Name: The British Museum is full of stolen artifacts
Uploaded: 2020-08-05T18:05:16.000Z
Duration: 9 min 33 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

It's the world's largest world history museum

and it draws millions of visitors every year.

Inside, it holds more than 8 million cultural and historical artifacts from all over the world

which cover 2 million years of human history.

If you follow the museum's recommended list of “Don't Miss” items, you'll see its star pieces.

Or this bronze sculpture of the Hindu God Shiva.

But there's a problem hidden in the museum,

and we can see an example of it along this route.

Out of those 12 pieces,  nearly half have disputed ownership.

The British Museum claims those pieces belong there, on display for the world to see.

But in recent years, many have been fighting to get them back to where they came from.

"The list of disputed museum  treasures keeps on growing"

“Should cultural artifacts be returned to their home countries or be left in western museums?"

"The subject of intense debate as to who should now own them”

In the late 1600s, the British Empire began expanding across several continents.

It became the largest empire in history, controlling about a quarter of the world's land and population.

During its centuries-long rule, the empire

took precious resources and wealth  from countries all around the world,

Including thousands of cultural and historical artifacts.

Many of which ended up here, in the British Museum

which was founded in 1753 and kept growing to accommodate all the new pieces

Lots of the items in the museum were legally acquired

and are completely undisputed, like this one.

A 2,000 year old roman vase sold  to the museum by a Duke in 1945.

The problem is with the pieces that are disputed.

Like the first item you see as soon as you walk in.

The Rosetta Stone, taken by British troops

Removed from the acropolis in Athens by a British Lord, and sent to the British Museum.

Some of the most contentious items in the museum.

The Benin Bronzes are kind of hard to categorize,

because they include such a huge range of items.

But they were all produced here, in the Kingdom of Benin in present-day Nigeria.

This wealthy and industrious kingdom produced

thousands of objects  and art pieces starting in the 1500s.

A lot of the items adorned palace walls and were used for religious rituals.

in a society that did not develop written script as we know them.

That's Professor Chika Okeke-Agulu, an art historian and professor from Nigeria

They told their history,  how they narrated the histories of kingship

of the kingdom. Its political and social life.

But in 1897 would lose thousands of these cultural pieces.

At the time, European colonial powers were

expanding south, in what was called the  “Scramble for Africa”.

They split up the continent into spheres of influence for financial exploitation.

All these pink areas were the British ones.

Benin, over here, was in Britain's sphere of influence.

But the kingdom didn't comply  with Britain's trade demands.

And in January of 1897 it led to what was

Where Benin guards killed seven British emissaries,  plus their many guides and servants.

In response 1,200 British troops embarked

on a mission called the  “Benin Punitive Expedition”.

The British wanted revenge, but the mission was about more than just that.

There were reports of these vast treasures in the palace of the king of Benin,

and that if they could retrieve these treasures, sales from it could offset the cost of the invasion

And so the punitive expedition, in other words, was also an economic enterprise.

The British soldiers armed with machine guns

conquered the city and burned it to the ground.

But not before carefully taking thousands of artifacts.

They piled them up neatly, photographed them

This photo, taken at the Benin palace after the raid,

shows soldiers with the dismantled plaques that were brought to the British Museum,

The region fell under full British colonial

control until 1960, when Nigeria, including the City of Benin, gained independence.

their historical artifacts  were still spread all over the world.

Locked up in western institutions, like the Leipzig Museum of Ethnology in Germany

That was my first time seeing an original ancient Benin artwork.

Being in the presence of these magnificent objects

and knowing that I had to travel all the way from Nigeria

to see these objects for the first time...

At the achievement of these ancient artists.

And anger. Mixed with a sense of loss, at what could have been

if I only had to travel a few hundred miles.

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The British Museum is full of stolen artifacts

privilege

ancient

acquire

conquer