They told us we had no history. So they locked ours away and filled their museums with it.
For over a century, African artifacts—looted during colonial conquest—have sat in European museums while the continent was told it had no civilization worth remembering. The Benin Bronzes. Ancient manuscripts from Timbuktu. Ethiopian crowns. Congolese relics. All displayed thousands of miles from home, behind glass, generating revenue and prestige for institutions built on extraction.
This wasn’t preservation. It was erasure with a polite name.
Now, as calls for repatriation grow louder, some museums resist. They claim they’re “protecting” African heritage—as if the people who created it can’t be trusted to keep it. The irony is deafening. The same powers that destroyed libraries, burned texts, and criminalized African languages now position themselves as the custodians of that history.
But here’s the uncomfortable truth: whoever controls the past controls the narrative. And whoever controls the narrative controls the future.
If Africa had no history, why are their vaults full of ours?
Sources:
∙ The Brutish Museums: The Benin Bronzes, Colonial Violence and Cultural Restitution by Dan Hicks (2020)
∙ BBC: “Looted Benin Bronzes to be returned by Germany and UK museums” (2021–2022 coverage)
For over a century, African artifacts—looted during colonial conquest—have sat in European museums while the continent was told it had no civilization worth remembering. The Benin Bronzes. Ancient manuscripts from Timbuktu. Ethiopian crowns. Congolese relics. All displayed thousands of miles from home, behind glass, generating revenue and prestige for institutions built on extraction.
This wasn’t preservation. It was erasure with a polite name.
Now, as calls for repatriation grow louder, some museums resist. They claim they’re “protecting” African heritage—as if the people who created it can’t be trusted to keep it. The irony is deafening. The same powers that destroyed libraries, burned texts, and criminalized African languages now position themselves as the custodians of that history.
But here’s the uncomfortable truth: whoever controls the past controls the narrative. And whoever controls the narrative controls the future.
If Africa had no history, why are their vaults full of ours?
Sources:
∙ The Brutish Museums: The Benin Bronzes, Colonial Violence and Cultural Restitution by Dan Hicks (2020)
∙ BBC: “Looted Benin Bronzes to be returned by Germany and UK museums” (2021–2022 coverage)
