European colonizers in Africa during the 19th and early 20th centuries often portrayed themselves as pious Christians on a “civilizing mission,” yet their actions starkly contradicted the tenets of the faith they professed. Christianity teaches moral principles like “Thou shalt not steal” and respect for others’ property, but colonial expeditions routinely violated these commandments on a grand scale. Under the banner of empire and evangelism, colonial powers pillaged countless cultural treasures from African societies – a brazen theft that ignored the very Christian morals of honesty and justice they claimed to uphold. This hypocrisy was not lost even at the time. For instance, British forces in Nigeria labeled the resisting Chibok people as a “small… tribe of savages” in 1907, justifying a brutal punitive raid, yet those same forces collected the Chibok’s arrows and spears as trophies and shipped them to London museums. The colonizers’ rhetoric dehumanized Africans as “uncivilized,” but their eagerness to seize African artifacts reveals a deep admiration – or at least covetous desire – for the sophisticated artistry and culture those artifacts embodied.

Such contradictions expose the moral bankruptcy at the heart of colonialism. On Sunday mornings, colonial administrators and military officers might have attended church, praying to a God of righteousness, only to spend Monday to Saturday looting African palaces, temples, and homes. They justified their conquests as bringing “Christian civilization” to Africa, yet in practice they committed what can only be described as grand larceny and cultural vandalism. The Bible these imperialists preached from condemned theft and greed, but colonial ideology found ways to rationalize plunder as a noble enterprise. In their minds, because they viewed African societies as “heathen” or backward, normal moral rules supposedly did not apply. This paternalistic mindset allowed them to wink at sins of theft and violence that their own religion unequivocally forbids. The result was a wide-scale despoliation of African heritage: mission houses and military forts overflowing with carvings, bronzes, ivories, manuscripts, and other treasures ripped from altars and ancestral shrines across the continent. The very Christians who should have protected the weak instead became, in Africa, like the money-changers in the temple – exploiters that any true Christ would have cast out for their hypocrisy.

‘Uncivilized’ Art Coveted by the ‘Civilized’ Thief

European colonial powers frequently denigrated African cultures as primitive or uncivilized while simultaneously swooning over the exquisite arts those cultures produced. This blatant hypocrisy is illustrated by how fervently Europeans collected and exhibited African art. If African societies were truly devoid of civilization as the colonizers claimed, how could they produce works of such beauty and technical skill that European museums scrambled to acquire them? In reality, the rich artistic heritage of Africa completely undermined colonial notions of African inferiority – a truth so inconvenient that some Europeans literally could not believe what they saw. When German ethnographer Leo Frobenius encountered the magnificent bronze sculptures of Ife (in what is now Nigeria) in 1910, he refused to credit Africans for the artistry. Instead, he absurdly theorized the bronzes were relics of Atlantis, declaring that the local African custodians – whom he called “degenerate and feeble-minded” – could not possibly be the heirs to such “marvellous beauty”. Frobenius’s racist disbelief speaks volumes: European “experts” were enamored enough by African art to steal it, yet their prejudice made them deny that Africans themselves were the skilled creators. Western scholars in the 19th century similarly speculated that the celebrated Benin Bronzes must have been taught or made by outsiders, erroneously attributing Benin’s metallurgy to Portuguese influence – a claim now thoroughly debunked. The truth is that African civilizations long perfected these arts independently; the very existence of these artifacts is prima facie evidence of complex societies with refined knowledge and creativity.

The contradiction was further heightened by European artists’ and collectors’ fascination with African art in the early 20th century. While colonial officials derided African cultures in official reports, avant-garde European artists like Picasso quietly drew inspiration from African masks and sculptures. Even as the imperial narrative dismissed Africa’s achievements, European taste-making was being revolutionized by African aesthetics – a debt seldom acknowledged at the time. The colonizers thus wanted it both ways: to claim Africans were uncivilized, while profiting intellectually, aesthetically, and financially from African genius. This hypocrisy is as vivid as the gleam of a looted ivory tusk or the intricate casting of a bronze plaque pried off an African palace wall. Every artifact stolen contradicted the lie of the “savage.” Each bronze, terracotta, or textile testified to a skilled artist and a rich culture, forcing colonizers into mental gymnastics – either denying African authorship, or admitting its existence but downplaying its significance. The theft of African art was not only a physical plunder but an assault on African identity: Europeans took the tangible proof of African civilization and locked it in glass cases labeled as the triumphs of “universal” (read: European-dominated) culture. As we shall see through specific examples, these artifacts and their histories utterly refute the myth that Africa had no civilization. On the contrary, the colonizers’ covetous behavior shows they recognized value and sophistication when they saw it – they just refused to publicly acknowledge African people as equals to the task. This deep hypocrisy set the stage for one of history’s great cultural crimes: the systematic pillaging of African art during the colonial era.

Case Studies of Looted African Heritage

The Benin Bronzes: Plunder of a Kingdom

Perhaps the most infamous example of colonial art theft is the case of the Benin Bronzes. These are a spectacular collection of brass and bronze plaques and sculptures that once adorned the royal palace of the Kingdom of Benin (in present-day Edo State, Nigeria). For centuries, the people of Benin City produced these artworks using sophisticated lost-wax casting techniques, creating detailed depictions of their obas (kings), warriors, and rituals. In 1897, this advanced civilization met with brutal colonial violence. A British military force launched what was officially called a “punitive expedition” against Benin City, ostensibly to avenge an earlier incident, but in reality to solidify British imperial control and seize the kingdom’s resources. British troops, under Admiral Sir Henry Rawson, invaded and sacked Benin City, burning the palace and massacring inhabitants. In the orgy of looting that followed, they carted off an estimated 3,000 to 5,000 pieces of royal art – including palace plaques, altarpiece brass heads, carved ivory tusks, and other treasures. The scale of theft was staggering. Around 200 of these pieces were sent to the British Museum in London as spoils for the Empire, while the rest were auctioned off to museums and collectors across Europe and North America to pay for the costs of the invasion. This haul became known as the Benin Bronzes, today a byword for colonial plunder.

The irony could not be more pronounced: British officers, many likely church-going men, ignored any pangs of conscience about stealing wholesale from a kingdom they had just destroyed. They labeled their campaign a mission of “punishment” against a supposedly barbarous African king, yet it was the British who violated the commandment “thou shalt not covet” on an imperial scale. The stolen Benin artworks quickly became star exhibits in Western museums, provoking admiration and disbelief at their craftsmanship. European audiences in 1897 were astonished that “primitive” Africans had produced art so intricate – a reaction that sadly reflected Europe’s racist underestimation of African capabilities. One late-19th-century British museum curator even suggested the bronzes were made with European help, unable to fathom their true origin. In reality, these masterpieces were unmistakably African, embodiments of a highly organized court culture. The tragedy is that rather than serving as proud evidence of African civilization on African soil, they were used to decorate the halls of colonizers. The British Museum alone today holds about 900 of the Benin artifacts in its collection – the single largest hoard in the world – and for decades resisted calls for their return. Other major stashes ended up in Germany (for example, the Ethnological Museum of Berlin held over 500 pieces) and in France, the US, and elsewhere. The British Museum’s labels for the Benin Bronzes long failed to mention the violent context of their acquisition. Visitors would marvel at the intricate plaques portraying oba kings and leopards, usually without learning that British soldiers literally pried those very plaques off the charred pillars of a devastated palace.

The Benin Bronzes are more than art objects – they carry the spirit and history of a people. As a Nigerian museum official recently put it, these bronzes are “embodiments of the spirit and identity” of their community. Their theft was thus a spiritual and cultural violation as much as a material one. Yet colonial collectors had the audacity to accuse Africans of being too “uncivilized” to appreciate such works. In truth, it was the people of Benin who had faithfully preserved them on royal altars for centuries until foreigners arrived. As one commentator acidly noted, “Had Africans not preserved their cultural objects, there would have been none for the Europeans to loot or steal when they came to the continent.”. The Benin Bronzes were safe in the Oba’s palace – cleaned, honored, and ritually maintained – up until the day Christian imperialists broke down the palace walls and plundered them. This fact alone explodes the myth that Africans were incapable of preserving their heritage. Indeed, when some of these bronzes were finally returned recently, the descendants of the original owners welcomed them with pride and care, proving that the capacity to cherish this art never diminished in its homeland. In 2025, in a milestone of long-delayed justice, the Netherlands returned 119 Benin Bronzes to Nigeria, more than 120 years after they had been stolen during the colonial era. At the handover ceremony in Lagos, Nigerian officials affirmed that all they ask is to be treated with “fairness, dignity and respect”. The pieces were displayed proudly, and plans made for many to reside once again with the Oba of Benin – a symbolic homecoming of history. The returning of these sculptures after so long highlights both the grievousness of their initial theft and the hypocrisy of the excuses that kept them abroad for a century.

Royal Treasures of Ashanti and Dahomey: War Loot

The Kingdom of Benin was not the only African polity to suffer looting disguised as warfare. Across West Africa, European powers waged wars that doubled as grand thefts of art and treasure. In Ashanti (Asante) – in what is now Ghana – the British fought a series of campaigns between 1874 and 1900, during which they seized vast amounts of gold regalia and sacred objects from the Ashanti royal palace in Kumasi. The Ashanti Empire’s mastery of gold craftsmanship was renowned, and the British coveted these riches. After the 1874 Anglo-Ashanti war, British troops looted gold artifacts, royal ceremonial swords, golden masks, and other items; many were taken to Britain as “gifts” for Queen Victoria or sold to museums. One object, an Asante gold “soul” pendant, ended up in London’s Victoria & Albert Museum after being sold by British officers in the late 19th century. Yet when the Ashanti later requested their sacred gold items back, they were met with mockery. In 1974, the Asante royal family formally petitioned the UK to return looted treasures; a British House of Lords debate ensued, where one peer infamously sneered, “Would it not be possible to keep the booty and return the souls?”. This callous remark – essentially proposing Britain keep stolen artifacts while consoling Ghanaians with spiritual platitudes – lays bare the racist contempt underlying the refusal. Another Lords member warned that giving back war booty could lead to a “strip-tease” unraveling of British museum collections. Such statements show how deeply colonial officials believed in their entitlement to others’ heritage, and how they trivialized African spiritual beliefs. Despite this intransigence, pressure for restitution has continued. Ghana still presses for the Golden Stool of Ashanti, the paramount symbol of the Ashanti nation, which British troops attempted to seize in 1900 and which remains a point of national pride and contention (the original Golden Stool was hidden and never taken, but related royal treasures were). The Ashanti example demonstrates that what colonizers called “spoils of war” were often the very heart of a people’s culture – and prying them away was a wound that has never fully healed.

France, meanwhile, carried out its own cultural pillage in Dahomey (present-day Republic of Benin) and elsewhere. In 1892, French colonial forces under General Alfred Dodds invaded the Kingdom of Dahomey. After defeating King Behanzin, the French troops ransacked the palaces of Abomey, seizing royal scepters, thrones, statues, and sacred venerated items. Twenty-six of these treasures – including royal thrones and ceremonial statues from Abomey – ended up in French museums, notably the Musée du quai Branly in Paris. For over a century, these items sat in Paris, far from the communities that created them. The people of Dahomey (now Benin) repeatedly asked for their return, to little avail. It was only in 2021 that France, under President Emmanuel Macron, finally agreed to hand back those 26 artifacts as a gesture of restitution. In a ceremony in Paris, Benin’s President Patrice Talon viewed the reclaimed objects – among them the royal throne of Dahomey – and stated emotionally, “This is our soul, Mr. President”. His words underline how profoundly these artworks embody identity and history: they are not mere decorations, but the soul of a people. The return of the Dahomey pieces was hailed as “historic” and long overdue. Yet Talon also pointed out that France still held many other important pieces of his country’s heritage, asking how his enthusiasm could be “complete” when so much remained in foreign hands. In fact, a report commissioned by Macron acknowledged that French museums hold around 90,000 African objects, about 70,000 of them in the Quai Branly alone. These astonishing numbers reflect how deeply France’s cultural institutions have benefited from colonial loot. The 26 items returned are but a drop in the bucket of France’s overall holdings, but their restitution set a precedent that may pave the way for more. France even had to pass special legislation in 2020 to allow exceptions to its museum laws, which normally forbid deaccessioning of state property, just to enable the return of those artifacts to Benin and to Senegal. The legal hurdle itself underscores how institutionalized the keeping of colonial spoils had become in Europe – to the point that national laws had to be rewritten to restore stolen property to its rightful owners.

These examples from West Africa show a clear pattern: European powers waged wars of conquest and at the same time cherry-picked the cultural fruits of the societies they vanquished. They justified their actions with a self-serving logic: since they “won” the war, they felt entitled to the spoils, be it land, gold, or art. But in many cases, the wars themselves were engineered or provoked by the colonizers (such as Britain’s pretext for attacking Benin City, or France’s expansionist push into Dahomey). Thus the claim of legitimate prize-taking is highly suspect – these were aggressions followed by looting. What’s more, the items taken were not military assets or state insignia alone; they included religious and ancestral objects of deep societal importance. Stripping them away was an attempt to break the spirit of the colonized, to demonstrate dominance, and to profit in the process. The Christian colonial narrative tried to frame these African societies as needing enlightenment, yet it was often the colonial soldiers who behaved like barbarians – torching palaces, desecrating holy sites, and shipping home crates of “exotic” art to adorn European drawing rooms. The hypocrisy was glaring: as Dahomean and Ashanti communities watched their patrimony hauled off to Europe, they surely wondered what sort of civilization would inflict such cultural humiliation on others while professing moral superiority.

Ancient Sculptures and Manuscripts on the Auction Block

Beyond the loot of war, European colonization also facilitated the wholesale export – often illicit – of ancient African artworks that colonial officials discovered (or simply dug up) during their occupation. One notable example is the Nok sculptures of Nigeria. The Nok culture, which flourished in central Nigeria between roughly 1000 BC and 500 AD, produced distinctive terracotta figurines – some of the oldest known sculptures in sub-Saharan Africa. These artifacts lay buried until uncovered by accident in the 20th century. Colonial mining activities first brought Nok terracottas to light in the 1920s and 1940s, and some early finds were placed in Nigerian museums like the one in Jos. However, lack of strong protections under colonial rule led to increasing looting of Nok sites, especially from the 1970s onwards. As Nigeria transitioned out of colonialism, a thriving international black market for Nok antiquities emerged. European and American dealers realized there was money to be made from these enigmatic figurines, and they spurred local looters to dig them up illegally. By the 1990s, organized trafficking networks were smuggling large numbers of Nok sculptures out through neighboring countries (like Togo and Benin) into Europe. Many genuine Nok pieces – along with countless fakes – flooded the art market during this period, ending up in private collections and even respectable museums that turned a blind eye to provenance. For instance, it has been noted that some Nok terracotta figures reached prominent European museums such as the Louvre and the Musée du quai Branly in Paris, despite laws against exporting Nigeria’s antiquities. The presence of a “Looted Nigerian Nok sculpture in the Louvre” was explicitly highlighted by researchers and advocates, drawing attention to the ongoing problem of post-colonial plunder to satisfy Western collectors. This continued trade shows a kind of neo-colonial appetite for African artifacts – even after independence, African nations have struggled to keep their heritage from being siphoned abroad under the old stereotypes (dealers often assume Africans won’t appreciate or guard these artifacts, echoing colonial-era tropes).

Similar stories can be told of other ancient African arts. The Kingdom of Ife’s exquisite bronze and copper heads (mentioned earlier with Frobenius) were thankfully mostly preserved in Nigeria, but not before a few were whisked to Europe. Frobenius himself stole several Ife terracotta heads during his 1910 expedition; he was caught and tried by the British colonial government in Nigeria for looting, yet by 1927 at least six of those heads ended up in the British Museum. They remain there today, far from the shrines of Ife. Another case involves the Kingdom of Mali and the Inland Niger Delta: French colonial adventurers and later unscrupulous diggers looted ancient funerary statues and jewelry from sites like Djenné and Timbuktu, many of which found their way to European galleries. Indeed, experts estimate that 85% to 90% of African cultural artifacts are held outside Africa today – a staggering proportion that speaks to centuries of extraction, from colonial conquests to illicit looting rings. Whole swathes of African history have been scattered across the globe, sometimes with key pieces surfacing in auction catalogs rather than archaeological reports. UNESCO’s 1970 Convention attempted to stem this tide by prohibiting illicit export of antiquities, but the damage to African heritage was already extensive. The ICOM Red List for Africa has warned that looting of archaeological sites has caused “irreparable damage to African history… Whole sections of our history have been wiped out”, since artifacts stripped of context lose much of their meaning. The Nok terracottas exemplify this: because so many were looted without record, scholars still struggle to understand their original function in Nok society. This is a second tragedy beyond the loss of the objects themselves – the loss of knowledge, inflicted by the greed of collectors.

Colonial-era pillaging was not limited to sculptures and gold; it extended to texts and sacred writings as well. A poignant example comes from Ethiopia, one of the oldest Christian civilizations in the world. In 1868, a British expeditionary force invaded Abyssinia (Ethiopia) to confront Emperor Tewodros II at his fortress of Maqdala. After Tewodros was defeated, British troops ransacked the mountain citadel and looted hundreds of Ethiopian treasures from the imperial treasury and churches. These included illuminated manuscripts, Bibles, icons, processional crosses, royal regalia, and even Tewodros’s royal crown. So thorough was the plunder that fifteen elephants and hundreds of mules were needed to carry the haul to the coast. Many of the manuscripts and religious items were then auctioned in London to raise “prize money” for the troops. The British Museum and the British Library acquired Ethiopian manuscripts, and the Victoria & Albert Museum (V&A) ended up with fascinating pieces like Tewodros’s royal wedding dress and other regalia. To Ethiopians, these were not mere curiosities – they were sacred texts and objects central to the Ethiopian Orthodox faith and national history. Ethiopia has repeatedly asked for their return. For example, in 2008 the President of Ethiopia formally requested the repatriation of the Maqdala artifacts from the V&A museum. The response? The V&A offered only to loan the items back long-term. This proposal – essentially “we’ll let you borrow what we stole from you” – was rightfully rejected by Ethiopia as insultingly inadequate. It took until 2021 for a significant breakthrough: a private British foundation purchased a collection of Maqdala items from descendants of soldiers and facilitated their return to Ethiopia. Thirteen artifacts, including an intricately carved processional cross and a richly illuminated triptych, were welcomed home in Addis Ababa with great fanfare. Ethiopian officials hailed this as the “largest act of restitution in Ethiopia’s history” and underscored that many more remain abroad. Among the items Ethiopia still seeks are the dozen Tabots (sacred altar slabs symbolizing the Ark of the Covenant) held by the British Museum. The BM has kept these Tabots locked away, never displaying them (out of a vague nod to their sanctity) yet refusing to give them back, creating a bizarre situation where Britain hoards religious treasures it doesn’t even use or exhibit. As one Ethiopian official poignantly said, “If there is no treasure, it means there is no history; if there is no history, there is no nation”. By taking and hiding these treasures, colonizers tried to erase or appropriate the history of nations like Ethiopia – a nation that, ironically, has a Christian heritage older than Britain’s. The Maqdala theft stands as a direct contradiction of Christian brotherhood: one Christian empire robbing another Christian kingdom’s churches. It reveals that colonial greed easily trumped any pretense of shared faith or morality.

From East to West Africa, from ancient to medieval to early modern periods, the pattern was consistent. African cultural assets of all kinds – weapons, sculptures, textiles, ritual objects, manuscripts – were swept into European possession. No category was off-limits. Even human remains were taken as curios: the skull of Chief Koitalel Arap Samoei of Kenya, a leader who resisted British colonial intrusion and was killed in 1905, was taken to Britain as a trophy. (His skull remains in the UK to this day, a macabre reminder of colonial brutality.) The overall effect of this massive loot of objects and remains was to bolster European museums and archives at the direct expense of African peoples’ heritage and dignity. It created a narrative – displayed in glass cases and catalogues – that world culture was best defined and interpreted by Europe. African artifacts were used to exoticize and infantilize Africans in museum displays, even as those artifacts silently testified to rich histories that colonialism sought to suppress. The next sections will discuss how Western institutions benefited from this pillage, and how the tide is finally, slowly turning toward rectifying these injustices.

Western Museums and the Spoils of Empire

The great museums of Europe – the British Museum in London, the Musee du Quai Branly in Paris, the Ethnological Museum in Berlin, and many others – owe a significant portion of their fame and collections to the spoils of colonial plunder. These institutions have built their reputations as custodians of “world heritage,” but much of that heritage was acquired through coercion, theft, or unequal treaties during colonial times. The benefit to the museums has been enormous, both culturally and financially, while the source communities were left bereft. Consider the British Museum (BM): it proudly touts a collection of around 8 million objects from all continents, making it one of the largest and most comprehensive museums on earth. But behind that encyclopedic breadth lies a colonial engine. The BM holds around 73,000 objects from Africa alone – items ranging from the Benin Bronzes and Ashanti gold mentioned earlier, to Egyptian mummies, Sudanese armor, Kenyan ceremonial instruments, and more. Many entered the BM during the height of the British Empire, whether as loot (Benin Bronzes, Maqdala treasures, etc.), purchases from colonial officers and “explorers,” or as part of forced artifact “donations” by colonial administrations. The museum’s own records acknowledge that it lacks complete provenance for a huge portion of its collection. And yet, these objects have been central to the BM’s identity and draw. The museum attracts millions of visitors every year (about 4 million in 2022 alone), many of whom come specifically to see famous pieces like the Rosetta Stone, the Parthenon Marbles, and indeed the Benin Bronzes. The irony that these marquee exhibits are contested colonial acquisitions is not lost on critics. In effect, the BM and others have profited from displaying stolen goods – increasing their visitor numbers, prestige, and even revenue (through ticketed exhibits, donations, and gift shop sales of replicas). For example, the British Museum received nearly £48 million in government and donor funding in 2022/23, justified by its status as a world-class institution housing invaluable collections. Those “invaluable” pieces often came at zero cost to the museum – because they were simply taken by force in the colonial era.

One might argue that these museums have preserved the artifacts well, keeping them safe for posterity. But that claim rings hollow when we consider how many items languish in storage, or how poorly the full stories are told. The British Museum, for instance, has tens of thousands of African objects not on display at all, sitting in storerooms. Some items taken by the British have never once been shown to the public – such as a sacred Pokomo drum seized in Kenya in 1902, which has spent over a century gathering dust in a BM storage room. What “preservation” is this, if not a form of imprisonment of culture? Moreover, some stored artifacts have deteriorated or been treated with toxic substances (arsenic was historically used on taxidermy and some ethnographic items), so when they are finally returned, they come back literally poisonous. Western museums often have more objects than they can properly care for or research; yet they refused to part with them, citing their mission to protect heritage. The British Museum even had a major scandal in 2023 where it was revealed that over 2,000 items were stolen from its own storage by an insider – an embarrassing breach that led to the director’s resignation. This episode severely undercut the BM’s argument that it is a uniquely safe keeper of global heritage. If anything, it showed that artifacts might be safer in their countries of origin, rather than locked away in a bloated institution half a world away. As one Kenyan curator pointedly observed, “Western museums act as if returning [objects] is the hardest part, but we are the ones who have to do the hard job… We are the ones who have to receive objects that are sometimes poisonous because they have been stored in arsenic”. This statement highlights the indignity that African nations must not only fight to regain their heritage, but also rehabilitate it from the neglect it suffered in Western hands.

Museums like the BM and Berlin’s Ethnological Museum long defended themselves with the concept of the “universal museum”. They claim to tell the story of all humanity under one roof, implying that objects like the Benin Bronzes or Ethiopian manuscripts serve a global educational purpose by being in London or Berlin. However, critics note that this lofty ideal often papers over the violent means of acquisition and the asymmetric power relations involved. In practice, these museums have historically under-represented the colonial context on their labels and displays. Only recently, under public pressure, have some institutions begun to add notes about items being “taken by British forces” or “acquired in colonial circumstances.” For example, Berlin’s Humboldt Forum, which opened a new display of non-European collections, initially planned to exhibit hundreds of Benin Bronzes until public outcry forced a change. Germany ended up returning ownership of more than 1,100 Benin Bronzes to Nigeria in 2022, including about 500 that were in the Berlin museum. This about-face came after decades in which German museums proudly showcased those bronzes as highlights of “world art” without adequately crediting their provenance in a British massacre. Similarly, Musée du quai Branly in Paris (established in 2006) became a focal point of debates after researchers revealed that the bulk of its 70,000 African objects were acquired under colonial duress. The museum’s founding ethos was to celebrate the arts of Africa, Asia, Oceania, and the Americas, but it did so by inheriting the collections of its predecessor, the Musée de l’Homme – collections largely built by colonial officers, missionaries, and even pseudo-scientific expeditions like the Dakar-Djibouti mission of 1931 which “collected” (i.e., stole or coerced) thousands of African ritual objects for French museums. In one striking case, French ethnographer Michel Leiris, who was part of the Dakar-Djibouti expedition, wrote about how they took sacred Dogon sculptures in present-day Mali: essentially plundering shrines while villagers protested – a process Leiris himself felt uneasy about, terming it “Afrique Fantôme” (Phantom Africa) in his journal. Those Dogon sculptures, long displayed in Paris, had in fact been preserved by their communities for generations (often hidden in cliffs or caves for safekeeping). The French did not teach them preservation – they simply absconded with what was preserved.

It is crucial to recognize how much economic and cultural capital Western institutions amassed by holding onto these artifacts. The British Museum, Louvre, Berlin’s museums, etc., gained prestige as repositories of world culture – a direct soft-power benefit of empire. Tourists flock to see Egyptian mummies in London, Benin Bronzes in Berlin, or Nigerian Nok terracottas in Paris, spending money on tickets, merchandise, and local hospitality. Entire academic careers in Europe and America were built on studying African artifacts that had been relocated to Western archives (often without African scholars having equal access). The moral ledger is stark: Europe enriched itself not only through African labor and resources, but through African cultural capital as well. The museums became, in essence, accessories after the fact to colonial crimes – institutions that laundered stolen goods into admired “collections.” They often justified retaining these items by arguing they were better caretakers than Africans could ever be. This paternalistic stance persisted well into the late 20th century. As recently as the 1970s, officials in institutions like the British Museum would privately (or even publicly) opine that African countries lacked the museums or expertise to conserve high-value artifacts – conveniently ignoring that many of those artifacts had been conserved just fine by their creators for centuries. The lingering colonial mindset was that African heritage was “safer” in European hands. Yet this claim was deeply racialized and self-serving. It assumed that Africans were inherently irresponsible or incapable – a notion rooted in the same ideology that once justified colonial rule. In reality, African nations have built museums and trained professionals since independence; and many objects that have been returned are now splendidly exhibited in Africa, drawing local crowds and contributing to a sense of restored pride and history.

The Push for Restitution and the Fallacy of African Incompetence

In recent years, we are witnessing a growing global recognition that the retention of looted African artifacts in Western museums is a grave injustice that needs to be righted. A restitution movement has gained momentum, driven by African governments, grassroots activists, and even concerned citizens in the West who acknowledge the inequity. High-profile cases like the Netherlands’ return of 119 Benin sculptures in 2025, France’s return of 26 Dahomey treasures in 2021, and Germany’s agreement in 2022 to transfer ownership of all its Benin Bronzes back to Nigeria, are signals of a broader shift. These acts are both symbolic and substantive: they acknowledge the wrong and also begin to materially remedy it. Each returned object carries enormous emotional weight. When those Benin Bronzes arrived in Nigeria from the Netherlands, they were greeted by traditional rulers and museum curators alike as long-lost family members. Four of the pieces were immediately put on display in Lagos as part of the national museum’s collection to educate and inspire Nigerians, while the rest were earmarked to return to the Oba of Benin’s palace – completing a circle broken since 1897. This is not just the movement of metal and ivory; it is the restoration of memory and identity.

However, alongside these positive developments, one still hears echoes of the old colonial paternalism: the suggestion by some European and American commentators that Africans “cannot preserve” these works, or that unstable political situations make returns risky. Let us confront that argument head on. The claim that Africans lack the capability or care to preserve their cultural heritage is not only insulting, it is demonstrably false and deeply racist. As discussed earlier, if the original communities did not know how to preserve their treasures, those artifacts would never have survived long enough to be looted. The people of Benin kept bronze altars polished and ritually intact for over 400 years before the British arrived. Ethiopian monks safeguarded illuminated manuscripts in monasteries for centuries, often under threat from wars – it was British soldiers who tore them out and allowed them to mildew in English attics until a collector found them, not any failing of Ethiopian care. In the words of Dr. Kwame Opoku, a restitution advocate, “Africans did not need Europeans to tell them to preserve their cultural artefacts. Had Africans not preserved their cultural objects, there would have been none for the Europeans to loot or steal… Somebody must have looked after the various African objects that European invaders looted.”. This sharp observation exposes the colonial trope of the negligent African as a self-serving myth. Indeed, many African societies have strong traditions of conservation: ancestral reliquaries in Central Africa, for example, were carefully maintained as part of spiritual practice. Far from “living only for today,” numerous African cultures place heavy emphasis on honoring ancestors and preserving their legacies – a point that directly contradicts the notion that Africans inherently disregard the past.

What about modern capabilities? Since gaining independence, African nations have established museums, cultural heritage boards, and training programs. Nigeria has the National Commission for Museums and Monuments (NCMM), founded in the 1970s, which manages dozens of museums and heritage sites (including the planned Edo Museum of West African Art, which will house Benin Bronzes). Ethiopia’s National Museum in Addis Ababa professionally curates everything from fossils (Lucy’s skeleton) to imperial regalia. Ghana, Senegal, Kenya, Egypt, and others all have functioning national museums and archives. To glibly claim that Africans “can’t take care” of artifacts is to ignore these realities. It is also telling that this standard – “proving capability” – is only applied to artifacts taken from colonized peoples. No one asks whether Greece can preserve the Parthenon Marbles (which Britain still holds), or whether Italy can take care of paintings if they were returned. The double standard reveals a racial bias: it assumes African incompetence as the default. Moreover, Western museums have not been infallible custodians themselves, as evidenced by thefts and poor storage mentioned earlier. Some of the Benin Bronzes in Europe corroded due to neglect in storage, whereas those retained in Nigeria (there are a handful that never left, plus pieces excavated later) have been carefully conserved by Nigerian experts.

To bluntly put it, the argument that artifacts should stay in Western museums because Africans might not care for them is a continuation of colonial-era arrogance – it effectively says: “We know what’s best for your heritage.” But Africans are saying otherwise, loud and clear. Activists like Nigeria’s Abba Isa Tijani, director of NCMM, have noted that in the past, European authorities made excuses that they “could not determine who the original owners were” or that “returned artefacts would not be properly managed” in Africa. These excuses are wearing thin. In response, countries like Nigeria have formed bodies such as the Legacy Restoration Trust (in 2020) to coordinate the handling of returned objects and the construction of new facilities. Such steps prove that the supposed lack of structure is being addressed by Africans themselves – and it never was an insurmountable issue to begin with, had goodwill existed on the other side. There is also a generational aspect: younger Africans and diasporan communities are increasingly vocal in demanding restitution, and younger curators in Western institutions are more sympathetic. This shift is eroding the old colonial guard’s stance. Even in Europe, public opinion has begun to favor returning obviously looted artifacts. A 2020 survey in France, for example, showed strong support for returning African cultural property held in French museums. In the UK and Germany, media coverage of Benin and other cases has largely portrayed returns as acts of justice.

At the same time, some defenders of the status quo still cling to colonial logic. In a few cases, they frame it as concern for the objects’ “safety” due to political instability or inadequate facilities in parts of Africa. Yet this concern was noticeably absent when instability wracked Europe – for instance, World War II saw major European museums quietly evacuate their collections to bomb shelters, while colonized countries had no say in their own treasures being under threat in foreign lands. More pertinently, many African countries are stable and peaceful, and for those that have conflicts, there are solutions like international cooperation to safeguard returned items (if Western institutions are genuinely concerned, they could offer expertise or funding for museum security, rather than hold items hostage). Furthermore, a new paradigm is emerging: shared stewardship and temporary loans in reverse. Some agreements now involve a Western museum returning ownership of objects but keeping them on loan for a few years until a local museum is ready – essentially the inverse of the old “loan to Africa” idea. This recognizes African ownership while addressing practical considerations. An example is the collaboration between Nigeria and Germany: Germany returned the bronzes legally to Nigeria, then a selection will be loaned back to Berlin’s Humboldt Forum for exhibition, but as Nigerian-owned property, and with Nigeria able to recall them at will. Such models indicate that Western fears of “empty museums” can be mitigated by equitable partnerships, not by clinging to stolen goods.

Crucially, we must call out the racism implicit in the notion that Africans cannot be trusted with African art. This notion is a direct descendant of the colonial-era racist ideology. It positions Africans as perpetual children needing supervision, and Europeans/Americans as the benevolent adults. It also ignores the fact that many African artworks had (and have) ritual or community roles that ensured their maintenance. For example, the Kota reliquary figures of Gabon were part of ancestor worship – they were oiled, cleaned, and honored by communities until the French took many away. In claiming Africans don’t care about their past, the colonial mindset conveniently forgot how much effort Africans put into safeguarding sacred objects from generation to generation. The proof of care is that these objects existed to be stolen. Moreover, the very people making these arguments often represent institutions that have displayed a glaring lack of care for the contextual integrity and spiritual significance of the objects in question. Museums have bolted sacred masks to walls as art pieces, or displayed human remains of African and Indigenous ancestors as anthropological curios, actions that show disrespect far beyond anything their original owners would have countenanced. So who really cannot be trusted with these works?

The tide is turning. Prominent voices within Western cultural circles have begun to condemn the “lingering colonial mindset” that justifies keeping such artifacts. In 2019, Egyptian writer and British Museum trustee Ahdaf Soueif resigned in protest, stating that the BM “continues to project the power of colonial gain” and refuses to truly engage with repatriation claims. She felt the museum was hiding behind legalities and failing a moral test. Similarly, Ghanaian-British curator Oforiatta Ayim has lambasted the romanticizing of empire by some museum directors and highlighted the spiritual emptiness of storing African objects in Western museum basements. Ayim eloquently framed the issue as a moral one: “You kill my parents, and then take objects from me… when I come to you and say this has been a really traumatic event and I want those objects back you say to me, ‘well they are mine now, maybe I’ll lend them to you’.”. This analogy lays bare the cruelty of the “retain and explain” stance some institutions still hold – it is tantamount to telling the victim to be grateful for a temporary peek at their own stolen legacy. The United States has also started to participate in restitutions: for instance, the Smithsonian Institution in 2022 voted to return most of its Benin Bronzes, and museums like the Metropolitan Museum of Art have restituted a few items to Nigeria. These decisions often come with public acknowledgments that keeping the items would perpetuate injustice. Even the debate around the British Museum Act (a UK law that prevents the BM from disposing of its collection) has intensified, with calls to amend it for cases of looted heritage. In the early 2000s, Britain did pass a law allowing return of Nazi-looted art from museums, showing that legal obstacles can be overcome when moral consensus is strong. Many argue: if exceptions can be made for victims of the Holocaust, why not for victims of colonial plunder?

The recent returns by the Netherlands, Germany, and France are encouraging, but they also highlight how far we have to go. Countries like Belgium are only beginning to grapple with their own dark legacy – Belgium’s Africa Museum in Tervuren is filled with artifacts from the Congo, taken during King Leopold II’s genocidal rule and later Belgian colonial administration. Belgium has announced plans to return some objects to the Democratic Republic of Congo, and a commission is examining its holdings. In addition, Nigeria’s push has led to agreements with museums in the U.S., U.K. (some universities and churches), and Ireland for returns. But the British Museum stands as a stubborn outlier – it has not yet consented to return the Benin Bronzes in its collection (instead, it talks of perhaps loaning them to Nigeria), nor other contested items like the Ethiopian Tabots or the Rosetta Stone to Egypt. The British government’s recent policy of “retain and explain” for contested heritage indicates an unwillingness at the highest levels to fully repent. This stance has drawn widespread criticism for being tone-deaf and patronizing. To many, it appears Britain wants to hold onto ill-gotten gains while slapping a new label on them, rather than do the right thing and relinquish them. Such a position is increasingly untenable in the face of changing global ethics.

It bears emphasizing: restitution is not about erasing history – it is about correcting history. The artifacts themselves are the best evidence of African civilizations’ greatness. Allowing them to return home does not “erase” them from world history; rather, it places them back into their proper cultural context and allows those societies to reclaim their narrative. Western museums can always keep high-quality replicas or digital displays as reminders of what once was, but justice demands the originals go home. In fact, returns can open new avenues for cultural exchange – traveling exhibitions between Africa and the West, joint conservation projects, etc., built on mutual respect rather than colonial hierarchy.

In sum, the argument that Africans cannot preserve their own heritage is a threadbare excuse that is being shredded by the reality of recent restitutions. The world is coming to acknowledge that the so-called incapacity of Africans was a lie told by those who, deep down, did not want to part with the fruits of their historical crimes. As the Benin bronzes, Nok sculptures, Ethiopian manuscripts, and other treasures slowly make their way back, they carry a message: that Africa’s people are fully capable of safeguarding their legacy, as they always were. The true challenge is whether Western institutions can overcome the racism and arrogance that keeps them clinging to stolen art. Justice and morality – principles shared by the very Christian faith the colonizers invoked – would dictate that it is long past time to let go.

Conclusion

The pillaging of African art by European colonial powers stands as one of the great moral failures of modern history – a crime cloaked in hypocrisy and rationalization. These self-proclaimed Christian “civilizers” violated the most basic tenets of their faith and of civilized conduct. They stole, coveted, and bore false witness about the very people they oppressed. They preached the Gospel while plundering gold crucifixes from Ashanti shrines; they sang hymns on Sunday and shipped out Nigerian bronzes on Monday. They dismissed African cultures as “uncivilized” even as they looted evidence of African civilization advanced enough to awe the world. The artifacts carried off to London, Paris, Berlin, and Brussels are irrefutable proof that Africa has long been a cradle of art, innovation, and knowledge. Each Nok terracotta figure with its serene, knowing expression; each Benin plaque with its complex iconography; each Ethiopian manuscript illuminated with divine images; each Akan gold weight or mask – all these bespeak societies of great depth and achievement. The tragedy is that instead of honoring these works and their makers, the colonizers chose to appropriate them, to display them without context, or to lock them away out of reach of their rightful inheritors.

Yet, history is not static. In recent decades, a powerful counter-current has emerged to challenge the lingering colonial mindset. African countries and communities have persistently demanded the return of their looted heritage, and the moral force of their argument is finally resonating. The act of restitution – like the Netherlands handing back 119 Benin Bronzes or France returning the treasures of Abomey – is more than a bureaucratic exchange. It is an act of redemption and respect. It acknowledges that what was done under colonialism was not “missionary” work or custodianship, but outright theft. It allows former colonizers to begin to atone, in however small a measure, for the cultural and spiritual harm inflicted. And most importantly, it restores to African people the stories and objects that are theirs – enabling a new generation to learn from and take pride in the creations of their forebears.

For too long, Western museums and governments hid behind cynical excuses: claiming legal barriers, questioning the competence of African institutions, or suggesting that everyone has a shared claim to “universal” culture. But no amount of rhetorical cover can erase the injustice of holding on to stolen property. The argument that such artifacts belong in Western museums “for all humanity” crumbles when we recognize that humanity was not consulted in their taking, and one part of humanity – Africans – was actually robbed of their heritage. As one African curator said, Western museums “hardly speak” while their foundations rest on colonial loot. Silence and obfuscation are no longer acceptable. The world is increasingly saying the quiet part out loud: these objects are stolen, and keeping them is wrong.

In calling out the hypocrisy of colonial Christians who defied their own moral law, we are reminded of the biblical story in which Jesus cleansed the temple of thieves and profiteers. Today, the “temples” are the great museums. This is not to disparage museums as institutions of learning, but to insist that they cannot continue to function as repositories of ill-gotten gains. Cleansing them of stolen artifacts will not lead to cultural impoverishment – on the contrary, it can lead to a new flowering of honest, collaborative global culture. A British Museum that willingly returns what was taken by force would stand not as a diminished institution but as a moral institution, one that values ethics over possession. The same is true for all museums grappling with colonial collections.

Ultimately, the stolen African artifacts themselves have acted as ambassadors of truth. Their presence in Western capitals has long whispered uncomfortable questions to attentive visitors: Whose art is this? How did it get here? Why is it not with its people? Those questions have now swelled into a loud demand for accountability. We have seen that when pressure mounts – from activists, from African nations, from even within Western societies – the once unthinkable (mass restitution) becomes possible. The return of the Benin Bronzes by multiple countries, the acknowledgment by France of tens of thousands of African works in its possession, and the agreements by Germany and others show that change is happening. But vigilance is needed to ensure this is not mere window dressing. Thousands more artifacts await liberation from European vaults. Each one should be evaluated, and where clear provenance of colonial looting exists, plans made for their repatriation. This process will take time and resources, but it is a necessary journey of healing.

In closing, the hypocrisy of the colonizers has been laid bare by their very victims’ creations. The exquisite arts they stole have become the strongest argument against the colonial lie. Those bronzes and carvings cry out that Africa was – and is – a land of creativity and knowledge, fully civilized by any meaningful definition. As these artifacts make their way home, they carry with them a powerful message: that historical wrongs can be confronted and partially repaired, and that respect, not racism, must govern our cultural exchanges. The old colonial mindset, with its greed and condescension, deserves to be consigned to the dustbin of history. In its place must come humility and justice – an understanding that the great museums of the world can no longer be crime scenes holding hostage the heritage of others, but should become true partners in a post-colonial age of cultural respect and restitution. This is how we finally align our actions with our professed values. It is how the heirs of those Christian colonizers can, belatedly, live up to the morals they once so flagrantly ignored: by doing unto others as we would have done unto us, by returning what was taken, and by acknowledging the full humanity and sovereignty of African peoples over their own cultural treasures.

References (APA style)

Al Jazeera News. (2021, November 9). France returns 26 treasures looted from Benin. Al Jazeera.

Al Jazeera News. (2021, November 24). After more than a century, Ethiopian stolen artefacts return home. Al Jazeera.

Al Jazeera News. (2025, June 21). The Netherlands returns 119 stolen sculptures to Nigeria. Al Jazeera.

Duggal, H., & Haddad, M. (2023, August 31). Where do the items in the British Museum come from? Al Jazeera.

Gbadamosi, N. (2021, October 12). Stealing Africa: How Britain looted the continent’s art. Al Jazeera Features – History.

Modern Ghana (Opoku, K.). (2012). Nok Once More. ModernGhana.com.

Smithsonian Magazine (Gershon, L.). (2021, September 10). Looted Maqdala treasures returned to Ethiopia after 150 years. Smithsonian Magazine.

Wikipedia. (2023). Benin Bronzes. Wikipedia. Retrieved 2025, June 22, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benin_Bronzes

Wikipedia. (2023). Fourth German Inner Africa Research Expedition (Leo Frobenius). Wikipedia. Retrieved 2025, June 22.