The author is a sociologist of international relations. She wrote the book lose the south (Éditions Écosociété, 2020) and edited the collective work Feminist Perspectives in International Relations (PUM, 2022).
In 1916, French fighters too exhausted after the Battle of Verdun allied with the English for the Battle of the Somme against the Germans, one of the deadliest battles of the First World War. More than one million victims, including approximately 443,000 deaths. The battlefield near the French river of the same name became a theater of debris, from which an English chaplain extricated a crucifix which he installed several years later in the Church of All Saints in the village of Tinwell, England. The cross originally came from the French church of Doingt-Flamicourt, south of Lille.
Last week, 106 years later, the crucifix was brought back to Doingt, thanks to the impulse of a young Englishman asking the congregation of All-the-Saints if it would not be more appropriate to return the object of art of 56 centimeters to its original church. All concurred with her opinion, with a church guardian stressing that “where there has been trauma and death, there will be life and community”.
Items recovered
A global movement has led to the transfer of many works to their original owner, such as the American Smithsonian museum, which returned most of its 39 bronze statuettes to Nigeria in 2022, stolen during the colonial period from the Kingdom of Benin. .
Last December, the German Foreign Minister also brought 22 bronze works back to Abuja. The Ethnological Museum of Berlin has hundreds of historical objects from present-day Nigeria, the largest collection after that of the British Museum, London. Thousands of artifacts, such as ivory and metal carvings, were looted by the British in 1897 during a raid from then-Benin city.
In this series of attacks, a bronze rooster named Okukor was stolen to end up on display in a canteen at the University of Cambridge… until students mobilized in 2016 to return the work of art to its former owners. Stolen from the Royal Court of Benin, the work had been offered to Jesus College in Cambridge in 1905 by the father of a student.
In 2019, France returned to the Museum of Black Civilizations in Senegal the sword of Commander Omar Saidou Tall, who reigned during the 19e century over an immense region partly comprising Guinea, Senegal and Mali. The famous anti-colonial leader’s bird’s-beaked weapon would be on long-term loan, but Dakar is demanding full restitution.
Restitution procedures are also operated by Canadian museums for objects stolen from Aboriginal nations and formerly colonized countries. Since 1997, Canadian collection managers have reportedly returned works of art to a dozen countries, including Bolivia, Bulgaria and Syria.
Delayed repatriations
Many art objects looted during colonization are still found, scattered, in various Western museums. In particular, Kenya is calling for the return of two stuffed lions from the Tsavo region, now on display at the Field Museum in Chicago, who allegedly killed and ate dozens of railway workers in the late 19th century.e century.
About 90% of the cultural historical heritage of sub-Saharan Africa is still found in Western establishments, according to the Report on the restitution of African cultural heritage written in 2018 by philosopher Felwine Sarr and art historian Bénédicte Savoy at the request of the French President Emmanuel Macron. France has at least 6910 objects belonging to Mali, 3157 to Benin, 9296 to Chad and 7781 to Madagascar.
The Director General of UNESCO, Amadou-Mahtar M’Bow, had already set up, in 1978, a committee for the return of cultural property to its country of origin. His speech was poignant: “Everything that was taken away, from monuments to crafts, was more than decorations and ornaments… They bear witness to a history, the history of cultures and nations whose tradition they perpetuated. ‘mind. The philosopher Ngūgī Wa Thiong’o has long argued that these genocides of thought and cultural identity are more enduring than those that take life.
Yet, according to a confidential 1978 memo from a group of German museum directors, how the objects arrived in Europe “doesn’t matter”. In France, repatriations also come up against the heritage code of 2004 which lists and protects “all assets […] which are of historical, artistic, archaeological, aesthetic, scientific or technical interest”. The code emphasizes the “inalienable” character of these so-called French possessions.
An argument often used against restitution is that African nations do not have proper facilities to store the works…much like a cake thief who asks the patisserie to buy a better fridge before giving him his desserts. The argument of the universality of art is also sometimes invoked, although these thefts are unidirectional and the heritage code rightly emphasizes the inalienable nature of French heritage.
These colonial dispossessions aimed not only to steal valuable works, but also to culturally destroy conquered peoples. Language, knowledge and culture are the most permanent spoils of war, as well as the most insidious. We are well placed to understand this. Who would we be without our Jean Paul Riopelle or our Alfred Pellan? Or without our 100 steeples?