Link to article: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2021/oct/15/cambridge-college-to-be-first-uk-return-looted-benin-bronze
Cambridge has become the first college or institution to return precious African artifacts (more specifically, Nigerian) after they were originally taken from their home countries over centuries ago. This comes as a wave of reparations to mistreated African countries takes place across the world, specifically for the crimes made to the country during times of colonization and the beginnings of slavery. Not only is the return important in a literal sense, as it is an item of high value, but it’s also important in leading other colleges and institutions worldwide to do the same. The hope is that sometime in the future, items of high value that were ‘borrowed’ from their home countries for ‘intellectual purposes’ will return home, and it will be acknowledged that those items were really stolen in the first place. Cambridge itself holds a variety of important historical items, including the Rosetta Stone (seized from Egypt), the Maqdala Crown (stolen from Ethiopia), and a variety of Indigenous relics.
Some may argue that these relics, having been seized for so long, are now at least partly the UK’s at least in prestige and reputation. However, I do not believe we can argue for the legitimacy of an artifact displayed in a museum if we ourselves (we being the UK, in this specific case) do not officially own the artifact or have not been granted the use of the artifact by the home country to which it belonged to originally when it was lost. The UK is notorious for it’s exploration of ethnic countries all over the world, but even just in relation to Nigeria the UK holds a very large amount of Benin artifacts. I believe it is morally right to return almost if not all stolen artifacts or at least gain the consent of the countries they were taken from, if not because it is right in an ethical sense then at least because it is right from a conservation and historical standpoint. Although the UK does not gain anything by this interaction, I at least hope they will continue to preserve their dignity to whatever degree it remains.
On an interstate level, this interaction may help to repair the damages between the two countries and further help them along on their path to peaceful interaction and a dual furthering of knowledge in an academic and historical sense, but on a global level I hope that at least to some degree this will spark a wave of reparations across the world to ethnic countries robbed of their history and robbed of their people, including reparations for whatever degree the US, Australia, and Canada may have partaken in the taking of Sub-Saharan Africa’s history.