320 pages. Published August 20, 2024 by Pluto Press. Non-fiction.
If many museums today pretend to have embarked on a decolonial turn in their practice and in the ways they consider their collections, it is essential to remember that ethnographic museums per se are colonial institutions.
Sela K. Adjei and Yann LeGall, in the Introduction
Colonial looting’s been in the news in recent years. In 2017, Emmanuel Macron, president of France, commissioned a report from Bénédicte Savoy and Felwine Sarr, which became known as The Restitution of African Cultural Heritage. Toward a New Relational Ethics. It examined the status quo regarding publicly-owned and disputed African artefacts, and suggested means by which they might be returned. How was this loot acquired? Mostly through outright theft and coercion. Western powers would have you believe otherwise, sometimes reluctantly providing ‘certificates of provenance’; but this, a German example:
The famous German art dealership J.F.G. Umlauff—to which more than 300 entries in the collection of the British Museum and more than 1,000 at the Ethnological Museum in Berlin can be linked—and its director Heinrich Umlauff conceded in a catalogue showcasing their Cameroonian collection sent in 1914 to museums across the world: If you consider the rich material of idols, masks, carvings, drums, weapons, household utensils, etc., you might be led to believe that such things are easy to obtain. In reality, the situation is quite different. [Africans] are very attached to their things and especially to old, inherited family pieces. In normal circumstances, they can hardly be persuaded to give away …old masks and sacred objects. …Only in times of war or in the case of great expeditions are conditions more favourable, when power exerts a certain pressure.
It’s been a wonderful year of reading about looted heritage and museums (see endnotes); this is the third book I’ve been privileged to read on the subject. Adjei and LeGall have collected the thoughts—sometimes in essay, other times in conversation—of African historians, activists, community leaders and experts, with accompanying illustrations by Chigozie Obi, Assil Diab, Sena Dede and El Carna Mpesum, along with photographs.
Fifteen Colonial Thefts is a guide to some of the most important of these looted artefacts, and wants to reframe the restitution question, to present the arguments of the wronged parties: Africans. These objects were taken—this loot was pilfered—in asymmetrical wars, mostly in the nineteenth century (examples: Algiers in 1830, Magdala in 1868, Kumasi in 1878, Ségou in 1890, Abomey in 1892, Benin City in 1897 and Tibati in 1898, mentioned in the Sarr-Savoy report). Clearly, the continued withholding of this material heritage from the communities they belong to is continued asymmetrical warfare and a continued show of colonial force and power, a hundred or two hundred years later.
In a wonderful foreword, Peju Layiwola introduces the subject of colonial looting, explains the current situation, and pulls together this collection of thoughts and arguments by various writers. The introduction to the volume is from editors Sela K. Adjei and Yann LeGall. Fifteen Colonial Thefts is divided into three parts: The Battlefield, The Royal Palace, and The Sacred, covering different aspects of looted heritage. Some examples of discussions in the volume: Felwine Sarr and Bénédicte Savoy on Samori Touré’s ‘treasure’; Fergus Nicoll and Osman Nusairi on the Sudanese Mahdi’s war banners; Mwelela Cele and Yann LeGall on IziHlangu, shields taken after the Anglo-Zulu war; Nii Kwate Owoo on Asante royal regalia; Godfrey B .Tangwa and Wan wo Layir on Ngonnso, and Didier Houénoudé and Gaëlle Beaujean on the bocio of the Three Danxomè Kings:
Some of these looted assets were even potent members of African societies endowed with agency, like the bocio of the kings of Danxomè or Chief Ne Kuko’s nkisi nkonde, who were both consulted for political matters.
The Tabots from Maqdala, Kwasio ancestor guardian figures from southern Cameroon, and Mbuya Nehanda’s remains are some of the sacred heritage discussed in the book. The whereabouts of Nehanda’s remains are a mystery from my own country, and of particular interest to me. Nehanda was an early freedom fighter and leader, an important medium of the Shona people. When she was captured by colonial authorities and hanged on April 28, 1898, her remains went missing, at least in the public record—’no bones, and no archives,’ as noted in Fifteen Colonial Thefts.
There are theories: one, by Paul Hubbard, a local historian, is that she was buried in Salisbury, near the site of her hanging. Other historians, like Njabulo Chipangura, Farai Chabata and Lennon Mhishi, in their essay on the subject here, believe her bones were taken to the United Kingdom as war trophies, although they acknowledge speculation that her bones may have been buried in Harare, while her skull was removed to England. However, no remains have ever been located at prominent institutions in the United Kingdom: they are (apparently) not at the Natural History Museum in London, the British Museum, Cambridge University’s Duckworth Laboratory, the Pitt Rivers Museum at Oxford University, or the Manchester University Museum. Where are they? No one knows, yet.
As Fifteen Colonial Thefts shows, colonial violence is still and always with us. Are apologies enough? German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier apologised in Songea, Tanzania, on November 1, 2023, for German colonial atrocities there. (The Namibian genocide question, however, remains open.) Emmanuel Macron, Charles Windsor, and Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo have also apologised (in the latter’s case, in 2022 specifically for Belgian involvement in the death of Patrice Lumumba, and for the ‘dark passages’ of his country’s history). And yet, most of the looted heritage remains in Western museums, on display and in basements.
Many thanks to Pluto Press and to Edelweiss for early access to a DRC.
Affiliate link: Support independent bookshops and my writing by ordering it from Bookshop here.
Related:
- Alírio Karina (2022) Against and beyond the Museum, Third Text, 36:6, 651-662, DOI: 10.1080/09528822.2022.2145049. Against and beyond the Museum: Third Text: Vol 36 , No 6 – Get Access
- Ghosts of the British Museum: A True Story of Colonial Loot and Restless Objects x Noah Angell
- A Programme of Absolute Disorder: Decolonising the Museum x Françoise Vergès (DRC)
Harare Review of Books 
Leave a comment