It is estimated that around 90 percent of African cultural assets from sub-Saharan Africa are located outside the continent.
European colonial powers took art and everyday objects from the colonies during their military and scientific expeditions in the 19th and early 20th centuries. From there, artifacts and human remains ended up in national ethnological museums and private collections of the conquerors. Among them are also objects from Asian, Oceanic or Caribbean colonies.
Do you have sources for this? It just feels like that extraction would be really hard to quantify.
Regardless, those artifacts need to be brought to rest back in their home lands. Maybe they can even go to museums that can revitalize local economies?! I hate how these priceless works go towards private collectors and money laundering scams.
The figure is not disputed by any European government. There is a dispute about whether and how the cultural heritage should be returned. It was stolen quite legally. Exploitation and robbery of the colonies was legally anchored by laws.
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.
Let me shed some light on the subject.
„Africa’s Struggle for Its Art: History of a Postcolonial Defeat“
Is a Book of Bénédicte Savoy.
I met her and talked to her a few times about this topic, because we worked in the same prestigious cultural institution, the Humboldt Forum. I quit there, among other things, because I witnessed firsthand the cynical handling of the Restition of the Benin Bronzes , a group of several thousand metal plaques and sculptures that decorated the royal palace of the Kingdom of Benin, in what is now Edo State, Nigeria. And I am talking of only one institution. There are many reputable sources about this topic.
