Long-awaited but postponed several times, the bill intended to facilitate restitution by France of looted cultural property, particularly in Africa, was adopted Monday evening in the National Assembly. A salutary text which historian Françoise Vergès hopes will open the door to a real inventory of objects stolen during colonization, and well beyond. Interview.

Published on: 04/13/2026 - 5:59 p.m. Modified on: 05/01/2026 - 08:02

“African heritage cannot only be in private collections and European museums. African heritage must be highlighted in Paris, but also in Dakar, Lagos, Cotonou.” On November 28, 2017, during his speech in Ouagadougou, intended to build a “new relationship” with Africa, French President Emmanuel Macron promised to facilitate the restitution of African heritage acquired illegally and held in French public collections.

Royal treasures from Abomey returned to Benin, Omar Saïdou Tall's saber in Senegal, Sakalava skulls in Madagascar and very recently Djidji Ayôkwé "talking drum" in Ivory Coast... Although France has since carried out several restitutions, it ultimately took eight years for the bill relating to the restitution of cultural property to make its way to the National Assembly, after its adoption on January 28 by the Senate. It was finally adopted by the deputies unanimously on Monday April 13 in the evening.

This text, which concerns property looted between 1815 and 1972, should facilitate procedures by introducing an exception to the principle of inalienability of public collections. Restitutions can now be decided by decree and no longer require the adoption of a law, as was the case until now.

An important text, seen not as an outcome but as the beginning of necessary work, for the historian and political scientist Françoise Vergès, specialist in the history of slavery and colonization. Interview.

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France 24: What is the principle of inalienability of public collections presented as an obstacle to the restitution of looted objects?

Françoise Vergès: This principle in its current form dates from the French Revolution. It was then decreed that the objects exhibited in public museums were not the property of the government or the state, but of the French people. This is how the revolutionaries set up, for example, the Louvre Museum in 1793 as a people's museum exhibiting the royal collections and then those resulting from the revolutionary and Napoleonic conquests.

The idea is that these collections belong to everyone, in a spirit of educating the people, which makes them inalienable.

In reality, this principle is little known: the French have no idea what is really in these collections, apart from the most famous works, and they think that they are the property of the museum or the property of the State.

But it is true that this principle complicates the restitution of works because each restitution must be approved by Parliament, representative of the people, and therefore be the subject of a law.

There is a legal question that is asked, but it is not an obstacle. It is enough to lift it by saying that as soon as an object has been acquired illegally, it does not belong to the French people in principle.

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This law has been awaited for a very long time. Do you think this is a major breakthrough?

Passing a law to facilitate restitution is certainly progress, but it is true that it took a long time to come. In my opinion, it remains a little insufficient: the law only concerns property acquired from 1815. However, in the royal collections, there are many objects which have been brought back by explorers. And then this law avoids Napoleon, whose armies carried out absolutely massive pillaging in Egypt, Italy, Poland, Germany, Spain...

It is essential, as recommended by the law, to facilitate restitution. States, particularly African ones, have been requesting returns of objects for a very long time. We must hope that this law will serve as a lever to remove deeper obstacles.

In my opinion, there is a concern for transparency. We focus a lot on a few objects with strong symbolism such as the 26 royal treasures from Abomey returned to Benin or very recently the Djidji Ayôkwé “talking drum” in the Ivory Coast. But behind these restitutions, which are in reality few in number, lies massive looting: piles of objects taken from people, communities, villages, towns, palaces, temples. We often think, and rightly so, of the African continent, but when we see at the Guimet museum, for example, all these immense statues of goddesses and gods coming from all over South Asia, East Asia and Central Asia... all of this has been cut up, torn from temples.

What we need is to carry out a real inventory. We must allow artists and people from countries that have been pillaged to come freely to France, make it easier for them to obtain visas, access to grants and, of course, to documentation and archives. There are thousands of objects in the reserves and it would be interesting to have a real catalog. This step is essential so that the countries concerned can make informed requests. Obviously not everything will be returned because stocks are immense. But the scale of the looting remains a taboo that must be lifted.

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In the debate on the restitution of works, we sometimes hear reluctance about the capacity of the countries concerned to conserve these objects in good conditions. What do you think?

Indeed, these types of conditions are often set for the restitution of works, which I personally find quite incongruous. So it would be a question of returning stolen objects by explaining to their owners what to do with them? They must be able to dispose of them without conditions: sell them if they wish or even exhibit them in community museums even if they do not meet the conditions of European museums. There are also examples where these objects return to their original role, as in the case of drums returned by Denmark and Germany to the Sami [indigenous people of northern Sweden, editor's note], some of whom were reinstated as sacred drums in the community.

It must be understood that many of these objects were not intended to become art objects. Some masks which were sometimes intended to be worn once and then thrown away or buried have reached absolutely crazy prices on the world market. For sacred objects that were used in rituals, communities sometimes refuse restitution, believing that these objects have lost their aura, or even become dangerous. Today, we are in an absurd situation where certain objects reach prices on the world market that exceed the financial capacities of their countries of origin.

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