1 | 1 | | Britain, as a former world power and until forty years ago the ruler of a vast |
| 2 | | colonial empire, is likely often to be faced with claims for the return of items of cultural |
| 3 | | property from its erstwhile colonies and protectorates. |
2 | 4 | | Of intrinsic importance and much public interest is the Greek claim for the return |
| 5 | | to Athens of the Parthenon marbles. Most of the problems arising in connection with |
| 6 | | cultural property, and the arguments on which they turn, can be illustrated from the |
| 7 | | discussion which this claim has provoked. |
3 | 8 | | There are two arguments which merit serious consideration, and which, mutatis |
| 9 | | mutandis, are applicable in a number of other cases. The first is the argument of the |
| 10 | | integrity of a work of art. The Parthenon, of which its sculptures are an integral part and |
| 11 | | not mere external decoration, is clearly a work of art of unique quality and importance. Is |
| 12 | | it reasonable that one should have to travel 1,500 miles to see the whole of it? |
4 | 13 | | The second argument is that of symbolic significance, and once again, it is one of |
| 14 | | very general application. The Statue of Liberty is a symbol of the United States both in |
| 15 | | the sense that a picture of it at once calls to mind that country, and in the more profound |
| 16 | | sense that most Americans see it as a kind of token or representation of important |
| 17 | | features of American history and the world role of the United States. For many Greeks |
| 18 | | the Parthenon and its sculptures are just such a symbol of their national identity and of |
| 19 | | their heritage from the past, and the retention of the sculptures in the British Museum is |
| 20 | | seen as a diminution of their dignity as a people, all the more humiliating now that other |
| 21 | | peoples and states are recovering their national symbols. |
5 | 22 | | A serious cause of hesitation to return cultural property is the fear that if anything |
| 23 | | is returned this will open the floodgates and empty the great international museums. The |
| 24 | | Times on October 30, 1985, commenting on the Greek request for the return of the |
| 25 | | Parthenon marbles, declared that 'The consideration which dominates the debate today |
| 26 | | is not history, or the issues of competence and accessibility - where there is hardly |
| 27 | | anything to choose between London and Athens. The problem is precedent.' |
6 | 28 | | In the first place this point of view is based on a logical fallacy. If it would be bad |
| 29 | | for everything to be returned to its place of origin, it does not follow that nothing must |
| 30 | | ever be returned. Secondly, it is a morally questionable attitude. If one recognizes that it |
| 31 | | is right to do something, one does not refrain from doing it because later on someone else |
| 32 | | may as a result do something wrong. |
7 | 33 | | In any case, precedent is of prime importance only where there is a tribunal which |
| 34 | | is bound by it, and there is probably none which can give binding decisions on claims for |
| 35 | | the return of cultural property. This is a matter for negotiation rather than judicial |
| 36 | | decision, and in any event scarcely any two cases are sufficiently similar to create a valid |
| 37 | | precedent. |
8 | 38 | | These problems will be with us for a long time. They are bound to generate |
| 39 | | powerful emotions. But the way to settle them is by careful and dispassionate |
| 40 | | consideration of historical, aesthetic, moral and technical arguments, and by recognition |
| 41 | | that the present distribution of the cultural heritage of the world is the product of past |
| 42 | | history and will be changed by future history. |
| | | |
| | | Rob ert Browning in The Times Literary Supplement, July 25, 1986 |