6 ms·

Reminded me of the more passive-aggressive Greek approach to their own stolen artworks: https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=113889188 https://

Reminded me of the more passive-aggressive Greek approach to their own stolen artworks: https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=113889188 https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=113889... The claims of European museums to art stolen in the past seem indefensible to me. Hard not to root for the criminals in this case, if they really are repatriating stolen artifacts.

laverick 8y ago
I find the issue a bit more complex. If keeping a Greek statue is indefensible, what about land in North America?
- lainga 8y ago
  Or Thrace, Constantinople, and Ionia? What about Pakistan? Alexander of Macedon clearly left it to "the strongest", not to a gaggle of warring Macedonian officers, and certainly not to a section of a former British imperial territory.
- Leary 8y ago
  If the land was stolen, then it's indefensible. Or should we have a separate moral code?
  - drharby 8y ago
    Literally indefensible in the sense that the natives defended against the US Cavalry and howitzers and lost.
- skh 8y ago
  It’s much easier and feasible to give back artwork. It’s not like millions of people living in the Great Plains are going to be able/willing to move so that we can give the land back to the original tribes. It’s reasonable to consider keeping artwork as indefensible whilst acknowledging the impracticality of giving back land.
- pjc50 8y ago
  The issue of "at what point land in history did stealing land become something illegitimate that we should reverse" is extremely fraught. It was a major part of both the UN and the League of nations to delegitimise this, but it wasn't systematic. Israel's seizure of land at the Six Day War seems to be the exact point at which nobody can agree. It's the last of the settler states.
  - logfromblammo 8y ago
    What country should control Crimea? Greece, Iran, Italy, Mongolia, Turkey, Russia, and Ukraine all have potential claims. If annexation by force is no longer a legitimate means of acquiring land, then it is reasonable to say that it was never legitimate. If it is, then going to war to take territory is still possible. But there really is no fair way to declare a fixed epoch and say that forceful annexation was only legitimate in the prior era, and is now unacceptable in the following era. Either conquest is still okay, or it never was. If it never was, you must be prepared to support repatriation claims from aboriginal peoples until the end of time. Perhaps there is a case for establishing adverse possession for land sovereignty. If you can take it and keep control of it for 20 years, your claim is presumed valid. And it could give national rivals a nice, limited territorial war every 18 years or so, to feed their military industrial complexes through hard times, when the world is just too peaceful to make a profit.~
    - rebuilder 8y ago
      i don't think that's the right way to think about it. Legitimacy is only meaningful when it can be enforced. Yes, international law is very important in providing a systematic approach to determining what kinds of acts justify what kinds of responses. Ultimately, though, land is yours if you can hold it.
    - bryanlarsen 8y ago
      > Either conquest is still okay, or it never was. I believe the parent's argument was that land seizure by any country which has signed the UN charter after they've signed the charter is not legitimate. It may not have been legitimate before, but signing the charter saying you agree it's not legitimate does put a nice line in the sand.
- jhpriestley 8y ago
  I think the principle of "Finder's Keepers" is completely illegitimate when it comes to transportable objects like artwork, but it's at least a little bit legitimate when it comes to land - in the case of North America, generations of people have been born there and made their lives there, so they have some claim to the land even if its original seizure was a crime. I think the legitimacy of US sovereignty over its land (or Canadian or Australian etc) is also strengthened by the fact that it is a representative democracy, so to some degree its management of the land is carried out on behalf of all of its citizens, including the descendants of natives. If the US were governed by an aristocracy of descendants of settlers, as in Apartheid South Africa, then that would be clearly unjust to me. edit: to be clear, I think that native populations in all these countries have legitimate grievances today, I just wouldn't go so far as to say that all their original land is still rightfully theirs.
  - JohnJamesRambo 8y ago
    Wow, so much random justification to make it fit your view.
    - chrisbennet 8y ago
      Is it your view that the US should return land to whomever the Indians took it from or just the most recent conquerors?
      - WalterSear 8y ago
        Who did they take it from?
        reaperducer 8y ago
        Other indians.
        WalterSear 8y ago
        That's a huge claim - it requires a source. As I understand it, most north American indiginous groups had very little concept of realty. Moreover, in this context, it's a specious argument.
onetimeusename 8y ago
What is your opinion of the painting: The Wedding at Cana[1]? Should it be returned to the Catholic Church? If a rich, Catholic or Italian collector decided to steal it from the Louvre, would you root for that criminal? If not, what is the moral boundary of when it is acceptable to steal art? [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wedding_at_Cana https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wedding_at_Cana
- Leary 8y ago
  Should be returned.
iamshs 8y ago
I absolutely side with Chinese here. I once saw the world’s longest water buffalo horns in a British museum with the accompanying caption as something on the lines of “purchased by a Britisher from an Indian farmer”. I thought either the poor guy got murdered or he was given a single quid for formality purposes to get his thumb imprint on forms to complete the paper trail. He wouldn’t even be able to read English on those forms. Exploitation and plunder is how I see these museums. I think these items should be property of originating country and taken on loan to display it to the public. https://fineartamerica.com/featured/indian-water-buffalo-horns-natural-history-museum-london.html https://fineartamerica.com/featured/indian-water-buffalo-hor...
- lucozade 8y ago
  OK I'll bite. So basically you're guessing that an ignorant Indian got suckered into giving up this prized possession to a murderous/exploiting white man? Had it ever occurred to you that what actually happened was an incredulous Indian farmer was more than happy to take the white man's coin for a pair of buffalo horns that were lying around his farm? I mean, they're not exactly rare, you get a free pair every time a buffalo croaks. Now, if you're talking about the Parthenon or the Old Summer Palace then fair enough. They were valuable to the original owners (OK not the Elgin marbles but still) and the Brits didn't exactly ask nicely. But assuming all Indians/Chinese/Egyptians/Greeks/whatever were just credulous bumpkins is a completely unwarranted slight.
  - PakG1 8y ago
    It is rather a curious thing that something so simple and not valuable in the past to one person could be seen as so unique and valuable to everyone in the future due to simply surviving the passage of time. See much of archaeology.
  - frgtpsswrdlame 8y ago
    >But assuming all Indians/Chinese/Egyptians/Greeks/whatever were just credulous bumpkins is a completely unwarranted slight. Except he didn't do that. He assumed that one Indian wasn't informed of the true worth of what he was selling.
sandworm101 8y ago
>> Reminded me of the more passive-aggressive Greek approach to their own stolen artworks. Note that such arguments were once made regarding Egyptian artifacts. Post-ISIL there isn't the same drive to repatriate middle-eastern artifacts. I'm a fan of not keeping all my eggs in one basket. Perhaps artifacts from past civilizations should be spread around the world to avoid them being decimated by any local conflict.

laverick 8y ago

I find the issue a bit more complex. If keeping a Greek statue is indefensible, what about land in North America?

lainga 8y ago
Or Thrace, Constantinople, and Ionia? What about Pakistan? Alexander of Macedon clearly left it to "the strongest", not to a gaggle of warring Macedonian officers, and certainly not to a section of a former British imperial territory.
Leary 8y ago
If the land was stolen, then it's indefensible. Or should we have a separate moral code?
- drharby 8y ago
  Literally indefensible in the sense that the natives defended against the US Cavalry and howitzers and lost.
skh 8y ago
It’s much easier and feasible to give back artwork. It’s not like millions of people living in the Great Plains are going to be able/willing to move so that we can give the land back to the original tribes. It’s reasonable to consider keeping artwork as indefensible whilst acknowledging the impracticality of giving back land.
pjc50 8y ago
The issue of "at what point land in history did stealing land become something illegitimate that we should reverse" is extremely fraught. It was a major part of both the UN and the League of nations to delegitimise this, but it wasn't systematic. Israel's seizure of land at the Six Day War seems to be the exact point at which nobody can agree. It's the last of the settler states.
- logfromblammo 8y ago
  What country should control Crimea? Greece, Iran, Italy, Mongolia, Turkey, Russia, and Ukraine all have potential claims. If annexation by force is no longer a legitimate means of acquiring land, then it is reasonable to say that it was never legitimate. If it is, then going to war to take territory is still possible. But there really is no fair way to declare a fixed epoch and say that forceful annexation was only legitimate in the prior era, and is now unacceptable in the following era. Either conquest is still okay, or it never was. If it never was, you must be prepared to support repatriation claims from aboriginal peoples until the end of time. Perhaps there is a case for establishing adverse possession for land sovereignty. If you can take it and keep control of it for 20 years, your claim is presumed valid. And it could give national rivals a nice, limited territorial war every 18 years or so, to feed their military industrial complexes through hard times, when the world is just too peaceful to make a profit.~
  - rebuilder 8y ago
    i don't think that's the right way to think about it. Legitimacy is only meaningful when it can be enforced. Yes, international law is very important in providing a systematic approach to determining what kinds of acts justify what kinds of responses. Ultimately, though, land is yours if you can hold it.
  - bryanlarsen 8y ago
    > Either conquest is still okay, or it never was. I believe the parent's argument was that land seizure by any country which has signed the UN charter after they've signed the charter is not legitimate. It may not have been legitimate before, but signing the charter saying you agree it's not legitimate does put a nice line in the sand.
jhpriestley 8y ago
I think the principle of "Finder's Keepers" is completely illegitimate when it comes to transportable objects like artwork, but it's at least a little bit legitimate when it comes to land - in the case of North America, generations of people have been born there and made their lives there, so they have some claim to the land even if its original seizure was a crime. I think the legitimacy of US sovereignty over its land (or Canadian or Australian etc) is also strengthened by the fact that it is a representative democracy, so to some degree its management of the land is carried out on behalf of all of its citizens, including the descendants of natives. If the US were governed by an aristocracy of descendants of settlers, as in Apartheid South Africa, then that would be clearly unjust to me. edit: to be clear, I think that native populations in all these countries have legitimate grievances today, I just wouldn't go so far as to say that all their original land is still rightfully theirs.
- JohnJamesRambo 8y ago
  Wow, so much random justification to make it fit your view.
  - chrisbennet 8y ago
    Is it your view that the US should return land to whomever the Indians took it from or just the most recent conquerors?
    - WalterSear 8y ago
      Who did they take it from?
      - reaperducer 8y ago
        Other indians.
        WalterSear 8y ago
        That's a huge claim - it requires a source. As I understand it, most north American indiginous groups had very little concept of realty. Moreover, in this context, it's a specious argument.

onetimeusename 8y ago

What is your opinion of the painting: The Wedding at Cana[1]? Should it be returned to the Catholic Church? If a rich, Catholic or Italian collector decided to steal it from the Louvre, would you root for that criminal? If not, what is the moral boundary of when it is acceptable to steal art? [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wedding_at_Cana https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wedding_at_Cana

Leary 8y ago
Should be returned.

iamshs 8y ago

I absolutely side with Chinese here. I once saw the world’s longest water buffalo horns in a British museum with the accompanying caption as something on the lines of “purchased by a Britisher from an Indian farmer”. I thought either the poor guy got murdered or he was given a single quid for formality purposes to get his thumb imprint on forms to complete the paper trail. He wouldn’t even be able to read English on those forms. Exploitation and plunder is how I see these museums. I think these items should be property of originating country and taken on loan to display it to the public. https://fineartamerica.com/featured/indian-water-buffalo-horns-natural-history-museum-london.html https://fineartamerica.com/featured/indian-water-buffalo-hor...

lucozade 8y ago
OK I'll bite. So basically you're guessing that an ignorant Indian got suckered into giving up this prized possession to a murderous/exploiting white man? Had it ever occurred to you that what actually happened was an incredulous Indian farmer was more than happy to take the white man's coin for a pair of buffalo horns that were lying around his farm? I mean, they're not exactly rare, you get a free pair every time a buffalo croaks. Now, if you're talking about the Parthenon or the Old Summer Palace then fair enough. They were valuable to the original owners (OK not the Elgin marbles but still) and the Brits didn't exactly ask nicely. But assuming all Indians/Chinese/Egyptians/Greeks/whatever were just credulous bumpkins is a completely unwarranted slight.
- PakG1 8y ago
  It is rather a curious thing that something so simple and not valuable in the past to one person could be seen as so unique and valuable to everyone in the future due to simply surviving the passage of time. See much of archaeology.
- frgtpsswrdlame 8y ago
  >But assuming all Indians/Chinese/Egyptians/Greeks/whatever were just credulous bumpkins is a completely unwarranted slight. Except he didn't do that. He assumed that one Indian wasn't informed of the true worth of what he was selling.

sandworm101 8y ago

>> Reminded me of the more passive-aggressive Greek approach to their own stolen artworks. Note that such arguments were once made regarding Egyptian artifacts. Post-ISIL there isn't the same drive to repatriate middle-eastern artifacts. I'm a fan of not keeping all my eggs in one basket. Perhaps artifacts from past civilizations should be spread around the world to avoid them being decimated by any local conflict.