British museums should send back thousands of objects taken from former colonies to help build bridges in the post-Brexit world, according to the historian David Olusoga.

Olusoga, who was one of the three presenters of the recent BBC series Civilisations, told the Hay literary festival that European and American museums were full of objects taken in violent raids from countries that are now the UK’s trading partners.

“If the world is pivoting to Asia,” he said, “if our relationship with the Commonwealth after Brexit [is] ... going to be more important, they remember what happened, and they remember the things that were taken. There are real senses of loss in those countries – it’s beneficial to us as a nation to listen to those appeals.”

He told the audience a friend of his had come up with a solution: “He said we should have a special version of Supermarket Sweep where every country is given a huge shopping trolley and two minutes in the British Museum. Maybe he’s right, maybe that’s the way forward.”

Olusoga, who arrived in the UK from Nigeria as a child, has a particular interest in the Benin bronzes that are housed in the British Museum and other museums across Europe. He said the case to return them was particularly compelling.

Some of the 900 bronze relief plaques known as the Benin bronzes. Photograph: Alamy Stock Photo

“I think it’s a very, very clear case of appropriation and theft,” he said. “They were taken in 1897 during the raid on the Palace of Benin. The palace was destroyed; they were taken and then sold to pay for the cost of the military adventure. Everyone was open about this – steal this stuff, send it to pay for the cost of the bullets. It’s just such a stark case of theft.”



He said there were around 4,000 objects taken from the Nigerian palace that were national treasures.

“The idea that your national treasure would be in the museum of another country is something that as British people we would find absolutely impossible to get our heads around,” he said, “but that’s what Nigerians have to think about.

“The things that we regard as the greatest cultural artefacts, the greatest things we ever produced, our greatest works of art are in the museums of other countries, and we know the date they were taken and the circumstances they were taken.”



If museums only sent what was back in storage, “you would have the biggest collection in Nigeria”.

One of the most high-profile and perennially contentious cases involves the Parthenon marbles in the British Museum, taken from Greece by Lord Elgin in the early 19th century.

Olusoga believes they should go back, as should objects taken from the summer palace in Beijing in 1860 by Elgin’s son.

Olusoga said he was brought up in Britain by his mother who was determined that her mixed race children would remain connected to their father’s culture.

He was taken to the British Museum and made, “I should stress the word ‘made’”, to read books about African history and Benin.

The Benin bronzes are particularly powerful. “You can’t look at them and not remember where you are when you’re looking at them. Their situation, their geography is part of the story. They are wonderful works of art but they are mainly spread across Europe and America, and therein lies the story.”

There is a moral case for repatriating objects but also a self-interest one in terms of making friends, Olusoga said.

Museums argue that, by law, they are not currently permitted to deaccession the objects.

Many have agreed to repatriate human remains, however, and the V&A recently raised the prospect of sending back treasures taken from Ethiopia – after the capture of the mountain city of Maqdala – on long-term loan.

Many museums have such loans in place but some believe they should go much further. The debate was given impetus in November when Emmanuel Macron, the French president, said in a speech: “African heritage can’t just be in European private collections and museums.”