A plurality of the catalogued items in the museum are from Britain itself (680,000 out of 2.2 million or so) and there are as many such objects on display as there are from Asia.
Despite the memes, most of the objects in the museum that do not come from Britain were bought, not stolen, though there are some important and high profile exceptions.
People whose cultures didn’t value them/were disconnected from the original creators eg. Egypt
People who ran empires and were just going to destroy them for a new palace or something anyway eg. Ottomans in Greece
People who were forced to give them up in the face of a much stronger miltary power eg. a lot of the Chinese & Indian stuff
I don’t think there’s anything unethical about keeping 1 and 2 as they wouldn’t exist otherwise, but 3 should be returned and replaced with other items from the collection or replicas
Just the top floor west wing would remain if they had to return all their stolen items. Sutton Hoo and all that
A plurality of the catalogued items in the museum are from Britain itself (680,000 out of 2.2 million or so) and there are as many such objects on display as there are from Asia.
Despite the memes, most of the objects in the museum that do not come from Britain were bought, not stolen, though there are some important and high profile exceptions.
Insert goose meme: Bought off of whom?
One of three:
I don’t think there’s anything unethical about keeping 1 and 2 as they wouldn’t exist otherwise, but 3 should be returned and replaced with other items from the collection or replicas