Yeah I was in a museum recently and they discussed how they worked with local African governments to regulate the amount they were able to take. But I’m sure that was a small part of the whole story of the ways in which artifacts were extracted. It’s not like Europeans at that time of history have been known to respectfully ask for things all the time, or most of the time. From their standpoint, I’m sure there was many “legal” loopholes they could have used.