Fifteen Colonial Thefts A Guide to Looted African Heritage in Museums, Pluto Press

Edited by Sela K. Adjei and Yann LeGall
Foreword by Peju Layiwola
Contributions by Fergus Nicholl, Osman Nusairi, Mwelela Cele, Jan König, Julia Kennedy, Christopher J. Philipp, Foreman Bandama, Kokou Azamede and Gabriel Mzei Orio

A timely and compelling contribution to the debate around repatriation of looted African artefacts, illustrated and contributed to by African artists and writers

'Eloquent and powerful' - Françoise Vergès

Debates around restitution and decolonising museums continue to rage across the world. Artefacts, effigies and ancestral remains are finally being accurately contextualised and repatriated to their homelands.

Fifteen Colonial Thefts amplifies these discussions, exploring the history of colonial violence in Africa through the prism of fifteen African belongings - all looted at the height of the imperial era and brought to European museums.

Structured around three arenas - the battlefield, the royal palace, and the realm of the sacred - the book displays how colonial officers violently plundered Africa. It explores the meaning of those cultural artefacts at the time of their appropriation and today in an era of restitution.

With writers from Europe and Africa, including scientists, museum professionals, artists and activists, the book illuminates the collective trauma and loss of cultural, historical and spiritual knowledge that colonial theft engendered.