00:00So it's a very shocking event. This is a collection of national and international significance.
00:05It includes irreplaceable historical material from all around the world. It was collected
00:11as a unique collection really 20 or 30 years ago and it contains material from lots of
00:18different public institutions and private individuals. So really it's something quite
00:22unique and it's something that's a huge value if you want to understand the history of the
00:27British Empire, British colonialism, the history of many African and Asian countries in the
00:31Pacific so it really is quite a shocking development. These are items which I'm not
00:37sure the resale value of many of them is all that great but the cultural value of these items and
00:45the fact that they are unique and irreplaceable and that they form part of collections built up by
00:51major institutions like what was called the Colonial Institute, the Commonwealth Institute in London
00:56which was there to promote public understanding of empire. That in itself is something that
01:02scholars study and think about you know how these collections were used in the past for imperial
01:08purposes. If we lose that we lose our ability to understand large areas of the imperial history
01:14of Britain but also the colonial history of many countries in Africa and Asia and the Pacific.
01:20It's a real loss to our understanding of a really important aspect of the past if those
01:24collections aren't safeguarded.
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