Skulls of Malagasy King and Courtiers Returned to Madagascar After Nearly 130 Years in France

After nearly 130 years, the skull of King Toera, a Malagasy monarch killed by French troops during a colonial-era war, has been formally returned to Madagascar, along with the remains of two members of his court.

The handover took place at a ceremony at the French Ministry of Culture in Paris, marking the first return under a new law designed to expedite the repatriation of human remains from French collections.

“These skulls entered the national collections in circumstances that clearly violated human dignity and in a context of colonial violence,” French Culture Minister Rachida Dati said during the ceremony, AFP reports.

King Toera was killed and decapitated in August 1897, when French forces sought to assert control over the Menabé kingdom of the Sakalava people in western Madagascar. His head, along with those of his courtiers, was sent to Paris and stored in the archives of the Museum of Natural History.

Pressure from the king’s descendants and the Malagasy government eventually paved the way for their return. Madagascar’s Culture Minister Volamiranty Donna Mara described the repatriation as a “significant gesture.”

“Their absence has been, for more than a century… an open wound in the heart of our island,” Mara said.

France has previously returned human remains from the colonial era, including the body of a South African woman cruelly nicknamed the “Hottentot Venus,” which was repatriated in 2012. However, this is the first return facilitated under the recent law, which aims to simplify the repatriation process.

It is estimated that the Museum of Natural History alone houses over 20,000 human remains brought to France from across the world under the guise of scientific study.

This historic repatriation, coming almost 130 years after King Toera’s death, is seen as a step toward acknowledging past injustices and restoring dignity to the victims of colonial violence.

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