Colonial treasures needn’t spur guilt
European powers should ask for better African governance before agreeing to discuss artefacts. By Roger Boyes.
King Leopold II of the Belgians supplemented his income by running the Congo as a private colony. African workers were required to hack down vines and cover themselves with rubber latex, rubber having become highly profitable in rapidly industrialising late-19th century Europe. They would then have to painfully chip it off. White administrators or their henchmen killed villagers who refused to co-operate.
Welcome, then, to the house that Leopold built. Just outside Brussels, the last unreconstructed museum of the European colonial era has reopened after a makeover. The Africa Museum is a vast, palatial building erected in 1898 to honour the king’s continuing contribution to the civilising of the Dark Continent.
His initials are engraved 54 times around the walls and even after a restoration that was supposed to correct the triumphalist parade of Belgian colonialism the letters are still in place, protected by a conservation order. So too are gilded statues with titles like ‘‘Belgium Brings Security to Congo’’.
The new-look museum is supposed to address the atrocities committed under Belgian rule but also to celebrate the progress made since. But the process of tugging the place into the 21st century has made neither the Belgians nor the Congolese happy.
Instead it highlights the extraordinary tension that still dogs the colonial debate. Across Africa and Asia there are demands on European states, Britain, France and Belgium to the fore, that looted artefacts be returned. The argument of those championing restitution is that the former colonies have been robbed twice: first, of their natural resources, and then of their cultural heritage.
The return of the objects in Belgium’s Africa Museum, says Aime Mpane, a Congolese artist whose sculpture is now on display there, is ‘‘a way to recover our identity and stolen memories’’. Many Belgians, though, see themselves as being put in the dock for what they still view as a ‘‘civilising’’ mission in Africa. King Philippe’s decision to pull out of the opening ceremony this month was welcomed by many of his fellow Belgians.
France too has woken up to the problem of the colonial discourse. President Macron commissioned a report on the artefacts taken from subSaharan Africa and broadly follows its recommendations by urging their return. He sees it as fortifying links with Francophone Africa but also as a way of addressing the roots of racism.
Macron has been looking for a way to solve a political riddle: why do so many sub-Saharan migrants risk their lives to cross the sea to Europe and end up hating it? How can across-theboard government policies break a pattern of distrust?
His offer to return 26 Benin bronze pieces to Nigeria is only a start; France has 90,000 more such works from sub-Saharan Africa. Britain too has brokered a deal in which some of the bestknown bronzes will return once a Benin Royal Museum has been constructed to house them.
The colonial backstory is grim: a so-called punitive expedition set out in 1897 to destroy the ancient Benin city and its palace. The looted plaques and statues were auctioned off to defray the costs of the military operation. Some wound up in the British Museum, just as the booty from another expedition to Abyssinia found its way to the Victoria and Albert, and the British Library.
There’s a powerful argument that works languishing in European storerooms should be sent back to the modern postcolonial states. Not much of Africa’s history is written down; its art serves an important purpose in forging links between the young and their cultural past. And it’s not just Egyptians who will tell you that the Sphinx’s beard belongs not in the British Museum but on the Sphinx’s chin.
There is, though, a question of what happens next. Returning art has to be more than an attempt to appease guilt and settle unpaid bills. There is a broader responsibility to cultural memory as a whole.
Should democratic accountability not be part of any restitution process? And should not Western states be advising the new generation of museum curators how best to preserve these ancient relics, how to display them to best effect? Or is that just another brand of softpower imperialism?
The best outcome is to allow art treasures to be lent to the countries of origin and to start a proper, active dialogue between Europe and Africa about their shared colonial heritage.
Some politically correct campaigners seem to believe colonialism can only be viewed through the prism of former master and freed slave, exploiter and exploited, and that Western guilt is the starting point for any analysis. They’re wrong. While African rulers are right to insist their modern states be taken seriously, the West too is surely right to say that African governance must improve if leaders hope to stir national pride among their young people.
Somewhere in between we can meet and have the kind of informed conversation that should be distinguishing 21stcentury international relations. Maybe it should be conducted by museum curators and historians rather than by politicians.