To the Trustees of the British Museum: 

With the publication in the past year of Caroline Elkins’s Legacy of Violence: A History of the British Empire, the “legalized lawlessness” that marked and maintained the realm of British colonial control through the mid-twentieth century has come before the eyes of the public as never before. From India to Malaya, Kenya, and beyond, Britain’s historic and systematic use of violence and coercion in the colonies—not to mention its repeated use of emergency declarations to derogate from its commitments under the European Convention on Human Rights—are a deep stain upon British history and a strike against the democratic ideals celebrated by the British people at home. 

In the words of the poet T. S. Eliot, “After such knowledge, what forgiveness?” Surely the answer hinges upon whether Britain’s leaders will muster the courage to take responsibility for the legacies of colonial violence, which have enriched the United Kingdom in various ways. Where such accountability is concerned, I would maintain that the British Museum, as the UK’s leading humanist cultural institution, has an important role to play. 

Take, for instance, the Benin Bronzes: the looting of these artifacts by British colonial authorities in 1897 is well documented and widely known. The British Museum currently retains over 900 of these exquisite artworks, which it acknowledges on its website to be held as a consequence of “colonial assault” and “pillage.” In light of this history, the museum’s current policy of “retain and explain” is shockingly insufficient. The museum has no defensible moral claim to these objects, which it avers to be stolen goods. The Benin Bronzes belong to the joint possession, held in trust, of the Nigerian government and the royal family of Benin. 

I call upon the trustees of the British Museum to meet the example of rightful restitution set by the German government, which returned their holdings of Benin Bronzes to the joint ownership of Nigeria and Benin in 2022. The Humboldt Forum still displays precious artifacts from Benin, in service to the museum’s educational aims and its broader celebration of human accomplishment in the arts, but it acknowledges these items to be on loan to the European museum.

“Virtues,” writes Eliot, “are forced upon us by our impudent crimes.” It is time to rebuke the criminal history of colonialism and its spoils, the legalized lawlessness of pillage and theft with impunity. It is time to return the art of West Africa to the people of West Africa.