Fifteen Colonial Thefts A Guide to Looted African Heritage in Museums

Debates around restitution and decolonising museums continue to rage across the world. Artefacts, effigies and ancestral remains are finally being accurately contextualised and repatriated to their homelands. Fifteen Colonial Thefts amplifies and adds to these discussions, exploring the history of colonial violence in Africa through the prism of fifteen African belongings - all looted at the height of the imperial era and brought to European museums. The book is structured around three arenas—the battlefield, the royal palace, and the realm of the sacred—in which colonial officers violently plundered Africa. It explores the meaning of those cultural assets at the time of their appropriation, but also today, in an era of restitution. Each chapter is accompanied by an original illustration, commissioned especially for the book, from both established and emerging African artists, bringing these stories to life for the reader. With contributors from across the continents of Europe and Africa, including scientists, museum professionals, artists and activists, the book illuminates the collective trauma and loss of cultural, historical and spiritual knowledge that colonial theft engendered.