129-year journey comes to an end as France returns Benin’s treasures | New

Anthropomorphic wooden statues, royal thrones and sacred altars were looted by the French army in the 19th century from West Africa. The French will have a last glimpse of the objects, from the so-called “Treasures of Abomey” collection, at the Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac museum from Tuesday to Sunday.

President Emmanuel Macron suggested that France must now right the wrongs of the past, delivering a landmark speech in 2017 in which he said he could no longer accept “that a large part of the cultural heritage of many African countries is to be found in France”. He established a roadmap for the return of the royal treasures taken during the time of the empire and the colony.

So far, however, France has only handed over one object – a legendary sword handed over to the Musée de l’Armée in Senegal. And the 26 works that go to Benin represent a tiny handful of the more than 90,000 artefacts from sub-Saharan Africa alone preserved in French museums.

Yet critics of such measures – including the British Museum in London, in a decades-long standoff with the Greek government over a return of the Elgin Marbles – argue it will open the floodgates to empty the museums. Western collections. Many are made up of objects acquired, or stolen, in colonial times.

The French Minister of Culture, Roselyne Bachelot, tried to appease the nervousness of European museums, stressing that this initiative “will not create a legal precedent”.

A French law was passed last year to allow the restitution of statues in Benin, and of the sword in Senegal.

But she said the French government law was intentionally specific by applying only to the 27 artifacts. “(It) does not establish any general right to restitution” and “in no way calls into question” the right of French museums to preserve their heritage.

The history of the “Treasures of Abomey” is as dramatic as their sculpted forms. In November 1892, Colonel Alfred Dodds led a thieving French expeditionary force in the kingdom of Danhomè located in the south of present-day Benin. The colonizing troops burst into the Abomey Palace, home of King Behanzin, seizing many royal objects, including the 26 artefacts that Dodds donated to the Trocadero ethnographic museum in Paris in the 1890s. 2000s, the objects are kept at the Quai Branly-Jacques Chirac museum.

One hundred and twenty-nine years later, their distant journey abroad will finally come to an end.

Beninese Minister of Culture, Jean-Michel Abimbola, called the return of the works a “historic step” and the start of new cooperation between the two countries, during a press conference last week. The country founded a museum in Abomey to house the treasures which will be partly financed by the French government. The French Development Agency will contribute some 35 million euros to the “Museum of the Amazons and Kings of Danhome Saga” as part of a commitment signed this year.

The official transfer of the 26 pieces is expected to be signed in Paris on November 9 in Macron’s presence, and the art is expected to be in Benin a few days later, Abimbola said.

While locals say the decision is overdue, what’s important is that the art will be returned. “It was a void created among the historical treasures of Benin, which is gradually being reconstituted,” said Fortune Sossa, president of the Network of African Cultural Journalists.