Confronting Colonial Objects

Front matter

OXFORD

Histories, Legalities, and Access to Culture

Carsten Stahn

Preface to Carsten Stahn’s book

Confronting Colonial Objects: Histories, Legalities, and Access to Culture

This book is a timely and important contribution to the current debate on the impact of colonialism and of de-colonization on the legal status of cultural property and on the difficult issue of reparation and restitution of objects obtained by war, colonialism, and coercion from colonized peoples. In the past twenty years this theme has attracted vast and increasing attention on the part of scholars, museums, media, collectors, and experts in provenance research. Important museums of the world have been facing increasing scrutiny from media, academics, and law enforcement officials over the extent to which their collection may include cultural objects looted during the colonial period. This has produced unprecedented reactions at the political level—such as the commitment undertaken in 2017 in a public speech by the French President Macron to inaugurate a policy of gradual return to African countries of cultural objects removed during the colonial period and now part of the collections of national museums. As we know, this political pronouncement has been followed by the influential Rapport Savoy/Sar sur la restitution du patrimoine africaine. This move has been followed by the adoption by important museums in Europe and the United States of plans intended to root out looted artefacts in their collections.

In this climate of changing cultural mores, this book addresses the topic through the lens of three interrelated legal-theoretical contexts: justice, ethics, and human rights. In this multidisciplinary perspective, the author raises the important question of whether the Western legal and social construct that defines the concept of cultural property and its relation to society may be shared, or may even be compatible, with the cultural understandings and legal traditions of the colonized people. The answer is, obviously, a negative one. Hence also a negative evaluation of the role played by international law in legitimizing the mass appropriation of cultural objects by the colonizing powers. But the most important question that remains to be answered concerns the role that international law can play today in remedying past injustices and ensuring the return of cultural objects wrongly removed from colonial territories. Today, international law provides a framework of multilateral instruments designed to facilitate the restitution or return of cultural objects illegally removed from their country of origin. However, as we well know, these instruments—such as the 1970 UNESCO Convention and the 1995 UNIDROIT Convention—are not technically capable of addressing the restitution of colonial

X PREFACE TO CARSTEN STAHN’S BOOK loot because they have no retroactive effect. However, this formal legal obstacle to the application of the above instruments to colonial loot does not relieve us from the duty to remedy past cultural injustices that continue to display their harmful effects in present time. This is what the author of this book successfully attempts to do through the lens of justice, ethics, and human rights.

Francesco Francioni and Ana Filipa Vrdoljak

Contents

Table of Cases Table of Instruments List of Abbreviations

=

. Confronting Colonial Heritage: Introducing Entanglements,

Table of Contents

Table of Cases Table of Instruments List of Abbreviations

1. Confronting Colonial Heritage: Introducing Entanglements, Continuities, and Transformations 1 Setting the scene

1.1 1:2