‘Slavery, Colonialism and Christian Memory: Restitution? Compensation? Or Status Quo?’

Let me start with a story of my personal connection with this topic.

In April 1997, while I was still a doctoral student here at Cambridge, I received a phone call from Miss Betts. She was the Head Teacher of Park Street Church of England Primary School. There was a sign of urgency in her voice. ‘Mr. Dedji, please come to see me as soon as possible in my office, I am having some problems with your daughter Samuella, she said.’ I panicked. Samuella, my eldest daughter was only 9 years old at that time. She and the rest of my family had joined me in Cambridge from Benin, just few months earlier. As such, at that time Samuella could only speak little English. But, when I rushed to the school, Samuella was in Miss Betts’ office, arguing with her. The issue as I was told was that, Samuella and her whole year 4 class, together with their teacher had been to visit an exhibition at the Fitzwilliam Museum about ‘Benin Bronzes’. As soon as they returned back to the school, Samuella went straight to the Head teacher’s Office and was determined not to leave, until the Head Teacher had promised her to do everything in her power, to return those ‘Benin Bronzes’ which according to Samuella had been stolen from Benin, her native country. I had to take the challenging responsibility to reassure my nine years old daughter Samuella that I would do everything in my power to make sure that one day, the ‘Benin Bronzes’ would be returned to their places of origins.

That was my very first personal major wake-up call about the question of whether or not, there should be a restitution project by Western museums, universities, churches and private collectors about African artefacts that have been taken away during the period of colonisation. More crucially, my daughter Samuella showed me the way to go about this issue of restitution: leaders at every level in the West should be held accountable for those historic acts of injustice against African and Caribbean people. You can imagine how thrilled I was when, last year (2021) President Macron surprised everyone by deciding to return to Benin 26 works of art looted by France’s colonial troops.

As the late President of Senegal, Leopold Sédar Senghor quite rightly put it:

It is not a matter of reviving the past, or living in a kind of African museum; it is a matter of animating the world, here and now, with the values of our past.’¹

In 1992, the Organisation of African Unity set up a restitution committee and, a few years later Bernie Grant emulated the same idea, on behalf of a number of Caribbean nations. That started an international movement whose objectives were about:

The Recognition of the injustice that African and Caribbean nations were subjects to, due to slavery and colonialism. This is crucial, because till today, there is no international day to commemorate the memory of African and Caribbean slaves, in the same way that there is a Holocaust Memorial Day.

In fact, the debates about the restitution of African and Caribbean cultural, religious and historic properties started as far back to the time of Queen Victoria. In a correspondence dated, 4^th July 1850 between King Ghézo, King of Dahomey (present day Benin) and Queen Victoria, King Ghézo wrote:

‘…Some years ago I entrusted two girls and one boy to the care of Mr. Freeman; I Am anxious they should be returned…’²

The issue here was that the ‘Mr. Freeman’ that King Ghézo was referring to was the British Missionary, Thomas Birch Freeman. Upon his visit to the kingdom of Dahomey in March 1843, King Ghézo entrusted those three children to the care of the British missionary to be educated in British schools in order to gain what King Ghézo believed to be the ‘white man’s power’. Clearly, King Ghezo wanted to hold Queen Victoria accountable for the welfare and the safe return of those children.

For the last few decades, the debates about the restitution of all items that belong to Africa has been slowly building up. Recently, this movement took on radical momentum after the murder in the USA of George Floyd and the toppling down of the statue of the ex-slave owner Edward Colston in Bristol on 7^th June 2020. So, the ‘restitution movement’ is now more alive and includes objects which, far from being mere exotic artefacts, represent powerful and sacred symbols of African and Caribbean people’s history, their genius, their belief systems and identity.

We are talking here about items such as:

The Ethiopian Tabots, looted during the battle of Maqdala in 1867 by an overwhelming army of 13,000 British troops led by General Sir Rupert Napier. The Tabot is the foundation of the Ethiopian Orthodox church and is what sanctifies and consecrates a church building. For the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, the Tabot is the representation of the Ark of the Covenant. Commenting on issues around the restitution of The Ethiopian Tabots, this is what Lord Carey Hol, former Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey, stated in the House of Lords on 30^th March 2022:

‘ The issue for me is respecting another nation’s culture and religious values. In the fact that the tabots entered the collection of the British Museum after British troops led by Lord Napier in 1868 looted them, following the Battle of Maqdala, would not he agree that Her Majesty’s Government bear some basic moral responsibility? As that is surely the case, would the Government give some words of encouragement – and I believe that they have implied something – to the trustees of the British Museum to do the right thing and return the Tabots to Ethiopia?’

The emotional and sentimental dimensions of restitution include the ancestral remains of:

The Ethiopian Emperor Towodoro who committed suicide during the battle of Maqdala with a gun that Queen Victoria sent him.

The call for reparation is based on the Biblical and theological principle of a ‘Restorative Justice’. It is a fundamental ethical issue. What is at stake is about setting up a mechanism of accountability towards nations whose natural wealth and national heritage have been unjustly plundered. Therefore, status quo is not an option.

More precisely, it is becoming increasingly clear that the multi-layer consequences of slavery and colonialism are parts of the main causes of the economic underdevelopment of many African and Caribbean countries. Consequently, it would be very difficult for those African and Caribbean nations to emerge from their socio-economic turmoil without a conscientious programme of reparation or compensation from Western highly developed countries. To back that theory, the New York Times has published recently (starting from 25^th May 2022), a series of articles showing how, after 64 years of their independence, Haiti was forced to pay the equivalent of 115 Billions of Dollars to France because of the uprising of Haitian slaves led by Toussaint Louverture against their French colonial masters (1787-1799)³. Also, by the end of the 19^th century, French authorities vandalised the National Bank of Haiti by illegally withdrawing millions of US Dollars that were used to build the Eiffel Tower. It is important to remember that, at that time, no one came to help Haiti.

Haiti was the only Black free country in the Americas, and it was a pariah. The British didn’t want to recognize it because they had Jamaica and Barbados as colonies. The Americans most certainly did not want to recognize it; they still hadn’t ended slavery.

On the other hand, on the African continent on 11 August 2015, speaking at the celebrations marking the 55th anniversary of the independence of Chad, the late President Idriss Deby declared, ‘we must have the courage to say there is a cord preventing development in Africa that must be cut off.’

The ‘cord’ he was referring to is now over 76 years old. It is known by the acronym ‘CFA franc’. The CFA franc – originally the French African Colonial franc – was officially created on 26 December 1945 by a decree of General de Gaulle. It is a colonial currency, born of France’s need to foster economic integration among the colonies under its administration, and thus control their resources, economic structures and political systems. Thus, the Central Bank of West African States (BCEAO) and the Bank of Central African States (BEAC) – have been required to deposit 50 per cent of their foreign exchange reserves in a special French Treasury ‘operating account’. From 1973 to 2005, the said figure has been raised to 65 per cent. Think about that!

So, in the face of all this, what should be the role of Churches and Church’ institutions?

Let us remember that slavery and colonialism took place according the rule of ‘The 3 Ms’: Missionaries – Merchants – Military. Therefore, because right from the beginning, church’ institutions were part of the problem, they also have to be part of the solution. So, my suggestion is that the role of Churches should be:

Educational: Indeed, we know the historic opposition of the Methodist Church to slavery and I have always been inspired by John Wesley’s life-long fight against slavery. More particularly, Wesley’s booklet ‘Thoughts upon Slavery’⁴ had a profound impact on me, well before I came to England. It was one of the first documents that I translated into French. Wesley’s point was always that all slavery is as irreconcilable to justice as to mercy. Therefore today, unless we educate our Church ministers, theological students and church members to understand the moral and psychological effects of slavery on the descendants of ex-slaves, we would still have a long way to go. It was interesting to hear Prince Charles suggesting recently during the Common Wealth summit in Rwanda that education about slavery should be included in school’s curriculum.

This should be the right moment to reflect profoundly on what it means to be a Justice-seeking church.

Additionally, at the heart of the book of Leviticus 25, is the Biblical mandate of the Jubilee. Jubilee provides the church with a template where the concepts of ‘restitution’, ‘restoration’ and ‘reparation’ should become a life-style, not waiting for fifty years. Authentic restitution, restoration and reparation should stem from our theological integrity. Biblically, Israel’s identity, or what it means to belong to the Hebrew people, consists in doing justice to the poor and to all those who have been abused and restoring their rights that have been trampled. Our God whom we serve is revealed as the one who does justice on behalf of His people. Consequently, when the Jewish people do not do justice to the poor, and the vulnerable, they are traitors to themselves. Therefore, today, the true identity of our Christian communities and institutions would be genuinely established only by how we do justice towards the downtrodden of this world; otherwise, there is a contradiction of the very essence of the ecclesial community.