Source link : https://las-vegas.news/france-mourns-its-stolen-crown-jewels-as-their-uncomfortable-colonial-previous-returns-to-view/
PARIS (AP) — As French police race to trace the place the Louvre’s stolen crown jewels have gone, a rising refrain desires a brighter mild on the place they got here from.
The artifacts have been French, however the gems weren’t. Their unique routes to Paris run by means of the shadows of empire — an uncomfortable historical past that France, like different Western nations with treasure-filled museums, has solely begun to confront.
The eye sparked by the heist is a chance, specialists say, to strain the Louvre and Europe’s nice museums to elucidate their collections’ origins extra actually, and it may set off a broader reckoning over restitutions.
Inside hours of the theft, researchers sketched a probable colonial-era map for the supplies: sapphires from Ceylon (Sri Lanka), diamonds from India and Brazil, pearls from the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean and emeralds from Colombia.
That doesn’t make the Louvre theft much less prison. It does complicate the general public’s understanding of what was misplaced.
“There is obviously no excuse for theft,” stated Emiline C.H. Smith, a criminologist on the College of Glasgow who research heritage crime. “But many of these objects are entangled with violent, exploitative, colonial histories.”
Whereas there’s no credible proof these particular gems have been stolen — specialists say that doesn’t finish the argument: What was authorized within the imperial age may nonetheless imply plunder in right…
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Author : LasVegasNews
Publish date : 2025-11-07 08:34:00
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