• gmtom@lemmy.world
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      20 days ago

      Do you the UK would ever tolerate another country doing that with their cultural artifacts?

      Yes, because do. The bayuex tapestry held by france. Henry VIII letters to Anne Boleyn held by the Vatican, the Vercelli book held In Italy, parts of old British warships kept by the Dutch, French and Spanish, The Codex Amiatinus, in Florence, most of Shakespeare’s originals are in the US, Charles I art collection, several entire buildings like Agecroft hall and James Cook’s house, even old London Bridge could fall under this category. And countless (and I really do mean countless) less import ones that have ended up in other countries, primarily the US, in state museums.

      And a lot of those were acquired with much less legality than the Elgin marbles.

      why should the UK hold onto them today and not Greece? What right do they have?

      The fact that they were acquired legally with permission of the government of the time, now have history outside of their original ones in Greece, allow the teaching of its history to be spread to more people and be viewed in the wider context of global history.

      And as I said before, if I was forced to chose, I would err on the side of them being returned. My point is to point out it isn’t a simple and black and white case of the eeeeeevil British blatantly stealing things and refusing to give them back just to be cunts.

        • gmtom@lemmy.world
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          20 days ago
          1. That’s kind of the point. The UK typically doesn’t feel the need to demand back it’s artifacts

          2. Some of those artifacts are contested

          3. My entire series of comments is about the fact that these are not clear cut, but as is the case with every random chucklefuck on the internet that thinks they are an expert or an authority on something they have a surface level, at best, understanding of, you’re taking an extreme position, arguing it’s clearly the correct one and the situation is obvious and without nuance and then staunchly and irrationally refusing to anything that challenges your simple minded binary world view.

          4. Imagine you bought something from someone fairly, then a day later they claim it has a lot of significance to them and demand you give it back without compensation. Are you going to give it to them? Does it still “belong” to them? Any rational person would say no.

          5. Well basically every prominent historian who’s weighed in on the matter thinks they hold water, so I’m not going to give much credence to random angry person on lemmy with little knowledge on the subject.

          Bye