NIGERIA IS MOVING closer to securing the return of some of its most treasured cultural artefacts. The Benin bronzes, sculptures that once decorated the royal palace of the Kingdom of Benin, now in south-eastern Nigeria, were looted by British forces in 1897, along with thousands of other precious items. They are now scattered across more than 160 museums and countless private collections, mostly in the West. In March a German official travelled to Nigeria to discuss the return of some of the bronzes held in Berlin. The University of Aberdeen, in Scotland, has promised to return one of the bronzes within weeks. And this month the Horniman Museum in London announced it will consider returning its pieces. Why are they giving back the artefacts, and how far will the process of restitution go?
Some of the Benin bronzes lie in London, behind thick vitrine glass in room 25 of the British Museum’s Africa Galleries. An inscription describes how the items came to be in the museum’s collection. It has changed over the years. It used to tell of imperial bravery against bush savages; now it tells a story of colonial violence and expansion. At the end of the 19th century British forces razed the city of Benin to the ground, demolishing the mud-walled compounds, as well as hundreds of houses and ceremonial buildings. On the former palace grounds, officers built a golf course. Then they seized thousands of royal and sacred objects to take home with them. The bronzes were initially exhibited to show the vast reach of the empire. Today institutions such as the British Museum find themselves at an impasse, struggling to come to terms with their colonial legacy, taking some steps to return artefacts but not wanting to lose their prized collections.
Restitution also faces legal obstacles. Many Western museums are prohibited from disposing of their collections. In France, for example, all public collections are considered inalienable, making it impossible to remove even the smallest piece, whether to sell it or, more altruistically, to return it. The British Museum Act, a law from 1963, prevents the museum in London from doing the same. The law does set out limited exceptions (such as if the object is a duplicate), but returning the loot of empire is not one of them.
Still, there is precedent for governments relaxing such restrictions. In 1998, 44 countries agreed to the “Washington Principles of Nazi-confiscated art”, a pact to identify and return works stolen during the Third Reich. When Britain’s High Court ruled in 2005 that British Museum trustees could not return four drawings by old masters stolen by Nazis from a private collection in Czechoslovakia in 1939, the government passed a law to deal with the obvious injustice. Since 2009 trustees of various museums (including the British Museum) have had specific authority to return property stolen during the Nazi era back to its Jewish owners or their heirs.
Similar legislation could ensure the return of colonial-era artefacts. France offers an example. As the first president born after the colonial period, Emmanuel Macron has been more willing than his predecessors to consider restitution. He commissioned a report in 2017 which recommended the complete transfer of property to their countries of origin rather than long-term loans (as some museums have proposed). In November 2020, a new law was passed to allow the return of 27 artefacts to former colonies. Hermann Parzinger, the president of the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, a government body that oversees 27 German museums, has called for international guidelines akin to the Washington Principles to help museums identify and return colonial heritage.
But this is unlikely to happen soon, especially in Britain. “Colonial history is still a touchy subject in this country, and you would need someone to put forward a test case,” says Alice Procter, an art historian and author. According to Ms Procter, one reason that British lawmakers made an exception for Holocaust-era artefacts is the knowledge that Britain had no responsibility for the atrocities. But when it comes to the Benin bronzes, “the historical violence being compensated for is a British act, not a German one,” making restitution a more delicate issue. Germany faces similar questions. In 2018 its government returned to Namibia the skulls of Herero and Nama people, whom German soldiers sought to wipe out after their rebellion in what was then German South West Africa. Indigenous groups criticised the German government for dragging its feet over the return, and over offering an apology. And the Natural History Museum in Berlin has been dodging requests from the Tanzanian government for years, asking for the return of a 39ft-long (13m) dinosaur skeleton discovered in the early 1900s by German scientists.
Legal hurdles may frustrate restitution requests, but politicians and institutions have shown a clear desire to defuse the colonial timebombs sitting in their public collections. Some governments, such as those of Germany and France, are now backing the return of part of their holdings. Others, such as Britain’s, will probably continue to “retain and explain” controversial artefacts instead, even though the vast majority are not on public display. The British Museum, for example, has 900 Benin bronzes and displays fewer than 100 in its permanent collection.
Correction (April 23rd): A previous version of this article said that the majority of the artefacts from Benin held by the British Museum are not accessible to view. They are, but they are not on public display. Sorry.
