RESTITUTION
149
released by Dodds’ army. Abomey was faced with
an acute problem of provisions. To avoid starvation,
some soldiers went home to search for food
and to defend their villages, which were being pillaged
by the liberated slaves.
Dodds, continuing his inexorable advance, entered
Abomey, which Behanzin had set on fi re
before heading to the northern part of his
kingdom where he settled.
So before judging history, condemning
Dodds (and all of colonial France along
with him), and justifying the restitutions
of allegedly ill-gotten objects, a few questions
are in order: Who are the bad guys
in history? Who are the good guys? Can
one condemn the Yoruba slaves that
Dodds liberated for having taken revenge
on their Fon masters? What are we to
think of the town of Ketou that owes its
“renaissance” to Dodds? Were these objects,
which are the symbols and regalia
of a government that actively practiced
slavery and were saved by Dodds from
destruction by fi re, really illegally acquired?
If so, who were their legitimate
owners? Why do they need to be restituted,
and to whom? When the modern-day
Republic of Benin formulates a demand for
their restitution, is that demand historically and
morally legitimate?
By anchoring the question of the assignment
of ownership of cultural property in the
context of restitution, President Macron, who
during his campaign did not hesitate to describe
colonialism as a “crime against humanity,”
has sparked a fi re that he will have a great
deal of trouble extinguishing. Let us look at
the defi nitions: “To restitute” means to return
something to its legitimate owner, so “restitution”
is thus the act of returning something
that one does not have the right to possess. The
very fact of invoking these terms immediately
opposes an illegitimate owner with a dispossessed
one. The linear equation is thus solved
as follows:
Colonization + crimes against humanity
+ looting
= restitution
Make no mistake, this is how the message has
been understood in Africa. Statements made by
the African delegations at the international meeting
held at UNESCO’s headquarters in Paris on
June 1, 2018, leave no doubt about this. According
to Patrice Talon, president of the Republic of
Benin, the cultural property of Africa is “being
enslaved” by museums, which are “environments
of repression.” The president
of Gabon urged swift action and warned
that “we mustn’t allow these questions to
be appropriated by the streets.” Lastly,
the former director of Kenya’s national
museums declared that “we are at war,
and the war is just beginning.”
So, is France at war—albeit a patrimonial
or cultural one, or so we hope—with
Africa because its museums are places
where African artworks are “enslaved”
and “repressed”? This is a sad but predictable
response to a clumsy gesture by
President Macron that was made in the
spirit of national repentance. But history
and the rule of law cannot be ignored
with impunity. Unfortunately, the presidential
statement was not anchored in
any serious refl ection, and no one now
can predict what will happen to French museum
collections.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Aublet, Édouard Edmond. La guerre au Dahomey,
1888–1893, 1893–1894 : d’après les documents
offi ciels, Paris: Berger-Levrault, 1894–1895.
Boahen, A. Adu (ed.). General History of Africa, vol. VII: Africa
Under Colonial Domination: 1880–1935, UNESCO, London:
Heinemann, 1985, notably p. 151.
Desplantes, Fr. Le générale Dodds et l’expédition du Dahomey,
Rouen: Megard et Co., 1894.
Garcia, Luc. Le royaume du Dahomé face à la pénétration coloniale
(1875–1894), Paris: Editions Kathala, 1988.
Michel, François. La campagne du Dahomey, 1893–1894 : la
reddition de Béhanzin : correspondance d’un commissaire des
colonies présentée par son petit neveu Jacques Serre, Paris:
L’Harmattan, 2001.
Roques, Pierre Auguste. Le Génie au Dahomey en 1892 … Avec
une carte. Extrait de la Revue du Génie militaire, Paris: Berger-
Levrault & Co., 1895.
Sankalé, Sylvain. “A la mode du pays : Chroniques saint-louisiennes
d’Antoine François Feuiltaine, Saint-Louis du Sénégal, 1788–
1835,” doctoral thesis in the history of law and economic and
social studies, faculté de droit, Montpellier, 1998.
Silbermann, Léon. Souvenirs de campagne par le Soldat Silbermann,
Paris: Plon, 1910 (third edition).
ecole.nav.traditions.free.fr/offi ciers_dodds_alfred.htm, accessed July
2018.
histoirecoloniale.net/la-France-prete-au-Benin-des.html, accessed
July 2018.
legionetrangere.fr: Histoire: 1892–1893 - La Légion Étrangère
pendant la campagne du Dahomey, accessed July 2018.
persee.fr/doc/cea_0008-0055_1984_num_24_96_2197, accessed
July 2018.
FIG. 2 (left): Directory of
Museums in Africa. UNESCOICOM,
Documentary Center,
1990.
Tribal Art magazine archives.
FIG. 3 (above): Statue of
King Oyingin, erected to
celebrate the centenary of
the renaissance of Kétou
1894–1994.
Photo: Fawaz Tairou, Cotonou, 2017.
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