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What's wrong with British museums?

by AntoniusBlock 4y ago

misnome 4y ago
It’s a joke based on the fact that British museums are full of looted foreign artefacts.
davidwritesbugs 4y ago
Think it's a jab at the British "stealing" other people's historical artifacts and displaying then in British museums.
- rajin444 4y ago
  I took it as a jab at modern Britain having a lot more people (% of population) who’s ancestors didn’t preserve much history, which implies a risk of the same pattern occurring.
- yboris 4y ago
  I wonder why you wrote "stealing" with quotes. Presumably this is exactly what they did in numerous (majority?) of cases.
  - rsj_hn 4y ago
    I mean, it's a tough call, because you can't really identify who something is stolen from. In some cases you can, but in most you can't. Say you have the necklace of some Pharaoh. OK, who is the rightful owner? The present day Arabs inhabiting Egypt, who conquered it? Or the Greeks who conquered it before then? Or the Romans? Or the "ancient Egyptians" (this refers to many people, as Egypt was conquered several times by many different groups). So then your fallback position is, "we don't know which 'people' the necklace should belong to, but we know which government it should belong to -- the present day government of Egypt, which is the current government occupying the geographic area where the necklace was made. It belongs to that government." We can call this the "occupying government" (OG) theory of ownership. It doesn't matter that that the present day Arabs were invaders number 50, but because they presently occupy the land, they own the necklace. Let's explore the consequences of this rule: When Britain controlled that territory, that meant that it was the rightful owner -- since by the OG logic the rightful owner is whatever government was in charge at the time -- and it moved the necklace to a museum in London, which the owner has a right to do with their property. But then you say "no, that doesn't apply to colonial governments - not to white people. Only legitimate governments can benefit from the OG rule", to which I would answer 1) "How were the Arab invasions legitimate? How were the Egyptian dynasties legitimate? They also ruled by force and enslaved their populations". 2) If your ownership rule is the OG but it's nullified if you believe (somehow) that a government can be illegitimate, then you create a situation in which the antiquities have no owner -- since the previous government doesn't exist, the original racial group is gone, so who is the owner if you are not going to follow the ownership laws of the government in charge? So really at the end of the day, these types of arguments boil down to not liking the behavior of the UK in Egypt, which is fine by me, but they are not objective arguments if you try to apply the same standards of property ownership across thousands of years to all governments that would remove antiquities -- which is basically every government in history, whenever they found something beautiful and shiny, from the Romans carrying back booty to the Pharaohs carrying back booty, some of which was turned into beautiful jewelry.
    - JadeNB 4y ago
      > I mean, it's a tough call, because you can't really identify who something is stolen from. In some cases you can, but in most you can't. I don't think one has to identify whom something was stolen from to know that it was stolen. For a lot of artifacts in the British Museum, it may not be clear or able to be agreed upon who could be said at the time of their appropriation to own them, but it's clear that the British didn't. > But then you say "no, that doesn't apply to colonial governments - not to white people. Only legitimate governments can benefit from the OG rule", to which I would answer …. You seem to be putting a lot of words in your interlocutor's mouth! If I find something, it's not my responsibility or right to decide whose it is, and my inability to do so doesn't make it mine. It may be that someone else will come along and commit an injustice equal to my taking it if I don't—but that doesn't excuse my taking it. I need not work out a theory of ownership before simply leaving what I have found where I found it.
      - rsj_hn 4y ago
        > I don't think one has to identify whom something was stolen from to know that it was stolen. If we are talking about people, then yes, but governments are different. They are not people. Governments are law makers. So you are claiming that British law shouldn't apply and I am asking you for the name of the government whose law you think should apply. That at least deserves an answer. The UK was ruling Egypt at the time and you have to prove its own laws weren't being followed -- which is unlikely to be the case as regardless of how we may not like Perfidious Albion, they are a stickler for things like property rights. The British museum paid for these artifacts, and you need to prove that the people who sold them those artifacts had no right to do so, but these antiquities traders were acting in accordance to British law, so you need to prove that someone else's law should have been applied instead. Whose? > If I find something, it's not my responsibility or right to decide whose it is, and my inability to do so doesn't make it mine. Again, people aren't governments. If you find oil in the ground, it may not belong to you, but if the UK finds oil somewhere in the mandate of Palestine, you can be sure that it belongs to the UK, since that is territory controlled by UK, and the oil belongs to the government that controls the territory, not France or China or some other government that doesn't control the territory. And if some Arab tribes conquer that region, then the oil belongs to them. And if some other nation conquers it, then the oil again gets a new owner. Or do you think the House of Saud was the first group of people to live in Saudi Arabia? No, but they were the government in charge when the oil was found, and no one has managed to conquer them -- that's the only reason it's their oil -- because they found it and they rule over the territory. And who do you think will be the owner of any artifacts that Saudi Arabia digs up as they search for more oil? Yes, it will be Saudi Arabia. The rightful owner. And they can transfer those artifacts to some museum in Riyadh if they want, even if the artifacts were made by some ancient civilization that has no genetic relationship to the house of Saud. They could be of Ethiopian origin, but Saudi Arabia is not going to "return" them to Ethiopia. This is the definition of what it means to be the government - it means your laws are the ones that apply in the territory you rule over. I think that's the mistake you are making here. Maybe you think there was some international law in effect at the time? International law originates with the UN charter, which post-dates what the UK did, and you wouldn't want to apply a law to an action which predated the law, as that's understood to be an illegitimate application of law. If you start retroactively applying the UN charter to all government actions that happened in the past, you will find every government on earth an inveterate thief and lawbreaker - from the UK to the Egyptian Pharaohs, they all stole everything.
  - wl 4y ago
    Much of the "stealing" arguably isn't. Just to pick a notable example, the Rosetta Stone was given to the British by the Egyptian government.
revolvingocelot 4y ago
Grandparent comment is a triple entendre: the historical British tendency to take priceless cultural treasures home with them for display is being inverted; the modern British tendency to retire/vacation in Spain is being noted; and I think there's also a jab at Brexit disallowing easy movement, as more people can more easily see a thing exhibited in an EU museum than in a British one due to the Schengen area.
- AntoniusBlock 4y ago
  Looks like it breaks multiple guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - wholinator2 4y ago
    I read through the guidelines and couldn't find any rules it was breaking. What guidelines do you believe are broken by the top comment?
    - taco_emoji 4y ago
      It's breaking "don't be snarky" at the very least, although that rule is barely ever enforced
    - AntoniusBlock 4y ago
      >Don't be snarky. >Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents. >Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle.
      - PhasmaFelis 4y ago
        Calling this "flamebait" or "ideological battle" is pretty over-the-top.

What's wrong with British museums?

misnome 4y ago

It’s a joke based on the fact that British museums are full of looted foreign artefacts.

davidwritesbugs 4y ago

Think it's a jab at the British "stealing" other people's historical artifacts and displaying then in British museums.

rajin444 4y ago
I took it as a jab at modern Britain having a lot more people (% of population) who’s ancestors didn’t preserve much history, which implies a risk of the same pattern occurring.
yboris 4y ago
I wonder why you wrote "stealing" with quotes. Presumably this is exactly what they did in numerous (majority?) of cases.
- rsj_hn 4y ago
  I mean, it's a tough call, because you can't really identify who something is stolen from. In some cases you can, but in most you can't. Say you have the necklace of some Pharaoh. OK, who is the rightful owner? The present day Arabs inhabiting Egypt, who conquered it? Or the Greeks who conquered it before then? Or the Romans? Or the "ancient Egyptians" (this refers to many people, as Egypt was conquered several times by many different groups). So then your fallback position is, "we don't know which 'people' the necklace should belong to, but we know which government it should belong to -- the present day government of Egypt, which is the current government occupying the geographic area where the necklace was made. It belongs to that government." We can call this the "occupying government" (OG) theory of ownership. It doesn't matter that that the present day Arabs were invaders number 50, but because they presently occupy the land, they own the necklace. Let's explore the consequences of this rule: When Britain controlled that territory, that meant that it was the rightful owner -- since by the OG logic the rightful owner is whatever government was in charge at the time -- and it moved the necklace to a museum in London, which the owner has a right to do with their property. But then you say "no, that doesn't apply to colonial governments - not to white people. Only legitimate governments can benefit from the OG rule", to which I would answer 1) "How were the Arab invasions legitimate? How were the Egyptian dynasties legitimate? They also ruled by force and enslaved their populations". 2) If your ownership rule is the OG but it's nullified if you believe (somehow) that a government can be illegitimate, then you create a situation in which the antiquities have no owner -- since the previous government doesn't exist, the original racial group is gone, so who is the owner if you are not going to follow the ownership laws of the government in charge? So really at the end of the day, these types of arguments boil down to not liking the behavior of the UK in Egypt, which is fine by me, but they are not objective arguments if you try to apply the same standards of property ownership across thousands of years to all governments that would remove antiquities -- which is basically every government in history, whenever they found something beautiful and shiny, from the Romans carrying back booty to the Pharaohs carrying back booty, some of which was turned into beautiful jewelry.
  - JadeNB 4y ago
    > I mean, it's a tough call, because you can't really identify who something is stolen from. In some cases you can, but in most you can't. I don't think one has to identify whom something was stolen from to know that it was stolen. For a lot of artifacts in the British Museum, it may not be clear or able to be agreed upon who could be said at the time of their appropriation to own them, but it's clear that the British didn't. > But then you say "no, that doesn't apply to colonial governments - not to white people. Only legitimate governments can benefit from the OG rule", to which I would answer …. You seem to be putting a lot of words in your interlocutor's mouth! If I find something, it's not my responsibility or right to decide whose it is, and my inability to do so doesn't make it mine. It may be that someone else will come along and commit an injustice equal to my taking it if I don't—but that doesn't excuse my taking it. I need not work out a theory of ownership before simply leaving what I have found where I found it.
    - rsj_hn 4y ago
      > I don't think one has to identify whom something was stolen from to know that it was stolen. If we are talking about people, then yes, but governments are different. They are not people. Governments are law makers. So you are claiming that British law shouldn't apply and I am asking you for the name of the government whose law you think should apply. That at least deserves an answer. The UK was ruling Egypt at the time and you have to prove its own laws weren't being followed -- which is unlikely to be the case as regardless of how we may not like Perfidious Albion, they are a stickler for things like property rights. The British museum paid for these artifacts, and you need to prove that the people who sold them those artifacts had no right to do so, but these antiquities traders were acting in accordance to British law, so you need to prove that someone else's law should have been applied instead. Whose? > If I find something, it's not my responsibility or right to decide whose it is, and my inability to do so doesn't make it mine. Again, people aren't governments. If you find oil in the ground, it may not belong to you, but if the UK finds oil somewhere in the mandate of Palestine, you can be sure that it belongs to the UK, since that is territory controlled by UK, and the oil belongs to the government that controls the territory, not France or China or some other government that doesn't control the territory. And if some Arab tribes conquer that region, then the oil belongs to them. And if some other nation conquers it, then the oil again gets a new owner. Or do you think the House of Saud was the first group of people to live in Saudi Arabia? No, but they were the government in charge when the oil was found, and no one has managed to conquer them -- that's the only reason it's their oil -- because they found it and they rule over the territory. And who do you think will be the owner of any artifacts that Saudi Arabia digs up as they search for more oil? Yes, it will be Saudi Arabia. The rightful owner. And they can transfer those artifacts to some museum in Riyadh if they want, even if the artifacts were made by some ancient civilization that has no genetic relationship to the house of Saud. They could be of Ethiopian origin, but Saudi Arabia is not going to "return" them to Ethiopia. This is the definition of what it means to be the government - it means your laws are the ones that apply in the territory you rule over. I think that's the mistake you are making here. Maybe you think there was some international law in effect at the time? International law originates with the UN charter, which post-dates what the UK did, and you wouldn't want to apply a law to an action which predated the law, as that's understood to be an illegitimate application of law. If you start retroactively applying the UN charter to all government actions that happened in the past, you will find every government on earth an inveterate thief and lawbreaker - from the UK to the Egyptian Pharaohs, they all stole everything.
- wl 4y ago
  Much of the "stealing" arguably isn't. Just to pick a notable example, the Rosetta Stone was given to the British by the Egyptian government.

revolvingocelot 4y ago

Grandparent comment is a triple entendre: the historical British tendency to take priceless cultural treasures home with them for display is being inverted; the modern British tendency to retire/vacation in Spain is being noted; and I think there's also a jab at Brexit disallowing easy movement, as more people can more easily see a thing exhibited in an EU museum than in a British one due to the Schengen area.

AntoniusBlock 4y ago
Looks like it breaks multiple guidelines: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- wholinator2 4y ago
  I read through the guidelines and couldn't find any rules it was breaking. What guidelines do you believe are broken by the top comment?
  - taco_emoji 4y ago
    It's breaking "don't be snarky" at the very least, although that rule is barely ever enforced
  - AntoniusBlock 4y ago
    >Don't be snarky. >Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents. >Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle.
    - PhasmaFelis 4y ago
      Calling this "flamebait" or "ideological battle" is pretty over-the-top.