Benin celebrates the return of Dahomey's treasure, 133 years after the plunder

The Finnish government returned to Benin on Tuesday a three-legged ceremonial stool, called a kataklé, belonging to the royal treasury of Abomey, which was taken from the country by French troops led by Colonel Alred Dodds 133 years ago. This restitution , which the Beninese are celebrating with great fanfare, completes the return of the famous collection to Benin after France returned the other 26 pieces from the royal treasury in November 2021. “This is the epilogue, but we are already looking forward to other restitution work ,” said Jean-Michel Abimbola, Benin’s Minister of Culture and Tourism, during the ceremony held at the Presidential Palace of the Navy in Cotonou.

It was in 1892 that French colonial troops led by Colonel Dodds looted the royal palace of Abomey, capital of the former kingdom of Dahomey, in present-day Benin, in a conflict that pitted them against the warriors of King Behanzin. The so-called Treasure of Abomey consists of 27 statuettes, thrones, items of clothing, decorative objects, and even doors from the palace. All of them ended up in the Trocadero Museum of Ethnography in Paris, which in 1937 became the Musée de l'Homme. However, the kataklé was part of an exchange of ethnographic objects between France and Finland that took place in 1939.

The stool was never put on public display and remained forgotten for many years in Finland, for the past two decades in the storage of the National Museum of Helsinki. An investigation by Radio France Internationale (RFI) journalist Pierre Firtion, museum curator Pilvi Vainonen, and French-Beninese art historian Marie-Cécile Zinsou located the object there in 2024 and opened the restitution process, which was completed this week.

The ceremony was simple but laden with symbolism, attended by the Finnish Minister of Culture, Mari-Leena Talvitie, as well as the Ministers of Culture and Foreign Affairs of Benin, Jean-Michel Abimbola and Olushegun Bakari, respectively, in addition to numerous high-ranking cultural figures and academics. The kataklé, worn by Dahomey's rulers during coronation ceremonies, embodied stability, unity, and royal authority. The Beninese government intends to display it to the public alongside the other 26 pieces from the Abomey Treasure.

The return of stolen objects

The process of restitution of artifacts looted from Africa by collectors and colonial armies is a demand of numerous African governments that has taken shape in recent years as part of a broader debate. In 2017, French President Emmanuel Macron gave a famous speech in Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso , in which he acknowledged the "errors and crimes" of colonization and promised to return African historical artifacts that had been looted or considered war spoils and were on display in French museums. These statements initiated a restitution process , still unfinished, and prompted other countries, such as Germany and Belgium, to look to their collections to evaluate possible returns, while African governments intensified their demands.

The Treasure of Abomey, or King Behanzin, has been at the heart of this restitution process from the very beginning, as it is a long-standing claim by Benin and given its historical and cultural significance. It was included by art historian Benedicte Savoy and philosopher Felwine Sarr in a famous and controversial report on African historical objects in European museums, commissioned by Macron. One of the first objects returned by France was a sword that allegedly belonged to the political and religious leader El Hadji Omar Tall , founder of the Toucouleur Empire, and which, since 2018, has been housed in a display case at the Museum of Black Civilizations in Dakar, Senegal.

Following the return of the Abomey treasure to Benin in 2021, France is also on the verge of completing the return to Ivory Coast of the Djidji Ayokwé talking drum of the Bidjan people, who lived on the shores of the Ébrié Lagoon. After its theft by colonial authorities in 1916, this instrument, a sacred object for the Atchan communities, remained in the French governor's house until 1930, when it was moved to the Ethnographic Museum of the Trocadéro in Paris. It is currently housed at the Quai-Branly Museum, but was reclaimed by Ivory Coast in 2018, and its return is currently underway: on April 28, the French Senate approved a bill to make this possible, which must now be submitted to the National Assembly.

In December 2022, the German government returned to Nigeria 20 so-called Benin bronzes, metal plaques and sculptures that decorated the palace of the Kingdom of Benin, located in present-day Nigeria. In February of that same year, Belgium handed over to the authorities of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) an inventory of more than 80,000 cultural objects, including sculptures, masks, utensils, and musical instruments, as well as liturgical objects, which were looted by the Belgians during the colonial period and could be returned. Among them is the famous sculpture of King Ne Kuko, stolen by the merchant Alexandre Delcommune and now one of the symbols of the plunder suffered by the Congo. Also in 2022, Brussels gave the DRC a giant Kakuungu mask on loan for an unlimited period.