Asante treasures, from Victorian England to museum cabinets: how the repatriation debate is taking shape

In the galleries of two major London museums, traces of Victorian England's military operations in Africa remain on view: gold ornaments, fragments of the royal throne and symbolic animal-motif artefacts taken from the central regions of present-day Ghana during the 1874 Asante War. HistoryExtra's broad feature dossier examines how these objects entered the museums and how the contemporary repatriation debate is redefining the ethics of collecting.

The Asante (Ashanti) empire developed structural power from the 17th century in the gold-rich central regions of West Africa. The empire's capital, Kumasi, contained a developed war economy and metallurgical culture. Asante goldwork (sika) was a symbol of the king's (Asantehene's) power and functioned as a sacred object.

The British Colonial Office sought through the 19th century to secure Asante's gold mines and to control the coastal trade routes. When the British Coast Castle network from Gambia to the Atlantic coast clashed with the Asantehene's sovereign rights, the Third Anglo-Asante War broke out in 1874. A force under Sir Garnet Wolseley took Kumasi and seized the royal palace, plundering more than 1,000 kg of gold artefacts among other items.

The seized objects were brought to the Tower in London and divided between the V&A and the British Museum in 1875. Dr Sarah Worden, professor of African studies at Cambridge University, told HistoryExtra that 'the Asante objects are perhaps the most symmetrically documented case of looting in British collections; the official records contain the war and date at which each piece was taken'.

The repatriation debate grew slowly over the years. The first post-independence request, in 1957, was raised in an official letter from Ghana's President Kwame Nkrumah to British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan; however, the British Museum Act (1963) limited the trustees' authority to permanently dispose of objects. In his reply to the letter, Macmillan said that 'collection policy is bound by statutory regulation'.

The February 2024 agreement was a legal turning point. The three-year repayment agreement between Asantehene Otumfuo Osei Tutu II and George Osborne, chair of the British Museum trustees, moved 32 objects to Kumasi on a long-term loan basis. This was not the first major instance of the British Museum returning an object from a core collection in its history (an Eskimo object was returned to the Smithsonian in 1995); however, in scale and symbolic significance it was unprecedented.

A critical nuance: all 32 objects are on temporary display at the Manhyia Palace Museum in Kumasi, while legal ownership remains with the British state. According to HistoryExtra, the Asantehene's representatives continue to work for full repatriation; the British Museum trustees say a new Act of Parliament would be needed for 'permanent restitution'.

There are several positions in the academic debate. Dr Adam Joseph, an African art historian at the University of Manchester, said that 'the repatriation debate must include not only the object but also the form of knowledge the collection has produced; can scholarly work on the making of Asante objects at the British Museum continue without them?'. In opposing position, British Museum director Hartwig Fischer, in a 2023 lecture, defended the 'universal museum' model as critical for global scholarship.

For the Ghanaian government, the issue is part of a project to redress the cultural impact of colonialism. Ghana's Minister for Culture and Arts Dr Gifty Twum-Ampofo told BBC Africa that 'where an object is displayed determines what it can say to the community to which it belongs'. Twum-Ampofo said annual visitor numbers to Asante objects at the Manhyia Palace Museum rose 47 per cent in 2024.

The repatriation movement has triggered a broad international dialogue between scholars and communities assessing the multi-generational impact of colonial-era looting. The Nigerian request to return the Benin Bronzes, the Greek debate over the Parthenon Marbles (formerly known as the Elgin Marbles), and Egypt's call for the return of the Rosetta Stone are being considered within the same framework. The Asante agreement is starting to function as a model for these movements; the next five years could be a potentially transformative period for the ethics of collecting.