Operation Legacy: Looting & Losing Africa's Kingdoms

By Olasupo Shasore

Operation Legacy Looting and Losing Africa's Kingdoms is a treatment of how colonial powers looted precious artefacts across Africa; still hold them in personal and public collections, some known and others unknown; and the violence of the looting and its consequences. The story reaches back into the basic assumptions around colonial rule and de

• Language: English
• Publisher: Quramo Publishing
• Release date: Apr 1, 2023
• ISBN: 9782222815419

Book preview

Acknowledgements

A book project ensures you draw from the reservoir of debts in the world. As a result, I am clearly indebted to the many unsuspecting people that I bounced ideas off, who gave me their heartfelt answers not knowing how much they were helping my cause. To all of you, I say thank you.

My many thanks to Quramo Productions for the use of some images from the documentary film produced as The Loot and the Lost Kingdoms. Each of these twin projects (the book and the documentary) were enjoyable to work on because of your professionalism and creativity.

Thank you to Rotimi Odugbemi, of my publisher, for the work we did together on the cover design, and to my publisher’s assigned editor, Uthman Adejumo, for painstaking editing.

I am particularly indebted to Dr Muftau ‘Segun Jimoh, lecturer at Federal University, Birnin Kebbi, a great representative of University of Ibadan and my very able historical researcher and consultant.

To the entire staff of Quramo Publishing for the work they put into this book and for all they do in the industry.

To my family, thank you for all the usual moral support and encouragement.

Preface

…perhaps in the future there will be some African history to teach, (now) darkness is not a subject of history (Africa has no history)

Professor Hugh Trevor Roper, 1962

….no one preaches better than the ant, and she says nothing

Benjamin Franklin

This book idea and its early sketches were developed over time, starting just before the COVID-19 outbreak, while I was at Nairobi trying to get back to Lagos before what was to become known as the first worldwide ‘lockdown’. The idea for the book and a documentary therefore developed at the same time. As I started to write, it became clear I had a lot of research work to do especially in an area of history that was not exactly my comfort zone—African medieval history. In addition to that, I was taking on the world of archaeology, that adjunct of history that uses artefact discovery to help us understand better the sequence of what history has itself unearthed. Together, these disciplines help us all understand what happened and why they happened—even if only in part.

This partnership is all the more important in Africa, where we have been deceptively taught, and are still trying to unlearn, that ancient Africa has no written records.

In many ways, Africa remains a prisoner of this fabricated past neatly constructed, before, during and after colonial rule, for good reason.

I was taken in and remain enamoured by the Afrocentric historians who led the charge to correct this false narrative that there is no African ancient History. You will find these great historians in the pages of this book.

For this reason I embarked on my own quest, hopefully to shed my own ‘light’ on Professor Hugh Ropers’ allegation of African ‘darkness’; thereby I am modestly contributing to the mission of those great Africanists, to show today’s generations and then some that Africa has indeed been the ‘light’ of the world throughout history, in many respects.

Importantly, the title, Operation Legacy, was the most recent iteration of this colonial determination to cover a continent (and elsewhere to be fair) in contrived ‘darkness’. Therefore, if uncovering denial of history was the attraction, the overarching, compelling motivation was finally provided by ‘Operation Legacy’ and the resulting ‘migrated archives’ that you will come across in the pages to come.

It is my hope that this book, like the documentary incidentally called The Loot and the Lost Kingdoms: A Quest for Who We Are, which will be released soon, will receive wide circulation, and I enjoin your assistance in that regard. This is because this is an important story of an important part of world heritage that could be lost forever if we do not keep unlearning the old past and relearning our real past.

Olasupo Shasore

Lagos, October 2022

Contents

Acknowledgements

Preface

Contents

INTRODUCTION

AFRICA IN THE AGE OF DARWIN

OF JAPHETH, HAM AND CANAAN: THE SONS OF NOAH

What Does the Hypothesis Mean for Africa?

THE EMPIRE WRITES BACK

Africans Study History of their Written History

The ‘Dike Revolution’ and the New Schools of History

Adu Boahen and the Making of Ghana’s Historiography

‘DARKEST’ AFRICA? ARCHAEOLOGY AND NEW SOLUTIONS TO ‘AN OLD PROBLEM’

Prof. Charles Thurstan Shaw

Unlocking Africa’s Unwritten Past: Discoveries at Igbo-Ukwu, Nok, Iwo-Eleru Rock Shelter

‘A Well of Discoveries’—Igbo-Ukwu

‘A ‘Scarecrow’ of Burnt Clay’: Nok

‘A Cave of Ashes’—Iwo-Eleru

‘The Lost Atlantis’—Ancient lle-Ife Kingdom and its Early Glass-Making Technology

Whose Culture? Whose Objects?: Implications of these Discoveries to Global History

MEDICINE IN PRE-COLONIAL AFRICA’

Early Immunisation

Snake Venom

Herbal Treatments

FROM THE ‘AGENTS OF CHANGE’ TO ‘THE WINDS OF CHANGE’

The Change—Macmillan ‘The Super Mac’

OF ARCHIVES, MUSEUMS AND AFRICAN MATERIAL CULTURES

Operation Legacy—‘The Whitewash’: Mutua et al. vs UK (The Mau Mau Case)

Changing History

Cracks in the Dome: Fractured Histories of Empire in the Zanzibar Museum, 1897–1964

Who to Trust; Who Not to Trust in the Operation

Migrated

The Survivors

The Right to Keep: Whose History, Whose Property?

LOOTING

Five Masks

The Studded Leopard

Spiritual Identity

Where are They?

Making Their Way Back Home

THE LOOTED AND THE RIGHT OF RETURN

Pressure to Return Artefacts

Is Returning the Loot Enough?

THE PAST AS A CONTINUUM

The Aftermath: The Colonial ‘Hunchback’

Access to Migrated Files

Epilogue

Appendix 1

Appendix 2

References

Index

PART ONE

INTRODUCTION

Exactly who coined the code name ‘Operation Legacy’ for the scheme is unclear. But it was coined in the back and forth between the Protectorate of Uganda officials and the British colonial office in 1961¹.

Shortly after, the more observant East African subjects in the British Colony and Protectorate of Kenya as well as the British Protectorate of Uganda would have noticed well-choreographed ‘bonfires’ on the sprawling stately grounds of various colonial homes of senior staff in both countries. These British subjects could be forgiven for not knowing exactly what was going on, what on earth was being burnt. Our East African subjects might even have answered themselves with a shrug of the shoulders, not knowing that history was being destroyed, literally being lit up in flames.

The scheme for the sea operation was a bit more elaborate: crates of records were to be taken out to sea, and the records were to be packed in weighted crates and dumped in very deep and current-free water at maximum practicable distance from the coast². Clearly, the intent would be to ensure the weighted crates and their contents would never be discovered or recovered. History was being drowned.

Unsuspecting, the East Africans were in a state of high excitement. These British masters, the colonials, were leaving soon anyway and the African subjects’ home countries would have a taste of self-rule with its much-expected promise.

A couple of years later in 1963, a jumbo jet landed at Gatwick Airport, London, on a late autumn morning, carrying crates of files from the Kenya administration, discreetly moving them out of public view, in utter secret. History was being concealed.

These events were part of the scheme carried out across Africa and other territories. Operation Legacy appeared not to refer to any legacy of value left behind for Africa; it was a reference to another legacy, the one the departing colonial authorities were selecting to leave behind (or take with them).

The scheme was all part of a continuous mission of colonial domination to hold on to power and maintain domination, even after leaving. It was intricately linked to the thinking behind denying Africa’s position in world history. ‘Losing’ by denial—the history of those ancient civilisations and then the invasive conquest. This inherently included looting (read stealing) and destroying heritage assets of Africa.

In this book, we see that looting records, stealing artefacts and denying existence of Africa’s history of civilised kingdoms was one continuous scheme, essential to colonial domination—it was one long ‘operation’.

The looting and the losing of Africa’s kingdoms now tells us some of who we were, what we knew, when we knew (and what we still do not know) of Africa’s heritage and the colonial legacy in Africa.

Looting African kingdoms, however justifiable in the minds of colonial powers, and denying Africa’s civilisations, however explained by the ignorance of the past, are all demonstrations of the power of narrative framing or narrative control.

If the conquerors can frame their role in history by narrating only what fits their good image and objective, they can control the future too. So insisting that Africa’s role in world civilisation didn’t exist and removing elements of their identity, are tendencies for control of a most valuable asset—Africa’s tomorrow.

Another tendency that was an extension of looting and denying was the destruction and concealment of Africa’s history—Destruction and concealment of the records, records that if not destroyed would ‘prove’ the colonial powers did not do only the good they propagated. Otherwise, it became extremely important to ensure that they (the colonial authorities) never lose control of the narrative of the past to ensure they never lose control of future thinking from the judgment of the past; this amounts to using ‘yesterday’ to control ‘tomorrow’!

The colonial authorities had periodically, consistently engaged in the wholesale destruction of records and archives throughout the rule period. But in the 1960s, when it came to decolonisation, there was a need to act with more urgency. This was finally code-named a secret scheme called Operation Legacy.

An unknown number of records were destroyed night and day all over the continent by departing colonial authorities—some dumped at sea and others burnt in huge bonfires.

A new form of looting then followed; some records were taken away to the home countries—whether it be France or Britain.

Besides the few that were aware of it, Operation Legacy only came, undeniably, to the knowledge of the public in the so-called Hanslope Park disclosure. In 2011, the United Kingdom’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office was compelled by a UK High Court to admit that over 1.2 million records from thirty-seven countries, former colonies, had been held for half a century in secret locations in the UK. These became the so-called migrated archives.

These documents have not been repatriated to the former colonies till this day, despite repeated demands for a return of the colonies’ history—pieces of their identity.

So, there is history and therefore heritage we will never know that was destroyed, and then there is history that is still being held.

The effect of this cannot be quantified. What happened to the Africans during the rule and before? What is really true about Africa and which is the lie? What happened in Africa? What is the true full identity of Africans then and now?

One colonial officer, a retired soldier, R.E. Stone, had served as an officer in the Second World War and was a senior District Officer in the Uganda Protectorate service at this same time in 1962. Stone must have drawn on his military background, he must have immediately sensed the need to follow ‘orders’ contained in the high-level telegram from Ian MacLeod, the Secretary of State for the colonies, to look for the best way to dispose of ‘sensitive records’ in the interest of the Colonial governments. Stone was reported to have thought:

‘These archives would be of immense interest and value to anyone who comes to write about the fascinating events here of recent times’.

While on the one hand thinking they might ‘contain a good deal of dirty material’ that should be sent to the Colonial Office back in Britain,’ he finally concluded that what couldn’t be ‘…sent to the U.K. before 1 March, then I would propose to destroy them’.³

The entire secret operation as well as the looting and denying were symptomatic of colonial domination and resulted in manifest damage to the African continent.

We shall travel back in time, tracing the source of the tendency that was the underbelly of looting, denying and destruction—culminating in the overt description ‘Operation Legacy’.

We shall also examine the root of the ‘justification’ of the superiority—the thinking that drove nations and a continent to abandon mutual trade and embark on a trade of human cargo.

We shall consider how this was ‘justified’ by 18th century European intellectual thought (ironically referred to as ‘the Enlightenment Era’) and the so-called science of the day which variously drew from philosophy and the scriptures to ‘justify’ the policy.

This ‘superiority’ led to cultural domination along with each invasion. Permanent control of the new territory was the mission, to loot and cart away; proof of sophistication and removal of traces of identity were necessary tools of control.

Then we will turn to the process of the great denial, again the colonisers, using historical sciences to prove to the world that listened—that Africa had no history, beyond the arrival of European expeditions and certainly no history in civilisation to contribute to the world. We explore in contrast, the evidence provided by a new wave of Africanist historical minds such as Cheikh Anta