The Netherlands has returned some stolen artifacts to Indonesia • Hacker News Board

Re: The Netherlands has returned some stolen artifacts to Indonesia

#211

Post by bloppe » Wed, Oct 02, 2024, 9:41 PM UTC

legacynl wrote: post #201

gaoshan wrote: post #30

The labeling of things in museums as "stolen" is lacking, IMO. In some cases, yes... straight up looted items are in museums. In other cases, though, the items could easily have ended up lost to time (or political, economic, social turmoil) if they had not been taken and put in museums outside of the places where they originated. Additionally some of these places would not have had the means to care for antiquities b…

> Additionally some of these places would not have had the means to care for antiquities back in the day. This is a bad argument, because it's irrelevant. Imagine getting your car stolen, and the thief says it's justified because he is rich (partly due to stealing a lot of cars) and he can afford to send the car to the shop for maintenance more often. The object belongs to the original owner. Even if that original ow…

I'm not very sympathetic with OP's positions, but I do think these analogies to individual theft are pretty weak. Who owns shared cultural artifacts? The government? The Ottoman government was in charge of Greece when they gave the Parthenon marbles to Lord Elgin. Was that stealing? If so, does the current Greek government have the authority to do what they want with them? And what's the difference? Both governments have supporters and detractors within Greece. There isn't nearly as clear of a distinction as most people want to think.

Re: The Netherlands has returned some stolen artifacts to Indonesia

#212

Post by philwelch » Wed, Oct 02, 2024, 9:41 PM UTC

chgs wrote: post #190

philwelch wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1707 versus 1776 isn’t what I would describe as “far longer”.

In the context of crowning kings, the union of the crowns was 1603, before the mayflower, before new Amsterdam, even before Jamestown. But even with 1707 you’re talking 30% of the age of the USA again.

Between 1714 and 1807, Britain was also in personal union with Hanover. That didn’t make Britain and Hanover the same country any more than England and Scotland were the same country during the 17th century.

Re: The Netherlands has returned some stolen artifacts to Indonesia

#213

Post by Managor » Wed, Oct 02, 2024, 9:58 PM UTC

Preservation is what gives artifacts value.

Re: The Netherlands has returned some stolen artifacts to Indonesia

#214

Post by Managor » Wed, Oct 02, 2024, 10:04 PM UTC

Covenant0028 wrote: post #163

noworriesnate wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because they are more secure there. These are irreplaceable items. Pick your favorite cultural artifact, would you help move it to a more secure location if there was a lot of instability that could lead to it being destroyed? Even if that more secure location was a different country? I personally would.

I would recommend reading "Africa is Not a Country" that delves into this exact question. It is the pinnacle of self-serving arguments for European countries to first spend centuries colonising Africa, stolen its wealth and cultural artifacts, enriching themselves in the bargain, and dividing the continent in a way that would guarantee political instability, to then use that same instability as an excuse for not retu…

To be honest, artifacts are not wealth. Resources are wealth and you do not use artifacts as resources. They can be a display of wealth but not the wealth itself.

Re: The Netherlands has returned some stolen artifacts to Indonesia

#215

Post by pyuser583 » Thu, Oct 03, 2024, 4:05 AM UTC

s1artibartfast wrote: post #128

bee_rider wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea of a nation-state is surprisingly recent and not completely universal, right? Historically people might be organized along kinship, tribal, ethnic, religious, or some other lines. Then an empire could pop up and control various groups of those, often against their wills, sometimes via intermediaries (which might not even map well to the underlying peoples). I do think the best thing to do is to return artifa…

Interesting thought. Perhaps the Egyptian relics should be repatriated to modern day practitioners of Egyptian polytheism. I believe the Kemetic Orthodoxy is currently headquartered in Illinois, USA. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kemetic_Orthodoxy#Worship

Egypt abandoned monotheism for Christianity before surrendering to Muslims.

Re: The Netherlands has returned some stolen artifacts to Indonesia

#216

Post by TeaBrain » Thu, Oct 03, 2024, 4:59 AM UTC

aguaviva wrote: post #207

TeaBrain wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I've read, the Egyptian genetics are still relatively similar to Egyptians from several thousand years ago, due to the relatively small number of Arabs involved in the Arab conquest of Egypt. However, the only kinds of inheritance that I believe are strong are familial or cultural. I don't believe in broad umbrella genetic inheritance claims without any establishable familial connection. Beyond this, I thin…

Beyond this, I think the idea of geographic artifact ownership claims, based solely on the geographic origin of artifacts, have little to no merit. That's fine, but the world disagrees with you, by and large. And it needs to have some way of adjudicating these claims. Granted, fine-grained aspects of "familial" vs. "genetic" inheritance (throwing in migrations and multiple waves of forced assimilation) might muddy th…

> That's fine, but the world disagrees with you, by and large.

I honestly don't like the way I ended that last sentence. If I could re-write it I'd replace "merit" with "basis in cultural lineage". I would agree that most people in the world don't default to feeling this way, but I also don't think most people have a well thought out idea of why they disagree. If it is considered that the current geographic ownership claims are retroactive ownership claims based solely on the current owners of the geography, for items that existed on the land long before the current legal nations came into existence, the claims make much less sense.

> the criterion of "proximate geographic origin" provides at least some form of an objective basis of ownership

This is part of the reason why I don't like how I used "merit", as it could get confused with legal merit, which wasn't really my intended meaning. However, the problem with this argument is that many of the cultural objects that were collected in years past were collected prior to the modern nations existing in those places. Due to this, this argument really would have little legal merit for virtually all the countries where artifacts have been collected, as those countries did not exist when the British collected the artifacts, and their current claims are a retroactive idea of ownership over what was collected before the current nation came into existence.

>the consensus view is that the ownership "claims" of recent colonial powers who extracted these artifacts coercively have no merit or basis whatsoever

There may be a opinion in the popular consciousness about this general topic, but there can't be a legal consensus, as every claim has to be evaluated individually. Without documentation on the origin and the original owners of the artifacts, and documentation establishing that said artifacts were retrieved illegally, it is impossible to establish legally that the current owners do not actually have ownership over the artifacts.

>the current population of Egypt seems to be the very opposite of such a case, for the very reasons you stated

This is very much not what I stated. The civilization that created the ancient Egyptian artifacts is completely distinct from the current culture. Besides having genetic similarities, which all humans do to some extent, modern Egyptians have near zero cultural lineage tracing to the ancient Egyptian civilization.

Re: The Netherlands has returned some stolen artifacts to Indonesia

#217

Post by TeaBrain » Thu, Oct 03, 2024, 5:35 AM UTC

s1artibartfast wrote: post #126

isodev wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it’s clear the spirit of my comment was to mean that the descendants of the original owners would be one of the parties with a claim to have their artefacts repatriated. It’s clearly not a strictly geographical problem.

Are we talking genetic ancestry? What if the genetic ancestors have little in common with the current geographic population What if the genetic ancestors themselves were brutal slavers and overlords who extracted the riches by force?

This is a very good point, which I brought up in another comment. Arguing on the basis of broad genetic ancestry to establish ownership of ancient artifacts can quickly get murky and nonsensical, when considering nations that exist today with similar genetic ancestry, and also those former nations which may have been antagonistic, yet have similar genetics.

Re: The Netherlands has returned some stolen artifacts to Indonesia

#218

Post by shantnutiwari » Thu, Oct 03, 2024, 8:54 AM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #174

sangnoir wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In other cases, though, the items could easily have ended up lost to time (or political, economic, social turmoil) That's a hard sell when the country that winds up with the artifacts was also the primary agitator of political, social and economic turmoil (you know, the usual colonial stuff). An arsonist shouldn't get to keep victims' heirlooms to "save them from the conflagration".

[flagged]

>Most of these countries were colonized because they were in turmoil to begin with. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decline_of_the_Mughal_Empire

Wow, great justification for imperialism, you deserve a medal.

You do know India had other kindgoms besides the Mughals, right? Marathas, Sikhs, Kashmir, to name a few

Re: The Netherlands has returned some stolen artifacts to Indonesia

#219

Post by mikrl » Fri, Oct 04, 2024, 1:28 AM UTC

TeaBrain wrote: post #55

mikrl wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>My counterpoint is wondering how many would have been destroyed by ISIS or civil unrest in some of the less stable regions of the world. This line of thought is fascinating to me. We should preserve them for all of humanity? Who chooses the custodian? We want a more nationalist case for repatriation to country of origin? If they get destroyed, it’s not the self-professed custodian nation’s problem or loss. Cynical,…

>Maybe having their artifacts back The idea that modern Egyptians have any claim over the artifacts when they don't share a culture or civilization with those who created the artifacts is tenuous. The artifacts don't belong to the land itself. They belonged to people of a no longer existing civilization that once inhabited the land.

Consider this though.

In the case of Britain, they got the artifacts because they established a protectorate over Egypt and thus were able to excavate and do civil engineering.

However, the fact that the artifacts were there to be discovered in the first place was because the Arab and later Ottoman overlords left them there.

So who should rightfully claim them? One of the historical suzerains of Egypt? Or the current nation of Egypt who inhabit the ancient Egyptian territory?

I can’t think of the ‘right’ (ie just) answer to that question… only practical ones.

Re: The Netherlands has returned some stolen artifacts to Indonesia

#220

Post by jadtz » Sat, Oct 05, 2024, 10:07 PM UTC

MitPitt wrote: post #27

Unfortunately artifacts returned to their origin country are often sold off to private collection or are otherwise lost. First world countries are better at preservation of such things and should keep it.

How often and can you give some examples in recent history?