Should former empires return removed relics (and do we get the sword back)?

Late in 2018 President Macron of France, leader of a former colonial power, declared that his country would return 26 looted treasures to the African state of Benin. He was taking delivery of an independent report he had commissioned, which sent shockwaves through museums around the world. The Savoy-Sarr report had recommended that objects removed in colonial times without the consent of their country of origin be permanently returned, if the country asks for them.

According to many art historians the French President had swept aside decades of museum policy. As recent as this year other declarations by a group of museums, defended their collections stressing the importance and value of ‘universal’ museums: “Over time, objects so acquired – whether by purchase, gift or portage – have become part of the museums that have cared for them, and by extension part of the heritage of the nations which house them”.

Tristram Hunt, Victoria and Albert Museum director, believes that to ‘decolonise’ a museum is to ‘decontextualise’ it. Contrastingly he sees the creation of more universal museums – across Africa, India and the global south – as the real challenge, detaching the “encyclopaedic museum from its colonial preconditions and reimagine it as a new medium for multicultural understanding”.

The dagger belonging to Grand Master de Valette was e on exhibition in Malta in 2017 - former Malta PM Joseph Muscat seen admiring it here. In 2017 only the dagger was lent to Malta as sword was undergoing maintenance by the Louvre labs.

Unlawfully removed objects

During these months of negotiations with Britain exiting the EU, Greece, backed by Italy, renewed its demands for the restitution of the Parthenon marbles (classical Greek sculptures). Buoyed by the vanity of imperial Britain, Lord Elgin early in the 19th century had removed the marbles to Britain via Malta – where the ship lost its treasures at sea and had to be retrieved – for his personal use, later selling them to the British Museum.

Greece has inserted a clause in the EU’s draft negotiating a mandate for a trade deal with Britain which calls for the return of “unlawfully removed cultural objects” to their place of origin. In this stance the Mediterranean state appears to have the support of Romantic British poet Lord Byron, who in Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, laments the removal of the sculptures from the Athenian temple: “Dull is the eye that will not weep to see / Thy walls defaced, thy mouldering shrines removed / By British hands.”  This Greek claim sparked a world-wide controversy. In the UK some see it as ‘a joke’, others believe that failing to respond to this petition Britain would be seen as having become ‘so mesmerised by its own lost empire that it is incapable of restoring a past injustice’.

Returning removed cultural objects to their country of origin always makes interesting reading. Raphael Vassallo (Great, so when do we get La Valette’s sword back?, MT, Feb. 23), focusing on Malta, queries the possible return of La Valette’s ornamental sword from France. It is perhaps worthwhile here to highlight a point or two on historical facts as regards the sword (and dagger) which are now in the Louvre. The decorative arms, which were given to the Grandmaster by the Spanish king Felipe II after the Island’s victory of the Great Siege of 1565, were removed by General Napoleon Bonaparte from Valletta in 1798.

First of all, in my opinion, all former powers should seriously consider the return of other nation’s national artefacts as they certainly help to further strengthen diplomatic and friendly bonds. Since former colonial powers have more than enough items of their own I see no need for them to hang on to other nation’s relics.

When La Valette died in 1568 the sword and dagger became the property of the Order. On June 12, 1798 a Convention was signed between General Bonaparte on behalf of the Republic of France and the Order of the Knights to pass all of their possessions and property to the French Republic. Besides the Spanish ambassador, this international agreement was officially signed and sanctioned by four Maltese deputies namely Baron Mario Testaferrata, ex-uditori Benedetto Schembri and Gio. Nicolò Muscat and ex-counsellor F. T. Bonanni. They were representing some four thousand Maltese literati gathered in Valletta two days before imploring Grandmaster Hompesch to surrender the Island to the French. One observes that up to 1964, this was the only instance, in Malta’s long history of changing suzerains, that the Maltese themselves had been invited to partake to any international treaty that concerned their destiny.

The 1814 plaque on top of the Main Guard in front of the President’s Palace claiming British possession through the ‘love’ of the Maltese when prominent Maltese citizens were only informed of the Island’s absorption in the British Empire three years later

Claiming ownership of iconic artefacts

Therefore the removal of any of the Order’s treasures from Malta by the French during this period, legally speaking, could not be described as looting. Yet only a few years later a chance of retrieving some of these objects was possibly missed.

According to the Treaty of Paris, confirmed later in Vienna (1814-15), when Malta was unqualifiedly claimed by Britain as a permanent possession, France bound itself to pay seven hundred million francs to the victorious allies, its ex-enemies, in indemnity for war damages, and restore the art treasures removed from Europe during the Napoleonic Wars. Great Britain’s share of compensation funds amounted to one hundred million francs. Although about fifteen European countries qualified for this compensation Malta, a major cause of the same wars, according to the British, did not qualify as it was absorbed by their Empire. No payments or returned items seem to have ever reached the Island.

In spite of a public plaque on St George’s Square, atop what is popularly known as the Main Guard and under the royal British insignia of King George III, declaring Malta to have become a British colony out of its own ‘love’ and the ‘voice of Europe’ to ‘great and unconquered Britain’ – according to historian Alfredo Mifsud (Origine della Sovranità Inglese su Malta) in 1907 – Malta became Britain’s possession without the Maltese ever being consulted. Mifsud argues that Malta was too small to affirm its rights and protestations against being ‘an object of negotiation without its intervention’. He says the Island was given to Great Britain by way of ‘compensation’ following the allies’ ‘arrogance in this congress of wolves’.  In fact Maltese leading citizens in Valletta, to their utter consternation, were only informed of this news – changing the destiny of their country – on December 16, 1818, a good three years later, by Maitland’s secretary at the palace.

Besides imperial arrogance there could have been another reason why British colonial masters had ignored Malta and its possible rights regarding its share of war indemnity by France. Had Britain asked for La Valette’s sword and dagger to be returned, the Maltese would have, most probably, also asked Britain to return the Island’s iconic items, including Grand Master Ximenes’ canon now in the UK, which the British seized from La Sensible while the French were in Malta. This could have been one of the reasons why Britain never bothered with the return of La Valette’s sword and dagger. For the record the Order, in disarray, did not claim anything either.

British pickings from the Valletta Palace

Back to the subject of removed objects from other countries it is pertinent to note that in the 19th century the British colonial authorities in Malta took away many artefacts, paintings and objets d’art without anyone’s consensus. The former Grandmaster’s Palace in Valletta was denuded of its artistic treasures, furniture and other valuable possessions, as well as much of its huge armoury by British governors and military and civilian officials. Judge Giovanni Bonello’s research yielded information regarding such displacement of treasures from Valletta. When Maitland had a palace built for him on Corfu, which he also governed, he had removed several paintings from the Palace which he dispatched to Corfu as adornments. This removal of paintings went on for a long time under different governors with regular public auctions held, during which paintings were sold cheaply.

Bonello speaks of how one of Mattia Preti’s most remarkable works, Boethius consoled by Philosophy, was hanging on a Palace wall but apparently disappeared early on, only to reappear at an auction in New York in 1992. Considered as a “major and sophisticated example of Preti’s themes of a philosophical imprint depicted in Malta” by art expert Professor Keith Sciberras, the Boethius and Philosophy was painted in around 1680. Quite recently, in January 2020, the Maltese government acquired the monumental oil on canvas for the sum of €1,323,000.

It is bad enough to find one’s iconic national treasures in global museums owned by governments from whom one could negotiate their return but it is worse to have to pay huge sums of money to private concerns in order to return removed artistic Maltese artefacts.

Recently one could also appreciate other diplomatic approaches how former powers could enable citizens of victimised countries to relish, even temporarily, their countries’ heirloom. Malta enjoyed such an opportunity when François Hollande, President of France had agreed to loan La Valette’s dagger which was eventually put on exhibit at the Auberge de Provence in Valletta for four months during 2017. When Bonaparte took possession of the sword and dagger in 1798, he sent the sword to France but kept the dagger as his personal talisman (trusting La Valette’s valour would accompany him in his battles) until his death in 1821. The sword and dagger were reunited when they were displayed for the first time at the Louvre in 1852.

Unfortunately it was a different story with the decorative Ximenes canon. When a number of years ago it was exhibited in Rome along with other European weaponry, the Maltese request to exhibit it also in Malta was officially turned down by the UK authorities.

Finally one would do well to further reflect in this regard upon two other points.   

History seems to have repeated itself after WWII in the case of the Marshall Recovery Aid which offered economic and other assistance by the United States to countries that suffered war damage. Again Malta was at a disadvantage because it was a British colony and could not qualify for aid on its own. This issue was on the forefront in post-war elections as it featured in the electoral programme of Malta’s Labour Party in 1950.

Regarding La Valette’s sword it is worth remembering that the real historic sword, the one with which the famous grandmaster fought the Ottomans in 1565, has been lying away from the national spotlight for more than four and a half centuries in a small parochial museum in Vittoriosa.