Transcript
Speaker: You're listening to the archaeology podcast... I call upon my ancestors to judge me and my clan. Hi listener!
Speaker: Have you ever had one of those days? You know the one where you're constantly wrong and everything you say is just completely wrong from the wrong perspective because you're just a little bit of a snowflake and you actually hate your own culture and your own identity and all that junk? Well, I don't on either account and I find it funny that that's the way in which we have to talk when we talk about history.
Speaker: So on the back of a very interesting Twitter conversation, I wanna talk about
Speaker: repatriation in a very broad sense. This might be a bit more of a kind of like a series of podcasts and such like that. But I want to kind of ground what I'm thinking and the kind of framework I'm working with. The truth is that I don't have a book's worth of theory that's completely rooted in super good practice or anything.
Speaker: And it's something I'm constantly working on and I'm trying to improve as an individual who's just really interested in making repatriation a part of the wider kind of policy of decolonialization when it comes to history.
Speaker: what's very important to me is that the history of Britain has never been properly dealt with or sorted out. A lot of the time what we have is situations where people talk about history and heritage, but they haven't come to terms with it. And what I mean by that is I find people very eager to talk about the benefits of empire and that maybe colonialism wasn't all that bad.
Speaker: but they're very, very reluctant to talk about the bad outcomes of colonialism, and more importantly, the material effects of colonialism. So in this modern myth moment, I'm hoping that to kind of talk about museums and their materiality, and that's kind of that correspondence to what repatriation is and can mean.
Speaker: Britain has a vast amount of stolen and acquired artifacts of international origin. It's time to give them back. The British Museum is not alone in its collection of clonally acquired artifacts, but it certainly provides an archetype of the kind of institutions and situations I want to talk about. After a long Twitter conversation,
Speaker: I was forced to really consider how I was affirming the case for repatriation, even if it was against a possibly bad faith actor. I was challenged by someone who believed that not only had the Elgin marbles been taken with a consent in Greece, but that in fact the UK was more eligible to have the marbles than modern Greek populations.
Speaker: The intersection between archaeologists and the public is not something that I myself have had feedback on. I thought I had the chance here to both teach and to learn from somebody who obviously had a very different perspective to me. And maybe it wasn't good practice to keep going on and on, but I hope that at least someone looking in on the conversation would take time to consider my counter -arguments.
Speaker: I felt that very much the points put forward by this individual are reflective, at least the outcome, for repatriation in modern society, where the material culture is kept in museums in the global north, that is Europe, America and the like, and it's never returned to the communities to which it belongs, which just so happens to be countries in the global south.
Speaker: The conversation when it comes to repatriation is not just a simple dichotomy. It is not simply whether they return the items or keep them here, with doing nothing as a neutral ground. It is actually a question of fundamentally changing the way in which museums operate. We aren't debating one or two routes. We're asking whether to keep things as they are, or are we going to develop and grow?
Speaker: With this in mind, it's not surprising that the desire to move beyond the glories and, honestly, trophies of empire and materially admit the harm flies in the face of nationalistic pride upon which many people's worldviews are built. If you believe that tradition is how we should organize, then radically changing the past, or who has the past, is very dangerous.
Speaker: So my stance is really very much repatriate everything. Everything taken under colonial rule. That's it. Gone. Bye -bye. No recourse. And the reason I hold such an extreme view is because I cannot see an incremental step from where we currently are to what I think is fundamentally a transfer of power.
Speaker: Museums are rooted in colonial hubris. They are testaments to the conquests of colonial empire, and as such, without that plunder, how are they to exist? This is certainly not the premise that I met in my online debate. No, instead I was led to believe that despite these things being taken, they were indeed in the best place for the items. They belonged in a museum.
Speaker: And who was deciding that? Of course, we decided that. To redistribute these material items would also put the money where the post -colonial words are. It would be an admission of guilt. Now, do I think that the modern day Britain should personally feel ashamed by what they did by being born in this country?
Speaker: No, of course not. That is nonsense, and no one is saying that. However, I do want the state to recognize that by having empire, they plundered these other cultures and became rich off that stolen wealth. Thus, all of us who live in the UK today owe our prosperity in the British economy to that boost throughout the colonial age.
Speaker: So how do we resolve such an issue of wealth? Firstly, we look at how recent has happened. Colonialism generally ended after the Second World War, with many colonies gaining their independence.
Speaker: But no doubt, well into the 70s there was still residual power being held over other nations by Britain. As an example, Kenya declared independence only in 1963. No doubt, you know people older than the independent Kenya. So where does this leave us today, however? How is this meaningful? It leaves us with the following question.
Speaker: having rescinded all political power, having withdrawn military troops, having recognized new leadership, at which point materially did the colonial power rescind its hold over other people's history. By keeping these items, are they not continuing on the aspect of colonialism in which a population would have their history taught to them, often, as in the case of Zimbabwe, twisted for political and racial reasons?
Speaker: So I ask if we are not keeping them so as to remove history from these places, how are we able to claim that all these communities can reach and see their own heritage? Why are museums still arranged in the colonial framework? Consider perhaps what it would mean for these items and materials to be returned.
Speaker: Would countries like Ethiopia begin then analysing their own history, connecting it to contemporary excavation to build up a more coherent picture of the archaeological record? Would it then lead people travelling to particular countries to see certain parts of heritage, like they currently do to see Stonehenge?
Speaker: Isn't it possible for a country wanting the return of its items to behave in such a way to appease Britain on the world stage, in the hopes that such favour could warrant the return, particularly if they so desired those items? I not only think that sometimes this happens, I think this is established foreign relations. And I want it to stop.
Speaker: the imbalance, the effect of blackmail, the dangling of carrots, the system of holding and maintaining heritage that was taken under colonial rule or under flimsy conditions really has to stop. And we have to consider that it's not just enough to acknowledge
Speaker: the horrors of imperialism or of empire, but we have to make meaningful changes to actually address that beyond just saying, yeah, it was kind of bad, wasn't it?
Speaker: because inevitably people will reach for something that makes Britain sound as if they weren't that bad. And in the same way we criticise people downplaying the Holocaust, we should be criticising people who downplay all these awful atrocities. There should be no atrocity for which imperialism or colonialism was acceptable.
Speaker: and we need to repatriate everything as a matter of foreign policy, as a matter of decolonization, as a matter of morality. So I ask you, where do you stand on the matter of repatriation?
Speaker: If you don't agree with me, tell me. Come and tell me on Twitter, as an archaeologist. I will be more than happy to have a conversation with you, and perhaps we can both learn something. Perhaps there's something I haven't thought about, or there's perhaps a way I bark you. That's not great. Let me know what you think, and as always, question goddamn everything. They told you what you wanted here.
Speaker: Why can't you say that the truth will set you free? Expose this modern man for me! A man!
Speaker: Oh yeah!
