Seven Historical Artifacts That the British Empire Stole and Displayed in its Museums
Britain’s Dark Colonialist Past: A list of Stolen Artifacts
The British Museum in London has great collections in archaeology and anthropology. In Bloomsbury, Camden. The Museum was formed in 1753 by Parliament and was based on three collections: Sir Hans Sloane’s, Robert Harley’s, and Sir Robert Cotton’s. Montagu House, Great Russell Street, opened in 1759 with a large collection of manuscripts and library objects.
Sir Robert Smirke created the Museum’s current Greek Revival construction between 1823 and 1852 on the site of Montagu House. It has been expanded and renovated several times. Its famous circular Reading Room was constructed in the 1850s. Karl Marx, Virginia Woolf, Peter Kropotkin, and Thomas Carlyle worked there.
In 1881, the British Museum’s natural history collections were moved to South Kensington to become the Natural History Museum. In 1973, the British Museum’s library was united with other assets to form the British Library. Before the St. Pancras library opened in 1997, half of the national library’s holdings were at the Museum.
Ownership of some of its most famous antiquities, like the Elgin Marbles of Greece and the Rosetta Stone of Egypt, is challenged and subject to repatriation demands. These are stolen objects at the British Museum.
