Introduction:
This question is not really a ''history question'', but simply one that has something to do with history (heritage, artefacts, archeology, etc.). I've been reading this forum for a long time, and I know that there are a lot of experts here, so I assume some of you have knowledge on the question I am about to ask.
The question:
A lot of Western countries, in particular the UK, France, and the US, possess artefacts that were found in other countries. An example is the Louvre's ''Khorsabad'' collection. These objects were ''retrieved'' from Northern Iraq, but are no longer in the possession of that country.
How does something like this work? What gives a distant country the right to take the historical heritage of a region/country? Are there agreements between the countries? Are the objects ''leased'' for exposition? Can they be retrieved on grounds of historical/cultural heritage claims?
Just something I am curious about. It's probably a sensitive subject because I understand the renowned museums in Europe don't want to give up their prized possessions, but it is, obviously, not fair to the country/communities these artefacts were from. Besides the cultural heritage argument, there is also the argument that income is lost (tourism) - we're ignoring the unstable situation in some of those ''source countries'' for the sake of argument here, as I understand such objects are safer under the care of world-class museums in the West.
I apologise if this question is out of place :).
Well there are some examples of repatriation you may be interested in. Aboriginal remains in the British natural history were sent back to Australia after a legal battle. Parthenon marbles of Greece are in the UK which came from Athens were controversially sold by powers in charge of Greece of time. This dispute is unresolved
The transfers generaly went by one of four methods.
The main one was simple purchase. Your rich Victorian would go to whoever was in charge at the time and offer them rather a lot of money to take well whatever took their fancy really (this is where your objects from northern Iraq mostly come from). Smaller objects would be purchased from local traders. Local traders tended to catch on pretty quickly and objects made specifically for sale to westerners start being made pretty fast (ashanti gold weights for example).
The second option was direct military force. In many cases when a European army set out to destroy rather than conquer looting was one of the methods used (and weapons and bells were considered legitimate booty in any case). The Old Summer Palace in china is probably the single largest case but the Benin bronzes case is probably better known. Other British examples would be stuff from Kumasi taken during the Anglo-Ashanti wars (although last time I went looking for it a lot of that had disappeared) and Magdala during the Abyssinian expedition.
Some stuff was and is simply stolen although generally this was done by locals who would then sell stuff to rich Victorians. You see this today with the mass illegal export of historic coins from parts of eastern Europe.
Finally some stuff was gifted by those in charge for diplomatic reasons. This does still happen from time to time today although its discouraged.
In terms of returning stuff while there are a few campains (and china is straight up buying stuff back) the museums mostly aren't budging and its the americans that are having more issues since they have had the money to buy quite a lot of stuff after 1970 and its the 1970 UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property that provides the main cut off.