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After reading a lot of books and articles on the question of restitution of cultural objects stolen or illegally exported, I was gradually coming to the conclusion that the taking of cultural objects of others was mainly practised by european nations or nations of mainly european descendants. I was rather uncomfortable with this conclusion since it goes against my general position that all human beings or at least all nations have the potential to behave along fairly similar lines. I was therefore extremely happy to read in the third edition of Dr Jeanette Greenfield’s excellent book, The Return of Cultural Treasures (Third Edition Cambridge University Press, 2007) that “Sometimes objects have also been peacefully and uncontroversially collected and bought. Such movements are a fascinating reflector of human history. Hardly a nation or tribe has remained untouched by this experience.”(p.xiii)

Greenfield starts with the fascinating history of the Icelandic manuscripts which relates to the return of manuscripts from Denmark to Iceland which had been removed to the later when Iceland was its colony. Iceland had been asking for the return of these manuscripts as far back as the 1830s but it was only in 1945 when Iceland became independent that the demand intensified. The final decision to return the manuscript was made in 1971 after some legal battles including the challenge of the constitutionality of a Danish parliamentary Act in 1961 regarding restitution.

From Iceland, Greenfield turns her attention to what has become the cause célèbre of restitution cases, the Parthenon Marbles/Elgin Marbles. The persistent refusal of the British to return the Parthenon Marbles has surprised most people who have looked at the matter. Greenfield gives us a detailed examination of the arguments on both the Greek and the British sides regarding their rights to the marbles since they were removed some 190 years ago by Lord Elgin from the Parthenon, The Temple of the Greek goddess, Athena, on the Acropolis in Athens.

Some of the arguments and statements made for not return the Parthenon Marbles reminds one of those often heard in connection with African art objects in European and American museums:
A British report noted that it would be “in Greece’s best interests to leave the marbles here - though in all probability Greece would not take that view”. According to the author a memorandum from the British Museum dated 31 December 1940 declared: “The principle of tying works of art to their places of origin is not recognized by Western Nations, and the frequent claims that such as have got out shall be returned has never been admitted and seems to be preposterous”.(p.62)

Many international bodies have called on the British to return the Parthenon Marbles. The UNESCO World Conference on Cultural Policies, Mexico,1982, recommended that the Parthenon Marbles be returned for reincorporation into the architectural structure of which they formed a part. The International Council of Museums (ICOM) in its General Assembly in London 1983 passed a resolution on the “Return of Cultural Property to its Countries of Origin”, pointing out the “moral rights of people to recover significant elements of their heritage dispersed as a consequence of colonial or foreign occupation”. The General Assembly of the United Nations has also passed several resolutions emphasising the rights of people to recover such artefacts but the British refuse to comply.

Instead the British Museum, arranged for a group of directors of the worlds leading museums to issued a Declaration on the Importance and Value of Universal Museums in December 2002. The aim of the Declaration was to establish immunity against all future claims that may be made against those museums holding illegally cultural objects from others. Although the British Museum was the guiding spirit behind the move it cunningly refrained from being a signatory to the Declaration, contrary to their inclusion in the list of signatories by Greenfield. The Declaration was met with a lot of criticism by museum specialists. Moreover, three of the major American museums that signed the Declaration, the Paul Getty Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston have all recently returned stolen cultural objects and thus gone against the main objective of the Declaration, namely, not to return any stolen object.

Greenfield examined the British and other european practice in the question of restitution. The United Kingdom was not the only colonial nation that collected massive number of artefacts from its colonies. France, Belgium, Germany, Holland, Italy, Denmark and Spain did the same. Greenfield seems to have forgotten Portugal. It was the first to establish colonies and the last to liberate its colonies. The colonial exploitation left many countries in a parlous situation and Greenfield is surely right when she declares:

“In Africa, South-East Asia and South Asia, the pattern of exploration, colonization, tribute, and then the punitive removal of treasures was repeated, with the result that many African and Asian nations were deprived often of the central core of their own art, as in the case of Benin, or of invaluable documentary records, as in the case of Sri Lanka”. (p.99)

It seems also that the Catholic Church was not averse to following the colonialist practice. According to the author:

“In 1925 Pope Pius XI organized a missionary exhibition extolling missionary work all over the non-western world. About 100,000 items were sent and after the exhibition only about half were returned. The Pope proclaimed the formation of a new museum, the Pontifico Museu Missionario-Etnologico, so that the ‘dawn of faith among the infidel of today can be compared to the dawn of faith which… illuminated pagan Rome”. (p.100)

The British Museum steadfastly refuses to consider any question of restitution. Sometimes the museum bases its refusal on its alleged universal role and sometimes on grounds that its governing law does not allow it to dispose of objects it holds in trust. Britain became party to the principal convention on the return of cultural property, the 1970 UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property only in 2002. France became party in 1997 and the United States in 1983. The French also refuse on grounds similar to those of the British Museum.

Opinion in the United Kingdom on the issue of restitution seems to be divided along professional lines; academics seem to favour restitution whereas museum directors and officials reject any thought of restitution. Greenfield summarizes some of these views which are interesting.

The director of the City Museums of Bristol, Nicholas Thomas has said:
“It would be disastrous at the present time if the West were to consider returning such material on mainly political grounds; without the guarantee of stability, such return of objects could very likely result in their destruction or use for political purposes...”

The former director of the Science Museum, London, Dr. Neil Cossons has said:
“If the question of restitution becomes a political one then the particular issue of the Sri Lankan treasures was a dangerous one, since it represented the tip of the iceberg. (p110).”

The late Professor Glyn Daniel, Professor of Archaeology at Cambridge has said: “the focus of archaeology is already shifting to the Third World, and new national museums will be developed throughout the Third World; there is no good reason why some of the objects in Western National museums should not be returned to their place of origin, such as the Benin bronzes to Africa or the Rosetta Stone to Cairo.”

Professor Thurstan Shaw, Emeritus Professor of Archaeology, University of Ibadan, Nigeria, has extensive knowledge of matters that relate to West Africa and has listed some of the main points:

“Each case has to be considered on its merits, especially the circumstances of removal from its country of origin; cultural material should not be removed from good security to bad; despite these earlier considerations, in many cases it would be morally right for the holding country to return cultural material to the country of origin. Where objects were obtained by right of conquest at a time when the country of origin was weak (e.g. Benin bronzes, Ashanti gold, Burmese treasures, much from India in the Army Museum),the ex-imperial country in retaining these items is denying part of the independence ‘granted’ to such countries; and this is a neo-colonialist policy. (p.109).”

After examining the arguments for and against restitution that have been made in Britain, Dr. Greenfield examines the following concrete British cases: Ashanti Gold (Ghana), The Benin Bronzes (Nigeria), The Koh-I-Noor Diamond (Pakistan/India), Ranjit Singh’s Throne (India), Bronze Statues, Ivories and Manuscripts (Sri Lanka), the Treasures of Magdala (Ethiopia), The Stone of Cone (Scotland), the Aurel Stein Collection from Tunghuan (China), the Taranaki Panels and Ortiz Case (New Zealand), The London (Pathur) Sivapuram Nataraja Case (India). Alone, the number of cases here examined and the number of countries involved shows the extent to which Britain and other imperialist powers had plundered their colonies and countries of Africa and Asia.

Many people know about the nefarious British attack on Benin in 1897 and the plundering and burning of the city. Thousands of cultural objects - plaques, large metal heads, carved tusks, portrait heads, statues and carved figures were stolen. A British consul insisted on visiting the Oba of Benin although he had been warned that the time he had chosen was inappropriate because of some customary rites. The consul, Captain Phillips, defiantly proceeded with the journey. He and some of his team were killed. The British promptly sent a punitive army which captured the city, stole thousands of art objects, burnt the City, terrorised for six months the inhabitants of the areas around Benin City in search of the Oba whom they later sent into exile where he died. The British kept some of the Benin bronzes and auctioned the rest to the Germans, the Austrians and other european and euro-American public and private institutions. The result is that Nigeria has fewer of the objects than Germany, Britain and the United States.

Nigeria has requested Britain to return these stolen objects but with no success. Instead Nigeria has had to buy some of these Benin bronzes from the British Museum. When Nigeria requested the loan of one ivory mask which was the mascot for the pan-African cultural festival in 1977 FESTAC (Festival of African Arts and Culture) in Lagos, Britain refused using all kinds of excuses. First a high insurance bond of £2 million was requested and later it was alleged the pendant was too fragile to travel.

When a national museum was opened in Benin, an appeal made through the International Council of Museums (ICOM) for all those museums holding Benin objects to return one or two pieces to Benin or give long-term loans so that Benin’s ancestral art could be displayed. The appeal fell on deaf ears and not a single piece was returned or loaned. The Ethnology Museum of Berlin, for example has 482 Benin bronzes. In the end, the Benin Museum was opened with photos of those objects. In discussions on the return of the Benin bronzes, some of the British press had their field day to show their lack of respect for Africans and their contempt for the victims of imperialism: The Nigerians were not to be trusted with the Benin bronzes which they might sell again - Sunday Telegraph, I October 2000; The Art Newspapaper, no.107, October 2000 recommended not to return the artefacts to Nigeria and the Daily Telegraph, 16 September, 2002 reported on how the President of Nigeria, General Gowan “liberated” a bronze for the Queen from the National Museum in Lagos. This was in reference of the illegal act of Yakubu Gowan by arbitrary taking a bronze mask as a gift for the British Queen on occasion of his visit to London. Even after the Queen had been advised of the illegality of the gift she still kept it!

There is a deep seated unwillingness on the part of many europeans to accept that Benin was a highly civilized society as proved by the fine and intricate bronze works that were stolen. Benin society was one that did not need the assistance of British colonialism and imperialism, a process that brutally put an end to a civilization dating back to the 13th Century.

Britain in conjunction with their German and American allies hold to ransom Benin art objects which allow them to produce experts on Benin art but not producers of Benin art. The genius and spirit which produced the civilization of Benin is undoubtedly African in origin and execution.

Less well-known than the British Punitive Expedition to Benin in 1897, was the British Punitive Expedition of 1874 to Kumasi, Ghana, to punish the King of Asante who resisted British attempts to reduce his control over the coastal trade in the former Gold Coast. The Asante were known for their gold and the Golden Stool which the British Governor had disrespectfully requested so that he could sit on. The Golden Stool was said to embody the spirit of the Asante nation and not even the Asante king, the Asantehene, was allowed to sit on it.

With deliberate provocations and other acts of challenge by the British to the political authority of the Asantehene, wars inevitably ensued and gave the British the pretext they had been seeking to attack. In 1874 a British Punitive Expedition Army, under Sir Garnet Wolseley entered Kumasi. According to Greenfield: “The king escaped from Kumasi, but the capital and his palace were taken by Wolseley and ransacked of every valuable object: the king’s sword, pure hammered gold masks in the shape of a ram’s head or that of a man, massive breastplates, coral ornaments, silver plate, swords, ammunition belts, caps mounted in solid gold, knives set in gold and silver, bags of gold dust and nuggets, carved stools mounted in silver, calabashes worked in silver and gold, embroided and woven silk sand numerous other treasures, including in particular a 20-centimetre-high golden head, the largest known gold work from anywhere in Africa, outside Egypt (now in the Wallace Collection in London). The town of Kumasi and the palace were destroyed by fire. Many of the ornaments found their way to the Museum of Mankind, where they still remain; it has been suggested that many of the items came as gifts or by purchase.”(p.119)

Gold mask, 20cm in height removed by the British from Kumasi, Ghana, in 1874 and now in the Wallace Collection, London.

The greed, cruelty, ruthlessness and the hypocrisy of the colonialist powers are amply demonstrated in this description by Greenfield. The name of the Asante king mentioned on p.122 is not “Opoku Wace” but “Opoku Ware”. The Asantehene, Otumfuo Nana Opoku Ware II, reigned from 1970 till his death in 1999.

The Ethiopians have been demanding for years from Britain the return of the various precious imperial and religious treasures stolen by British troops in 1868. These objects include a golden crown owned by the Ethiopian Orthodox Church which is now at the Royal and Albert Museum and hundreds of precious bibles and illustrated manuscripts at the British Library, and at the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge, Manchester, and Edinburgh. Sacred documents and items of religious importance to the Ethiopian Church, some of them 400 years old, are being held by British institutions.

The acquisition tactics here were similar to those employed in Asante and Benin. The British sent an army expedition to release two British envoys held by the Ethiopian Emperor Tewedros in Magdala, the then capital of the Empire. The Emperor was killed, the treasures looted and the city was destroyed.

A few items have been returned to Ethiopia but the bulk of the looted items remain in Britain and there is no sign that they are about to be returned. The arguments of the British for not returning the items are the untenable familiar ones, including the insult about the Ethiopians not being in a position to guarantee the safety and security of the items. The thief requests from the owner of the stolen items a guarantee of their safety and security as a precondition for their return!

The University of Edinburgh issued the following response to a request for the return of Ethiopian manuscripts:

“It is the considered view of the University that conservation of the documents is of primary concern. Since acquiring these documents, the University Library has exercised good curatorial management over the manuscripts in accordance with current best practice. It has a responsibility to ensure that they are properly conserved in the future.

Regardless of the outcome of any further consideration of this matter, the Court has agreed that the University should work in partnership with AFROMET and University of Addis Ababa, to ensure that the manuscripts are accessible to the Ethiopian people and to scholars through appropriate copies, such as microfilms and digital scans, and that these should be made available to the Institute of Ethiopian Studies at the University of Addis Ababa.

The manuscripts form a part of the overall richness and depth of the University's Collections. The University of Edinburgh plays a significant role as one of the world's leading research universities hosting scholars from all over the world and, through the use of leading edge technology, providing scholarly works to researchers. These manuscripts should be viewed within the context of an active research collection where the interaction of these items is important for scholarship both now and in the future.”
University of Edinburgh press release 28 February 05

The arrogance of this answer requires no comment.

Plunder of art and archaeological objects has been going on a frightening scale and with the complicity of many powerful institutions.

Countries in turmoil or subject to invasions are the worst off. Iraq has had most of its very valuable objects, many going back to very ancient civilizations -Sumerian, Akkadian and Babylonian periods- have been plundered. These objects and sites were not protected even though before the invasion, the need for protection was obvious to all and was discussed. Afghanistan has also had its ancient treasures plundered on a wide scale and many of these items are in western european museums.

Greenfield has an interesting chapter on the question of restitution of skulls, bones and artefacts to the peoples the Westerners call the “First People” i.e. Aborigines and the Native Americans. The terminological problems alone indicate the hypocrisies involved here. The author also points out quite correctly that artefacts were valued by the peoples not simply for the material content: “Since the 1980s there has been wider recognition of the rights of indigenous or aboriginal people - First Nations-to reclaim their cultural heritage through retrieving their relics and the bones of their ancestors.

Sometimes the issue of artefacts becomes intermingled with the question of funerary objects, particularly bones. The history of their loss has often been painful. Repatriation involves restoring the collective memory, and in some respects it is as much about reconciling the living and the present with the past as it is about putting the ancestors to rest. These things were not originally treasured for their material worth but for the fact that they emanated from the marrow and the spirit of their owners and their earthly existence. It could be argued that no museum can fully convey that.”(p.300)

The answers that Australian aborigines received when they sought to recover the bones of their ancestors from Western museums were frankly disgraceful. According to Greenfield, the response of English institutions was legalistic while Scottish response was, scientific. In the United States the response was to request that special safekeeping place be considered and accommodation made for preservation and scientific access. The Swedes and the French had similar views. Belgium and Austria opposed any return. The Director of the Natural History of Vienna responded to demand that the Tasmanian Aborigines were extinct!

Greenfield states: “Foreign holding institutions cannot reasonably expect to retain such indigenous human remains in perpetuity”. (p.337)

Europeans and their museums have for a long time displayed Africans as if they were not human beings. Indeed, in most western countries Africans were paraded like animals in circus, in Britain, France and Germany in the so-called “Peoples shows”. The worst example of this display, mentioned by Greenfield, is the case of Saartjie Baartman, a Khoisan lady, who because of her unsual body shape was brought by a British ship surgeon to England to be exploited as a sexual freak and was paraded all over Europe and was mockingly named the “Hottentot Venus”.

After her death, French scientists, in order to establish European racial superiority, made a mould of her body, genitals and all and displayed it in the Paris Museum of Mankind until 1974. Former Azania (South African) President Nelson Mandela intervened for her return and President Mitterrand gave his promise and the body was returned to South Africa. The French National Assembly authorised her repatriation in 2002. A funeral ceremony was held for her to wipe out the recollection of her awful sojourn among europeans and to restore the dignity of her people. (p.340)

The european habit of massacring Africans in the colonial period and in apartheid Azania (South Africa), yielded more skulls, bones and skeletons for european scientists and anthropologists. The bones of thousands of Hereros, Namas, and many others are still in europe, especially in the Ethnologische Museum Berlin which later transferred them to the Naturhistorische Museum Berlin and to the Naturhistorische Museum Vienna.

Has the time not come for all such museums to open their secret rooms and tell us how many of these bones are still there and possibly identify their sources? Many of the persons who disappeared under colonial rule have still not been accounted for.

Greenfield’s last chapter, entitled “Homecomings: real and virtual” enumerates many instances of return of cultural objects to their countries of origin. The author however, ends her excellent book, by stating that: “Perhaps the notion that some of the major cultural treasures of the world should be returned to the people to whom they matter most is put into true perspective by the words of the nineteenth-century American writer Nathaniel Hawthorn.”

Hawthorne observed in 1856 after visiting the British Museum that:
“The present is too much burdened with the past. We have not time, in our early existence, to appreciate what is warm with life, and immediately around us; yet we heap up all these old shells out of which human life has long emerged, casting them off forever. I do not see how future ages are to stagger onward under all this dead weight, with the additions that will be continually made to it”. (p.443)

If what Greenfield intends with this citation is to say that the immense accumulation of objects in the British Museum and similar museums is too much for the needs of the countries they serve, then I think most of us will agree. If on the other hand, the intention is to underline the relative unimportance of the return of cultural objects (which I doubt very much) then we would have to disagree.

So is stealing of other peoples cultural object is a specifically european cultural heritage or universal?

Well although it is known that Japan has taken cultural objects from Korea and China, there are no known cases of African States having forcibly or illegally taken european cultural objects and refusing to return them to their countries of origin. Similarly, no Asian countries are known to have illegally taken european, African or Latin American cultural objects. Nor are there any intra African disputes in this area.

The ability to display stolen art works of others, without compunction or shame or regret, without any expression of apology or condolences for those whose lives or livelihood may have been destroyed in the acquisition, is prevalent across europe.

One cannot imagine Ghanaians or Nigerians displaying, on a large scale, stolen British or German artworks in Accra or Lagos, which the owners want back, and the Ghanaians and Nigerians feeling that they are doing humanity a great service and expecting to be congratulated or congratulating themselves on this “achievement”. The reaction of the African public to this open display of stolen property would prevent the exhibition lasting for long.

There are simply no precedents or traditions in our public morality for such exhibitions.

The overwhelming evidence so far available would tend to support the conclusion that systematic and large scale stealing or plundering of the cultural objects of others and refusing to return them has been so far practised primarily by europeans and States controlled by people of european culture.