African Collections in Scottish Museums

The colonial-era extraction of cultural belongings and treasures from the continent of Africa by colonial agents contributed to the globalization of African material cultures. Through the actions of traders, mariners, missionaries, soldiers, engineers, administrators, their families, and others associated with colonization, huge quantities of African material culture entered global circulation, eventually being amassed in private and public collections primarily in North America and Europe. In recent years, this situation has led to growing calls for the repatriation and restitution of African belongings and treasures (Sarr and Savoy 2018) and the return of some collections have slowly taken place (see, for example, “Jesus College returns Benin Bronzes World First” 2021; see also Zetterstrom and Wingfield 2019). In addition, there have been concurrent calls for museums to practice proactive transparency about their colonial-era collections, what they contain, where they came from, how they were obtained, and to research descendant community understandings of their cultural importance, and to communicate this widely, all as part of a wider process of decolonization (see, for example, “Our Statement on Decolonisation”; Museums Association 2025)

Colonialism · Decolonization · Descendant · Globalization · Publishing · Repatriation · Transparency (behavior · Archaeological Research and Protection · Cultural Heritage Management and Preservation · Museums and Cultural Heritage