Professor Bénédicte Savoy’s influential Africa’s Struggle for Its Art: History of a Postcolonial Defeat is now available in paperback from Princeton University Press. This detailed study, originally a report published by Savoy and her co-writer  in 2018, was critical in the restitution debate.

The restitution debate refers to the ongoing struggle of African nations to reclaim countless artworks stolen during the colonial era and currently housed in Western museums. This complex issue has been a subject of intense debate and negotiation for decades.

In Africa’s Struggle for Its Art, Bénédicte Savoy sheds light on this largely overlooked yet critical historical struggle. As a leading expert on restitution and cultural heritage, Savoy delves into extensive, previously unpublished sources to reveal that the roots of this movement extend far beyond recent debates. She exposes the numerous attempts to suppress these efforts by various opponents.

Shortly after the independence of eighteen former colonies in Africa in 1960, African intellectuals and political leaders spearheaded a movement to repatriate stolen artworks. Savoy examines pivotal events, such as the groundbreaking speech by Zaire’s president, Mobutu Sese Seko, at the UN General Assembly, which ignited the debate on restitution and led to the first UN resolution on the subject. She also explores tactics employed by German museums to conceal information about their inventories and the British Parliament’s failure to pass a proposed amendment to the British Museum Act, which would have protected African cultural heritage. Savoy concludes her analysis in the mid-1980s, when African nations enacted the first laws safeguarding their cultural heritage.

Reflecting on the context of her work, Savoy said in an interview

There is dire need to incorporate the present restitution debate in the longue durée of historical processes, in order to recognise the political, personal, administrative and ideological constellations, which have by now shaped the debate for half a century.

Described by Dan Hicks, Professor of Contemporary Archaeology at Oxford University, as “a ground-breaking book,” Africa’s Struggle for Its Art continues to spark conversations around restitution.

The return of stolen artworks is not merely a symbolic gesture. It is a matter of cultural justice and the recognition of the historical wrongs committed during the colonial era. With the paperback release of this book, Savoy’s crucial study endures in the ethical debates around colonial theft, heightened by the growing concerns of antiracism and decolonialism today.