El Hadj Omar Tall was an interesting figure, and not a traditional hereditary African ruler. He was a commoner who rose through his scholarly abilities and forceful personality to be an imam in the Sufi branch of Islam. He raised an army of 50,000 men armed with French rifles and with Western advisers, and launched a jihad against animist tribes and kingdoms in Western Africa. After they were subdued he attacked smaller Muslim kingdoms, some of which banded together and defeated him at Timbuktu. Omar Tall also unsuccessfully attacked a French fort, forcing him into a peace treaty with them. Omar Tall’s successors’ eventually had to deal with complete French hegemony over their short lived empire. It can be argued that by plunging the entire region into war and rebellion, Omar Tall had paved the way for the French, who certainly gave him those rifles for a reason.
In Omar Tall’s Toucouleur Empire, society was regulated by extreme orthodox Muslim belief and behavior. The whole purpose of the empire was to impose this on the conquered lands. One of those beliefs is that idolatry is evil, so one wonders how many pagan pieces of art were destroyed during the jihad, and how many became plunder before the French turned them into their plunder. Since the Toucouleur Empire only lasted about 30 years, they couldn’t have produced much art of their own, and none of it could have contained depictions of human beings. The Toucouleur are a distinct ethnic group in West Africa now, and I would imagine that it was some of their elders that received Omar Tall’s sword from the French in Senegal, along with Senegalese President Macky Sall. Is it on display somewhere?
The British may have some valuable Ethiopian artifacts, but they also drove Fascist Italy out of Ethiopia, and put Emperor Haile Selassie back on the throne. The emperor had no problem with the UK, who sheltered him when he was in exile. One wonders how the murderous and corrupt Marxist Leninist Derg that strangled him would have handled those treasures when they were in power in Ethiopia. The same question could be asked about how other post independence African regimes that were extremely corrupt and/or unstable would have handled priceless African historical artifacts.
I’m not saying that European museums shouldn’t be talking to Africans about returning some of these artifacts, because they have a lot of them, but they should only be returned to institutions that will properly take care of them, and display them. The people running the European museums care about the artifacts too, and don’t want to see them locked in a warehouse, sitting on some elder’s mantle piece, or sold to some plutocrat. These are World cultural treasures, and should be held by institutions worthy of them.
