In 2018, Senegalese economist Felwine Sarr and French art historian Bénédicte Savoy published, at the request of French president Emanuel Macron, a report advocating the unconditional restitution of the vast quantity of African art objects held in French national museums.

Recounting the violent colonial origins of some of the more famous groups of objects in France, they placed the French case within the larger context of European colonial collecting on the African continent and reiterated the shocking statistic that 90-95% of sub-Saharan Africa’s material cultural heritage now resides outside the African continent.

As Sarr and Savoy explain, “the absence of cultural heritage can render memory silent” and creates difficulties in the “construction of a political community and a project for the future.” The report spurred a variety of reactions.

Those who oppose restitution have sounded the alarm about a mass exodus from western museum collections, defended the paradigm of the universal museum, made allegations about protectionism and the reimprisonment of African objects beyond the reach of Europeans, voiced warnings about the death of Africanist art history, pointed out the contradictions inherent in returning African artifacts to oppressive African regimes, and filed lawsuits defending the rights of the descendants of enslaved Africans to access African heritage in the United States.

By contrast, the report has led some African governments to relaunch restitution campaigns; has instigated successful restitutions by national governments, museums, universities and private individuals in Europe and North America; and has led to creative reappropriations by contemporary artists on the continent.

It is important to note, however, that restitution requests did not start recently.

In 1872, Emperor Yohannes IV of Ethiopia wrote to Queen Victoria requesting the return of just two of the hundreds of items taken from his father’s citadel and a nearby church in Maqdala when the British destroyed them in 1868. Only one of the two was returned and the majority remain in England today.

Decades later, in 1947, Ethiopia’s peace treaty with Italy, signed on the occasion of the Allied Powers’ victory, specified the restitution of all cultural property. Nevertheless, Italy continued to hold Ethiopian heritage hostage.

Many Africans had given up on restitution by the 1980s in the face of authoritarian regimes and economic decline on the continent. One prominent exception was Germany’s return, in 2000, of the missing half of a soapstone bird spirited away from the monumental and sacred site Great Zimbabwe at the end of the nineteenth century. It was only in 2018, with the publication of the Sarr and Savoy report, that the movement to reinstitute Africa’s material heritage gained new momentum.

Almost two decades of researching and teaching histories of African architecture allowed me to recognize the large numbers of African architectural works still hidden in plain sight in western collections. In their report, Sarr and Savoy make only one offhand reference to “architectural ornaments” in a list of the genres of objects obtained by western museums as spoils, scientific samples, gifts from private collectors and through illicit trafficking.

But noted historian of African architecture Labelle Prussin had pointed out this phenomenon as early as 1974. Prussin compared the dislocation of architectural works from sub-Saharan Africa to earlier removals from Egypt, and referenced textiles as an underrecognized category of African architecture and a prominent genre of collectible.

In addition to works of art, religious paraphernalia and objects of everyday use, westerners have appropriated elements of African architecture and components of the built environment. Unlike some of the previously mentioned categories, architectural works were not inherently portable and their dislocation — especially from intact buildings — often required an entirely different scale of effort and level of violence.

Likewise, their removal created an entirely different type of injury. What does it mean to recognize that what was taken was not “merely” art but also the very structures we inhabited and the floors we walked on?

Acknowledging this crime adds further moral strength to demands for restitution. It reveals an additional layer and scale of loss.

To examine African architecture in museums is to raise many of the questions raised in other investigations of the subject: What is architecture? What constitutes ornament in relation to architecture? What is structure? How do materials and construction technologies function?

However, approaching the African architecture from this angle also offers unique insights: It bypasses purely ethnic, national, geographic and chronological surveys in lieu of a comparative approach that situates architecture firmly as a player in complex historical, political, economic and social developments.

Excerpted from “Africa’s Buildings: Architecture and the Displacement of Cultural Heritage,” published by Princeton University Press and reprinted here by permission.

This post was originally published on Next City.