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France has formally returned the skull of King Toera, a Malagasy ruler killed by French troops during the colonial conquest of Madagascar in the late 19th Century.
At a ceremony in Paris, King Toera’s remains – along with the skulls of two members of his court – were handed over to Madagascar’s Culture Ministry. The skulls had been held for nearly 130 years in the collections of the Museum of Natural History.
The transfer marks the first use of a new French law designed to speed up the restitution of human remains taken during colonial times.
“These skulls entered the national collections in circumstances that clearly violated human dignity and in a context of colonial violence,” said French Culture Minister Rachida Dati at the handover.
King Toera was killed in August 1897 when French forces crushed the Menabé kingdom of the Sakalava people in western Madagascar. His head was decapitated and sent to Paris as a war trophy. For generations, his descendants and the Malagasy government have pressed for its return.
Although DNA tests could not conclusively identify the remains, a traditional Sakalava spirit medium confirmed that the skull belonged to the monarch.
Madagascar’s Culture Minister Volamiranty Donna Mara hailed the restitution as a “significant gesture,” calling the century-long absence of the king’s remains “an open wound in the heart of our island.”
France has previously repatriated colonial-era human remains, including those of Sarah Baartman – the South African woman derogatorily known as the “Hottentot Venus” – in 2012. But this is the first return carried out under the new restitution law, which could pave the way for many more.
The Museum of Natural History alone holds more than 20,000 human remains acquired from around the world during the colonial period, many under dubious circumstances.
