Should Britain give back items accumulated from different countries?

Something that should be noted is that the reason the marbles are "held in the British Museum despite Greece's protests" (as GB News put it) Is because Greece sold them to us back when they considered them worthless and wanted to court favour. This was the case for the vast majority of the stuff Britain "stole" from other cultures as before around a century ago most of them just considered their historical artifacts to be worthless old junk, hell in the case of Egypt they were actually forcing artifacts on more powerful countries who didn't even want them (this is the reason one of Cleopatra's needles is in a random corner of a park in New York).

IMO if Greece really reeeeeally wants the marbles back then we should be willing to negotiate their price, however that price should reflect their value plus the loss of trade to the museum that would be losing them. Which I think would be a price too large for Greece to consider anyway.
 
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uber soldat said:
We've accumulated quite a few foreign citizens over the years, do we give them back to? Where do you draw the line?
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It's investing that a lot of the people very keen on restoring other countries cultural artifacts are the same people that scoff at the idea of preserving European cultures by restricting mass migration.

They're not really concerned about countries like Greece being able to have their own cultures and history be at the forefront and on display for the world.
 
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PlacidCasual said:
No, we bought the Elgin Marbles.

I mean ultimately you follow this nonsense to its illogical conclusion and no renaissance paintings outside of Italy. All the Dutch Masters n the Netherlands.

Ignore the fact that the archeology to recover them was done and paid for by us after they’d sat there deteriorating for thousands of years.

We need to stop apologising for the past.
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The greek PM was using the example of the Mona Lisa would you want that divided in half? Quite ironic really since that and Leonardo da Vinci were kidnapped by the French king during a smash and grab raid into italy and brought them back to France. At least the marbles were purchased legally not that the present greek government would recognise any legal ruling by their former turkish rulers of course. The greek PM knew what he was doing he knew it was a loaded statement designed either to force acknowledgment or cause offence since the meeting originally had nothing to do with the marbles infact it had been agreed in advance not to talk about it
 
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Hmm so reading about this the items were sold by Turkey which was essentially ruling the Otterman Empire and not by Greece. Its kind of like the UK selling something from one of the countries that were in our Empire and then when that country got its independence it asking for the items back. It could be argued they didn't belong to the people selling them in the first place.
 
How about we give them back if Greece reimburses the uk for the expenditure of freeing Greece from the Austrian-Hungarian empire and the nazis? Of course with the interest accumulated since 1916?
 
Colonel_Klinck said:
Hmm so reading about this the items were sold by Turkey which was essentially ruling the Otterman Empire and not by Greece. Its kind of like the UK selling something from one of the countries that were in our Empire and then when that country got its independence it asking for the items back. It could be argued they didn't belong to the people selling them in the first place.
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I'm not sure that idea of ownership is really helpful, especially in a historical context - essentially arguing for the invalidation of any non democratic government (which depending on how you measure it is all of them, including the UK until 1928) and any decisions they make, and an assumption that any cultural artefact is owned by the people of a future country which doesn't yet exist, not any private or state actor (even if the people aren't particularly interested at the time).

If we said the Ottoman empire wasn't a valid state in that area of modern day Greece despite being there for hundreds of years, then who was? One of the Frankish states in the couple of hundred years before that? Or the Byzantine Empire before that, or unified Roman Empire before that?
 
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robfosters said:
You give the marbles back and then the Egyptians will kick up even more of a fuss over the Rosetta Stone
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I'm not giving it back

rosettastone.jpg
 
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