone's claim to it is based on theft at some point, as for most of human history handing over property (mostly land) is just a fact of war.