AEMI

126 AEMI JOURNAL 2015
Image Emigration Museums: Auswanderer Haus Ballinstadt
success in this initiative. 60
From Antiquity, the Silk Road was a
key route between China and the Mediterranean
that not only promoted trade
it also formed a cultural bridge between
China, India, Persia, Greece and Rome.
The rebirth of the Indian ‘cotton route’
and China ‘maritime silk route’ are it
seems to be undertaken chiefly in an attempt
to restore these earlier trade linkages
in the hope they will again facilitate
the potential exploitation of trade and investment
they did in the past when they
were still dominated by the ‘Nations’ and
‘States’ of the Indian Ocean Region.
Another distinctive turn of events
related to European mobility is taking
place in Europe. Driven mainly by
Greece it is characterised by that country’s
repeated requests to relevant European
States but particularly Britain to
return their ‘plundered heritage’. I refer
here specifically to the Elgin Marbles61
that Greece claims the UK took without
consent.62 This and similar stories
prompted travel photographer and storyteller
Raphael Alexander Zoren to ask
‘Who owns antiquity’? 63 In his essay on
this topic he notes further that: “If recent
and ancient history is to believed, the
owners of antiquity are First-World Museums
that exist merely because they have
looted invaluable relics from developing
countries in wars, contraband or simply
using treaties and laws that were signed
by corrupt officials who sold out their
own heritage”. Although the situation in
all its complexity is of beyond the scope