Crimes of History. A reckoning?

[chrisp65]

[theboyangel]

52 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

Didn’t take the news about the new Doctor Who well? 

[maqroll]

6 hours ago, chrisp65 said:

Somebody find this man a brassiere

[blandy]

7 hours ago, maqroll said:

Somebody find this man a brassiere

[Mandy Lifeboats]

On 15/10/2021 at 13:18, Mandy Lifeboats said:

The story below is the official story of how the Benin Bronzes came to be in the British Museum.  

1896    Merchants from the Kingdom of Benin decline to supply the British with Palm Oil for the price offered.     They are supported by the ruler of Benin.  

January 1897   The UK agreed that a "Trade Mission" should visit Benin.  It was actually 250 fully armed African Mercenaries masquerading as a drum and pipe band along with a handful of British "Trading Agents".   Their intention was to occupy the country and install a more friendly ruler.   The plan was discovered and the invading army was slaughtered before they could take their rifles out of their trombone cases.   

February 1897    The UK invaded in order to punish the savages that had slaughtered our innocent trade mission.  They slaughtered thousands and literally wiped Benin off the map by making it part of Nigeria.   We scorched the earth.  

We then decided that Benin must pay for the cost of killing all those savages.  Using official figures 2500 treasures were plundered and sold.  That only reflects items that were plundered and sold at official auctions.  Much more was simply taken away.   40% of the official plunder ended up in the British Museum.  

2021 "The British Museum is fully committed to developing an online tool to DIGITALLY reunite historical objects that illuminate Benin."   

Aren't we kind. 

The British Museum has finally agreed to return the Benin Bronzes.  Just another small step to right the wrongs of our past.  

[Seat68]

3 minutes ago, Mandy Lifeboats said:

The British Museum has finally agreed to return the Benin Bronzes.  Just another small step to right the wrongs of our past.  

Some way to go but it's a start. 

[Mandy Lifeboats]

10 minutes ago, Seat68 said:

Some way to go but it's a start. 

I am a realist.  We aren’t going to return the diamonds in the Crown Jewels or the Rosetta Stone.  But the Benin Bronzes were never rightfully ours.  If it’s something we looted and 99% of Brits have never heard of - let’s give it back.   

[CVByrne]

On 14/10/2021 at 03:36, TheAuthority said:

Will we in the West ever fully recognize the crimes of colonialism and manage to build a more equitable society? There is more awareness than ever in my lifetime of systemic racism and how the legacy of slavery and colonization has scarred countries and economies, leaving an un-level playing field for so many.

At the same time there is a counter movement of people who have always benefited from this inequitable system and are fighting back. The threat of white nationalist terrorism has never been higher in the US, and the attacks of Anders Breivik in Norway & Brenton Tarrant in New Zealand show that it is not limited to these shores. These terrorist have quoted each other and other racially motivated shootings in their 'manifestos.'

Is it necessary to recognize our history so we can move forward? Should we just bumble along as we have been hoping for small incremental change along the way? How do we handle those on the right who believe we are already in a cold war between whites and muslims/people of color. 

The world is a horrible place and evil of war, genocide, subjugation is the story of 99.99% of human history. 

The reason there is a rise in far right is as a counter to the far left and all that is happening is polarisation "us vs them". No compromise, no middle ground either we win other "they" win. Everything is now binary. 

The issue with a focus on the past is, we never committed those crimes other long dead people did. The legacy of the past is indeed inequality and we as a people should find ways to create a more equal society. 

The current environment of identity politics, where people need to be classified under race, gender, sexual orientation etc.. and that is the narrow thing that now defines people. This environment isn't one that will help find common ground between us all, it just further divides us. The answer to the far right in the center, not the far left. People are slow to change so forcing drastic change on people will result in a backlash which is the far right. 

[CVByrne]

35 minutes ago, Mandy Lifeboats said:

The British Museum has finally agreed to return the Benin Bronzes.  Just another small step to right the wrongs of our past.  

It's right they have returned them. Returning artefacts looted during colonialism seems a just thing to do. 

A question to ponder in general though. Venice's Bronze Horses. They looted them from Constantinople which was the Byzantine Empire at the time. The Ottomans and then Turkey took over rule of that city since. Who should technically own the Bronze Horses? 

[bickster]

5 minutes ago, CVByrne said:

The reason there is a rise in far right is as a counter to the far left and all that is happening is polarisation "us vs them".

This is nonsense

Where are the Far Left in power that the Far Right are reacting to?

Macron? Blair and Brown? Merkel? The EU?

There's absolutely no correlation at all

 

[Mandy Lifeboats]

10 minutes ago, CVByrne said:

It's right they have returned them. Returning artefacts looted during colonialism seems a just thing to do. 

A question to ponder in general though. Venice's Bronze Horses. They looted them from Constantinople which was the Byzantine Empire at the time. The Ottomans and then Turkey took over rule of that city since. Who should technically own the Bronze Horses? 

This question is so difficult to answer with many items.  The French “gave” the Rosetta Stone to Britain.  We did have them surrounded and were furiously bombarding them.  Their nice gift was a number of gifts that persuaded us to stop.  
France “found” it.  Exactly how they found it is very debatable.  The official story is that French soldiers were digging and low and behold, just like magic, it appeared.  Some may wonder if the previous owners did lose it.  Or whether they “gave” it to the French who had them surrounded and were furiously bombarding them.  
That’s relatively modern history and well recorded.  God knows what the last legal owner was. 

[CVByrne]

6 minutes ago, bickster said:

This is nonsense

Where are the Far Left in power that the Far Right are reacting to?

Macron? Blair and Brown? Merkel? The EU?

There's absolutely no correlation at all

 

I'm not talking about government. I'm talking about discourse. Everything is more polarised now than it was 20 or 30 years ago. 

[CVByrne]

2 minutes ago, Mandy Lifeboats said:

This question is so difficult to answer with many items.  The French “gave” the Rosetta Stone to Britain.  We did have them surrounded and were furiously bombarding them.  Their nice gift was a number of gifts that persuaded us to stop.  
France “found” it.  Exactly how they found it is very debatable.  The official story is that French soldiers were digging and low and behold, just like magic, it appeared.  Some may wonder if the previous owners did lose it.  Or whether they “gave” it to the French who had them surrounded and were furiously bombarding them.  
That’s relatively modern history and well recorded.  God knows what the last legal owner was. 

We could go with a system that sets post WW2 land boundaries as the fixed countries. So artefacts that you can argue originated without the borders of the countries can request the return of those items. But then it's complicated with all the Gold Spain took from South America and minted into coins how can you tell the origin. 

I think there are lots of fairly simple ones with obvious colonial looting of artefacts as was the case with Benin Bronzes for example. But what happened if artefacts were sold between two parties 180 years ago for example in a colonised country? Can the transaction be illegitimate due to colonialism? It's all very murky and complicated in general. 

[Mandy Lifeboats]

43 minutes ago, CVByrne said:

The reason there is a rise in far right is as a counter to the far left and all that is happening is polarisation "us vs them". No compromise, no middle ground either we win other "they" win. Everything is now binary. 

The issue with a focus on the past is, we never committed those crimes other long dead people did. The legacy of the past is indeed inequality and we as a people should find ways to create a more equal society. 

The current environment of identity politics, where people need to be classified under race, gender, sexual orientation etc.. and that is the narrow thing that now defines people. This environment isn't one that will help find common ground between us all, it just further divides us. The answer to the far right in the center, not the far left. People are slow to change so forcing drastic change on people will result in a backlash which is the far right. 

I am not sure I agree with either your statements or your general viewpoint.   But what has the rise of the far right got to do with crimes in history or the return of the Benin Bronzes?????

As you rightly say, they were stolen by our ancestors.  But we are alive now and we can right the wrongs of our ancestors.  I don’t see that as a far left wing viewpoint. Isn’t it just the right thing to do? 

[CVByrne]

2 minutes ago, Mandy Lifeboats said:

I am not sure I agree with either your statements or your general viewpoint.   But what has the rise of the far right got to do with crimes in history or the return of the Benin Bronzes?????

As you rightly say, they were stolen by our ancestors.  But we are alive now and we can right the wrongs of our ancestors.  I don’t see that as a far left wing viewpoint. Isn’t it just the right thing to do? 

Absolutely Nothing. They are two conversation threads. I was replying to the OP which was a post from 2021, I quoted him. 

My next post was in relation to the Benin Bronzes. They're two different topics.

[Mandy Lifeboats]

12 minutes ago, CVByrne said:

Absolutely Nothing. They are two conversation threads. I was replying to the OP which was a post from 2021, I quoted him. 

My next post was in relation to the Benin Bronzes. They're two different topics.

Ah!  I see.   Your post seemed to be connecting the two. 

Ownership is difficult to determine in many cases.  In others its impossible.  But I firmly believe that we don't need to establish ownership. We can just return them to a more appropriate owner than us.   The Benin Bronzes are a great example. They were looted from many places and people within a country that no longer exists.  We aren't returning them to the rightful owners. We are returning them to a museum in Nigeria. That's not perfect but it's the best we can do. 

[CVByrne]

8 minutes ago, Mandy Lifeboats said:

Ah!  I see.   Your post seemed to be connecting the two. 

Ownership is difficult to determine in many cases.  In others its impossible.  But I firmly believe that we don't need to establish ownership. We can just return them to a more appropriate owner than us.   The Benin Bronzes are a great example. They were looted from many places and people within a country that no longer exists.  We aren't returning them to the rightful owners. We are returning them to a museum in Nigeria. That's not perfect but it's the best we can do. 

Yeah, there are lots of artefacts that we can easily establish a more rightful owner, especially ones like Benin Bronzes. Nobody is going to argue against situations like that.

But let's take a more difficult example, does Iraq have a clear ownership of ancient Sumerian artefacts that were taken from that land 150 to 200 years ago prior to the existence of Iraq as a country? Would the artefacts long term preservation be best served by sending them back to Iraq?

So many millenniums of conquests and mass migrations of peoples have occurred since the Sumerians. Which is why if we set the world order as of the post WW2 boundary of lands then we could simply return artefacts to the lands they were found in. So Egyptian artefacts all go back to Egypt. Sumerian and Assyrian back to Iraq etc..

I don't have an answer. It just made me think of how complicated the majority of the historic items in museums in the world is. 

[chrisp65]

Treating everyone equally and returning stolen property where its reasonable to do so is not far left ideology.

That is the middle.

[CVByrne]

14 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

Treating everyone equally and returning stolen property where its reasonable to do so is not far left ideology.

That is the middle.

I don't believe anyone is saying it is far left though are they?

[chrisp65]

3 minutes ago, CVByrne said:

I don't believe anyone is saying it is far left though are they?

The way I read your post, people identifying as whatever they want, was divisive because it wasn’t the old way of doing things. This, in turn, is part of the reason we have a far right, to counter the far left. It is the middle ground that is changing, it is the middle that accepts there are more ways to live your life than there used to be. It is the middle that has passed equality legislation and it is the middle that has given us the European Court of Human Rights.

To suggest any of these cultural shifts are in any way associated with the far left would suggest that somehow this country has had the far left in a position of power over the last 3 or 4 decades and now there is a far right back lash.

I don’t think the far left are driving gender politics, I don’t think the far left are driving the return of the bronzes, I don’t think the far left have pushed equality and access legislation through. So I’m struggling to see the far left chicken to the far right egg. It’s hardly hardcore leftist ideology to demand to be an individual and its the demand to be recognised and valued as an individual that some appear to disapprove of. Those are often the same people that absolutely cannot see why looted art should be returned, or why slave trader statues end up in the dock.

The demands for individual freedoms and the demands for fair international dealings might trigger the right, but they are the actions of the middle.