Restitution

This item caught my eye this morning. A Swiss museum is returning its collection of Afghan artefacts to Kabul a decade after they were donated to keep them out of the hands of the Taliban. It was triggered by the calculation that Afghanistan is now stable enough: you may share my uncertainty over whether this decision is a little premature.

The event is being billed as "one of the biggest repatriations of a country's cultural heritage since World War II". Reading between the lines it adds to pressure on the British government to sanction what is known as restitution: the return of items like the Elgin Marbles or the Benin bronzes to their countries of origin.

A friend of mine is an expert on this (see him here hard at work on his research) but I think that there is a powerful argument in favour of any nation's cultural heritage being dispersed around the world. Dispersal is the best insurance policy. In Iraq and Afghanistan museums have been looted and their contents smashed respectively. Had items from either place held by the British Museum already been returned they would probably now be missing or destroyed. Similarly, I am always amused by the shameless determination of the Chinese government to reclaim Tibetan Buddhist manuscripts taken by Sir Aurel Stein, given the efforts they have gone to to pulverise Tibetan culture. Just as Britain prides itself a safe-haven for refugees so it should resist the calls to hand back historic artefacts in its care.