In Benin, a ‘kataklè’ – a ceremonial stool, and the final fragment of the royal treasure of Abomey – has been returned by Finland, 133 years after being looted by French troops and later transferred to the Nationwide Museum of Finland. It be a toddle that began with an investigation attributable to an RFI journalist.
The kataklè is a three-legged royal chair from Dahomey, a West African kingdom positioned within novel-day Benin that existed from 1600 till 1904.
It used to be discovered to be on the Nationwide Museum of Finland, the Kansallismuseo, thanks to a lengthy investigation by artwork historian Marie-Cécile Zinsou, of the Zinsou foundation, one of many museum’s curators, Pilvi Vainonen – and RFI journalist Pierre Firtion.
The kataklè used to be returned to Benin by Finland on Tuesday, with Finnish minister of culture Mari-Leena Talvitie handing it over to the Beninese authorities in the midst of a ceremony on the Marina Palace, the presidential build in Cotonou, Benin.
A whispered clue
The first 26 items of the treasure had been returned to Benin in November 2021 by the Paris’s Musée du Quai Branly.
The museum, alongside with the French Ministry of Custom, had announced the restitution of 26 works from the royal treasury in Abomey in 2018, as authorized by President Emmanuel Macron.
These items had been looted in 1892 by French Colonel Alfred-Amédée Dodds in the midst of the sacking of the metropolis of Abomey, after the Second Franco-Dahomean Struggle, taken from the royal spot.
Despite housing approximately 70,000 African objects, the Quai Branly returned this little restitution of 26 items thanks to a specific French regulation, passed in December 2020, which allowed for exceptions to the precept of inalienability of public collections for them and for a separate merchandise, returned to Senegal.
Among them had been anthropomorphic royal statues, recades (this kind of sceptre linked with Dahomey), the gates of the royal palace of Abomey, thrones, seats, and a first kataklè.
‘Dahomey’ film invites colonial past to keep in touch thru Benin’s stolen treasures
RFI’s Firtion used to be in Cotonou in November 2021 conserving the restitution of the 26 royal objects, when a source whispered to him: “There aren’t 26, but 27 treasures.”
“What if it was true?” he requested himself, as he recalls in a French-language podcast sequence on the story.
Quickly after, Firtion joined forces with Zinsou and Vainonen, delving into texts on Beninese artwork and the restitution of works of artwork to Africa.
Lost in storage
He discovered that this kataklè had arrived on the Trocadéro Museum of Ethnography in Paris on the discontinuance of the nineteenth century.
Then in 1939, the museum, by then renamed the Musée de l’Homme, agreed to an exchange with the Nationwide Museum of Finland – a favorite be conscious on the time.
The Musée de l’Homme wanted to enrich its assortment of Finno-Ugric objects from day to day lifestyles, and in exchange sent around 40 objects to Helsinki, mainly from Africa and Asia. Among the lot used to be the kataklè.
It used to be never exhibited, as an replacement ending up in the storage rooms of the Nationwide Museum of Finland, where it remained for many years. Over time, curators lost monitor of it, because it used to be listed as belonging to Dahomey.
In the earn inventories of the Musée du Quai Branly, Firtion identified a fraction donated by Colonel Dodds to the Trocadéro Ethnography Museum, which used to be no longer returned to Benin… a three-legged stool, referred to as a kataklè.
The journalist additionally travelled to Marseille’s Mucem museum in 2024, where the items potentially exchanged with Finland for the kataklè in 1939 had been being stored – and where he learned that the exchanged items serene belonged to the museum originally owning them.
After intensive analysis on her aspect, Vainonen got succor to Firtion and told him it had been display in Finland.
A essential wider debate on restitution
Benin’s quiz for restitution is never any longer an isolated one.
Be half of free AllAfrica Newsletters
Obtain the most contemporary in African data delivered straight to your inbox
As early as 1973, the president of Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo, or DRC), Mobutu Sese Seko, used to be the predominant to keep in touch on the United Countries Total Assembly, calling for the country’s cultural heritage to be returned to it.
Since then, a growing selection of African countries – together with Egypt, Ghana, Ethiopia and Nigeria – hang referred to as for works of artwork and reasonable artefacts to be returned.
In 2021, Belgium handed the federal government of the DRC an inventory of 84,000 Congolese artefacts relationship from the colonial duration – even supposing their return hasn’t taken spot but.
Netherlands has the same opinion to return 119 Benin statues to Nigeria
Germany handed 22 artefacts looted in the nineteenth century succor to Nigeria at a ceremony in the capital, Abuja, in December 2022. In February this year, the Netherlands agreed to return 119 Benin bronze statues to Nigeria.
Two British universities began returning items to Nigeria across the identical time: the College of Aberdeen, which returned Benin bronzes in 2021 and Cambridge College, in 2022.
