What’s the opinion on certain high risk countries where there’s a high likelihood of the artifacts simply being destroyed? If I remember correctly ISIS and other similar organizations have burned or bombed several historical sites before.
Much like the theft of historical artifacts by the UK et al, ISIS was the result of decades of imperialist meddling by the US. Maybe just leave things be and let the locals work out what they want to do with their land, their people, and the artifacts on it. Offering assistance without strings attached is good, interventions are bad.
It’s like offering to help your neighbor with their yard: it’s acceptable to offer to lend them your mower, but it’s not acceptable to dig up everything on their property, replace it with grass sod, and spray it regularly with herbicides because you didn’t like the look of their local fauna and are afraid the dandelions and clover would spread to your lawn after your first intervention.
Who do you recognize as the authority to make that decision though? If the locals are currently ruled by a terrorist group or Nazis or whatever, do they get to decide? What about the locals that disagree with the government currently in power?
And an answer of ‘if we just didn’t needlessly meddle’ might be the ideal, but it’s ignoring the realities that we have meddled and some countries are unlikely to stop doing so. We have to accept the world we have not the one we wished we had.
Unless whatever group is in power has expressed that they wish to destroy those artifacts, I would prefer to work with whatever government there is to not only transfer the artifacts back, but help them setup whatever infrastructure is required to maintain them, including training of staff in their care.
Your bias is exactly the same on that led to those artifacts being stolen. It can be summed up as “these are savages, how can we trust them with their own things?” The West stole these artifacts and in many cases destroyed other artifacts or defaced historical sites to take them in the first place. It’s chauvinistic to continue this cycle. Give them back, try to make things right, and if things get destroyed, that’s just how it goes. It wasn’t the West’s to take in the first place. More progress is made by working with people than pearl-clutching. This is accepting the world as it is and trying to make it better all at once.
We have to be extremely wary of people who cite that because it’s so easily used as a justification for artifact theft and can have deep roots in racism.
ISIS works for usa, so, the answer is kill all yanks
Many ethnic minorities complain that their cultural heritage is exhibitioned in the capital far away. Countries are a social construct
So it’s better to keep it somewhere thousands of kilometres away where they’ll never be able to see it as compared to being able to see it albeit with difficulty?
That’s an internal problem for them to solve, not an excuse to hoard someone else’s culture.
Do you REALLY think a minority ethnic group in say, Nigeria, would rather have their artifacts locked away in London under the stewardship of Anglos rather than displayed in Lagos where they can at least visit it?
doesn’t mean crackers are off the hook for centuries of theft
