A museum for anyone else’s history

Since Queen Elizabeth has died everyone is looking at England, it’s a good time to remember some of the things older than her than aren’t in their proper final resting spot. 

I think it’s time Britain stops stealing other country’s profits through using their stolen history. British Museum attracts over 6 million visitors a year and has generated 40.4 million pounds just between April 2020 and March 2021 alone. Some of their biggest attractions are the artifacts they have stolen from other countries. 

Many of the items in the museum are stolen from smaller or newer countries that were liberated from England at some point. England has had a long and bloody history, due to its hundreds of years as an empire. Which is how the museum has acquired so many of its pieces. Over the years many of the countries whose history is being displayed for England’s profit requested that the museum return their artifacts. 

The British Museum has said it does not plan to return items and emphasizes the importance of keeping the collections together. I think there is a simple solution for that. Give the entire collections back to the countries they belong to. 

Now I won’t say that they completely deprive the countries from their history. Over the years the British Museum has lent countries their artifacts for exhibits with the expectations that they will kiss their history goodbye after a limited amount of time and send it back to the people who stole it. 

Now as the rest of Europe has been slowly giving artifacts back to the countries they belong to, the museum is tip toeing in the right direction. The museum will give back 72 artifacts back to the Nigerian government, according to NPR. 

That is a good step in the right direction. However, I wonder if they have or ever will have plans to return the other about 3,000 Benin artifacts to the country. 

Among the museum’s other stolen artifacts are the Gwaegal shield from Aboriginal Australians, the Rosetta Stone from Egypt, two Moai head statues from Easter Island, Parthenon marbles from Greece, about 80 different objects from Maqdala, the Amaravati Marbles from India, Ashurbanipal reliefs from Iraq, the Akan drum from Ghana, Birdman from Jamaica, figures from Boinagel, and objects from the Summer Palace in China. There are also more artifacts that the museum isn’t even sure where they belong to. 

So, if you thought that was a ridiculous amount of stolen objects, I’d like to remind you there’s more. 

As these countries begin to have their own museums and try to create their own museums, they want to be able to tell their history. Apparently, the British Museum thinks they could do a better job. 

I think it’s time to give up the last bits of empirical ideas that live in that museum and start giving back what they never should have stolen.