France has returned three colonial-era human skulls to Madagascar, including one believed to have belonged to a Malagasy king executed by French troops in a 19th-century massacre.
The skull, presumed to be that of King Toera, and two others from the Sakalava ethnic group were handed over to Malagasy representatives at the French Culture Ministry on Monday. French colonial forces killed Toera in 1897, and his skull was taken to France, where it was later displayed in Paris’s National Museum of Natural History alongside other human remains taken from Madagascar, an island off the east African coast in the Indian Ocean.
“These skulls entered the national collections in circumstances that clearly violated human dignity and in a context of colonial violence,” said French Culture Minister Rachida Dati, describing the moment as “historic.” Her Madagascar counterpart, Volamiranty Donna Mara, welcomed the return of the skulls as “an immensely significant gesture.” “Their absence has been, for more than a century, 128 years, an open wound in the heart of our island,” she said.
France has in recent years accelerated its return of artworks looted in the colonial era to their countries of origin. But President Emmanuel Macron’s broader ambitions for restitution have been hampered by the country’s heritage code, which classifies museum holdings as “inalienable.” Much of his administration’s legislative work has focused on streamlining the historically arduous process of deaccessioning. Earlier this year, the government introduced legislation that would make it easier to restitute objects from the national collection that were taken from states “deprived of them through illicit appropriation” between 1815 and 1972.
The law would apply to items acquired through “theft, looting, forced transfers, or donations made under coercion or violence,” or taken from individuals without the legal authority to dispose of them, the culture ministry said. The bill is scheduled to be debated in France’s Senate in September.
Since his election in 2017, Macron has made a particular effort to address the lasting trauma of France’s former African colonies. In 2023, the National Assembly overcame Senate opposition to transfer ownership of 26 stolen royal artifacts from the Musée du Quai Branly–Jacques Chirac to Benin, along with one object from the Army Museum to Senegal. Those works were returned on the condition that they “continue to be preserved and presented to the public in places dedicated to this [cultural] function.”
During a visit to Antananarivo, the capital of Madagascar, in April, Macron vowed to seek “forgiveness” for France’s “bloody and tragic” colonial years on the island, according to Le Monde.
