STOLEN GOODS will always be
STOLEN GOODS M
BY FINTAN WARFIELD
oai are the monolithic human figures carved by the Rapa Nui people of Easter Island. Weighing four tonnes, one of these monumental statues has stood inside the door of the British Museum for 150 years. The Elgin Marbles and the Benin Bronzes are other wellknown artefacts that share a common thread; local people want them returned and campaigners are calling for their repatriation. The National Museum of Ireland, the Hunt Museum in Limerick, and, possibly, the Ulster Museum all hold material looted during the destruction of Benin City, Nigeria (then the Kingdom of Benin) by British forces in 1897, according to Dan Hicks, Professor of Contemporary Archaeology at the University of Oxford. Museums across France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Germany – the former imperial capitals – are packed with collections, objects, and artefacts that have imperialist and colonial origins. These ethnographic collections consist of items of human activity; including, but not limited to, art and sculpture, weapons, clothing, jewellery, tools, and decorations. The National Museum of Ireland is home to around 11,000 objects and artefacts that form part of a nonEuropean ethnographic collection acquired between 1760 and 1914. This collection contains concrete examples of people’s culture from the Pacific, Asia, Africa, and the Americas and has been described by Dr William Hart of Ulster University as one of the finest of its kind in the world. The National Museum of Ireland currently holds its non-European ethnographic collection in storage at Collins Barracks, Dublin, while ethnographic material from Ireland is displayed at the National Museum’s Folk and
Country Life site in Turlough Park, County Mayo. Why does the National Museum of Ireland hold objects from around the world? The National Museum of Ireland holds items that it would never collect today. This is because its collection is built on the collections of other institutions. The Museum of Science and Art, Dublin was established by an Act of Parliament in 1877. This Act transferred the collections and buildings of the Royal Dublin Society (RDS) into state ownership. Trinity College Dublin and the Royal Irish Academy later transferred much of their collections to the Museum of Science and Art in 1890 and 1894 respectively. After Partition, the Museum of Science and Art, Dublin was renamed and became the National Museum of Ireland. Rachel Hand, writing in the extremely informative ‘Exhibit Ireland: Ethnographic Collections in Ireland’, explains that “the majority of these collections were acquired during the heyday of the British Empire, between 1860 and 1914.” Hand continues, “the varied background to the acquisition of this material by individuals, travellers and servicemen meant that its collection was rarely systematic” and this “is the case in most museums with historic collections”. “Collected by military men and their families, colonial officials and explorers, the ethnographic material of these early museums, including the Royal Dublin Society and Trinity College Dublin, is typical of the common interest in artificial curiosities among the educated upper classes – weapons, tools, and clothing of peoples in far-flung exotic lands.”
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ther objects in the non-European ethnographic collection held by the National Museum of Ireland include a great deal of material from southern Africa, reflecting the British colonial presence there, and includes objects from the Zulu Wars. There are also objects from the Maori Wars. Some of the material also came from surveys of the Pacific by the HMS Herald in the 1850s, which were originally acquired by the Royal Dublin Society. The National Museum of Ireland website also documents a Nuu-chah-nulth (Nootka) whaling hat, “probably brought back from Captain Cook’s third voyage”. While some items in the collection are self-described as loot or taken during battles as trophies of war, not all of the artefacts were taken by force and many would have been souvenirs from people’s travels. In a colonial ISSUE NUMBER 1 – 2021 - UIMHIR EISIÚNA 1 anphoblacht
