I just read that some historic jewels were stolen from the Louvre and that seems to be a ‘national disaster’ for France.
I was curious as to where the jewels came from so I looked it up.
I want to throw up.
The diamonds, emeralds, sapphires, and gold in the Louvre’s jewels almost certainly originated in colonial or exploitative contexts.
They were:
Extracted under forced or semi-forced labor,
Traded through imperial monopolies, and
Used to symbolize European royal power built on that global inequity.
In short: the beauty of those jewels rests on colonial extraction, not fair exchange.
Hey France! Sit down!