Artefacts set to return to Africa

NEARLY every Western European capital has a massive, monolithic museum designed to project an image of national might and instil ordinary citizens with patriotic pride through expansive collections that stretch across time and place.

In the seats of former colonial powers, these caverns of culture also reflect contested periods of history. They feature items acquired in dubious circumstances or plundered outright. And although the empires have long since collapsed, the objects have remained.

Now, after decades of silence and even obfuscation on the part of many European governments, some of the continent’s leading cultural institutions are beginning to re-evaluate colonial-era artefacts and, in some cases, discuss returning them to their countries of origin – under certain terms.

The accelerated push began with French President Emmanuel Macron, who proclaimed while in Burkina Faso in November that France would work towards the “temporary or permanent restitution of African heritage to Africa”.

As recently as March 2017, France had rejected efforts by Benin to reclaim thousands of objects looted in the 1890s from what was then the Kingdom of Dahomey.

“The goods you mention have been integrated for a long time, some for more than a century, into the public assets of the French state,” the government insisted in a communique obtained by France’s Libération newspaper. “Their restitution is not possible.”

But Macron, elected in May 2017, signalled a shift. “I cannot accept that a large part of cultural heritage from several African countries is in France,” he said. “African heritage cannot just be in European private collections and museums.”

There is similar discomfort within Britain. In April the Victoria and Albert Museum staged an exhibit of objects taken by the British Army from Ethiopia in 1868. “Even at the time, this episode was regarded as a shameful one,” the museum noted.