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On Sunday, the iconic Louvre Museum successful the French superior played big to a speedy heist successful which 8 items of precious jewellery dating from the Napoleonic epoch were spirited distant from its 2nd floor.
The stolen items included a tiara pertaining to the jewellery acceptable of Queen Marie-Amelie and Queen Hortense, an emerald necklace utilised by Empress Marie-Louise, a ample brooch belonging to Empress Eugenie, and different akin goodies.
International quality outlets reported the theft with predictable drama; CNN, for example, blared the headline: “Historic jewels stolen successful ‘national disaster’ for France”. The nonfiction went connected to enactment that 1 of the looted diadems “features 24 Ceylon sapphires and 1,083 diamonds that tin beryllium detached and worn arsenic brooches, according to the Louvre”.
The sensational hand-wringing was astir reminiscent of different modern “national disaster” successful Paris – namely, the April 2019 fire astatine the Notre Dame cathedral that broke the hearts of politicians worldwide, adjacent arsenic they remained seemingly unmoved by specified objectively much tragic events arsenic Israel’s recurrent slaughter of Palestinians successful the Gaza Strip.
And present that we person conscionable witnessed 2 years of all-out genocide successful Gaza courtesy of the United States-backed Israeli military, it seems that the nonaccomplishment of each those sapphires and diamonds mightiness yet not truly beryllium truthful “disastrous”, aft each – astatine slightest successful presumption of, you know, the wide authorities of humanity and the aboriginal of the planet.
In fact, galore of america mightiness adjacent find ourselves rooting for the thieves, to immoderate grade – if lone arsenic a symbolic mediate digit to a satellite predicated connected obscene inequality and misplaced priorities.
To beryllium sure, the Louvre and like-minded elite creation institutions are themselves symbolic of humanities injustice, serving arsenic they bash arsenic repositories for treasures accrued by royals who built their precise wealthiness connected the backs of the moving classes – not to notation taste artefacts and stolen relics from erstwhile assemblage possessions and different imperial stamping grounds.
Talk astir “looting”.
In her publication Decolonize Museums, curator and student Shimrit Lee notes that “even the word ‘loot’ derived from the Hindi ‘lut’, meaning ‘stolen property’, was appropriated into the English connection arsenic a effect of British power of India”. Remarking connected however the British Museum successful London has traditionally “showcased plundered sculptures from India arsenic good arsenic the bronzes of Benin”, the West African kingdom successful what is present Nigeria that was invaded by Britain successful 1897 and subsequently subsumed into the British Empire, Lee observes that “France’s Louvre created galleries successful the aboriginal 1800s specifically to location the galore objects nabbed by Napoleon and his entourage successful Egypt”.
Nowadays, Lee writes, it is “impossible to find a Western depository that doesn’t clasp immoderate magnitude of taste worldly from Africa, Asia, Oceania, oregon Native America” – a bequest of convulsive and extractive colonialism whose repercussions proceed to interaction the lives of Indigenous and Black radical crossed the world. And yet “the museum, with its achromatic walls and achromatic lights, immunodeficiency successful humanities amnesia, tricking visitors into believing that this unit lone exists successful the past”.
Enter Sunday’s jewel thieves, who – against specified a white-walled, white-lit backdrop – mightiness adjacent presume the relation of semi-Robin-Hood-type heroes. Unfortunately, this benignant of romanticisation falls short, arsenic the would-be Robin Hoods astir apt did not undertake their spectacular stunt arsenic a politico-cultural connection against humanities amnesia but alternatively successful the involvement of making slope by peddling the looted treasures to different affluent radical specialising successful the creation of exploitative economics.
In her caller article connected the heist, Emiline Smith – a lecturer successful criminology astatine the University of Glasgow successful Scotland – emphasises that the stolen jewels are “products of a agelong past of assemblage extraction”, the looted gemstones having been mined successful Asia, Africa, and South America, regions that were “systematically exploited for their taste and earthy resources to enrich European courts and empires”.
As Smith puts it, France’s “colonial outposts and broader European networks funnelled specified invaluable resources to royal courts and elite collectors” – each with the assistance of bully aged slavery. Among the funnelled items is simply a 19th-century sculpture by enslaved tribunal creator Akati Ekplekendo of the kingdom of Dahomey – formerly a colony of France – successful the present-day Republic of Benin (not to beryllium confused with the British-appropriated kingdom of Benin), which Smith notes “Benin has repeatedly requested backmost yet is inactive exhibited successful the Louvre’s Pavillon des Sessions”.
Again, then, it is not hard to spot wherefore those of america acrophobic with planetary justness mightiness theoretically beryllium inclined to presumption with favour the worldly nonaccomplishment inflicted connected the Louvre connected Sunday.
At the extremity of the day, though, the heist is not rather worthy of romanticisation. Nor, however, is it worthy of categorisation arsenic a “national disaster” – oregon an planetary one. And the information that determination are folks who would formed it arsenic specified is beauteous overmuch a catastrophe successful itself.
The views expressed successful this nonfiction are the author’s ain and bash not needfully bespeak Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
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