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Ethiopia's Lost Crown:
Repatriation - What Prime Minister William Gladstone said in the House of
Commons in 1871
By Professor
Richard Pankhurst
In
view of the fact that the Victoria and Albert Museum has been requested to
return Emperor Tewodros's Crown, looted by British troops at Maqdala
in 1868, it may be of interest to recall the Parliamentary debate, held in
British House of Commons over a century ago, on 30 June 1871. In
that debate the case for restoration was voiced by none other than the
great Liberal leader William Ewart Gladstone – who was then Prime
Minister..
The
present Victoria and Albert Museum is, we should recall, the successor of
the old British Museum referred to in the Debate here quoted.
Gold
Crown and Chalice
The
matter was raised in the British House of Commons when Colonel North,
a Member with a military background, raised a remarkable matter: British
troops had seized a solid gold crown believed to have belonged to the Abun,
or Head of the Ethiopian Church, and a gold chalice dating back several
centuries to the reign of Emperor Iyasu I, but had not received any prize
money for them!
The
two items had been appropriated by Richard Holmes, the British Museum ’s
representative at Maqdala, but the Treasury had refused to pay for them.
Colonel
North moved a Motion that the House prayed the Queen, i.e.
the Government, “to direct that the Abyssinian Crown and Chalice
captured at Magdala by the force under General Lord Napier of Magdala,
shall be purchased for the Nation" - for £2,000 Sterling.
Colonel
North declared that he wanted justice for "a body of
men”, i.e. the British soldiers, who had fought at Maqdala, and”deserved
well of the country” (He said nothing about the Ethiopians who had been
robbed of their treasures). Elaborating, he declared that when the
Expedition was despatched the British Museum had sent with it Richard
Holmes – “for the purpose of collecting any article of worth” to add
to its collection.
Holmes
had acquired the Ethiopian crown and chalice, and had asked Napier to
retain them for the Museum; in which they had been deposited. He
proposed that the Museum purchase the two items, by paying the Army £2,000
Sterling- what would have been obtained by auctioning them as Prize
Money for the troops.
The
Museum, North explained, did not possess this money, and had therefore
applied to the British Government to “complete the necessary
purchase as soon as possible”. A year had, however, elapsed, and nothing
had been heard from the Treasury.
Lord
Napier
Lord
Napier, the victor of Maqdala, had then been approached. To the
surprise of many, he had replied, on 27 August 1868, that “the best way
of treating the crown and chalice would be for the State to purchase them
and deposit them in the British Museum until an opportunity offered for
restoring them; and that opportunity would arise when a Government was
established in Abyssinia with some prospect of stability. Their selection
of the party to whom they should leave the crown and chalice”, he had
declared, “would be an indication that they regarded them as the
rightful rulers of the Empire”.
Another
speaker, Mr Eastwick, urged that the crown and chalice
should be”given back on a proper opportunity to the Abyssinian
Government. A time would very likely soon come”, he added, “when they
would be desirous of making some present to that Government, and there
would be nothing of our own manufacture which would be so acceptable to
the Abyssinians as those things. Although the Abuna from whom they were
taken was dead, there was, or soon would be, another Abuna in his place,
and to him let those articles be given. In that way they would obtain a
double advantage – they would conciliate the people of Abyssinia, and
they would remove out of the way a matter which would for a long time to
come rankle in the minds of the soldiers, and make them dissatisfied and
discontented”.
William
Gladstone advocates repatriation
The
great Liberal leader William Gladstone then rose to speak..Referring to the
two looted Ethiopian artefacts, he spoke, as reported in Hansard, the
official record, of the “unsatisfactory state of the question
from first to last”, and continued:
“He
(Mr Gladstone) deeply regretted that those articles were ever brought from
Abyssinia, and could not conceive why they were so brought. They [the
British] were never at war with the people or the churches of Abyssinia.
They were at war with Theodore, who personally had inflicted on them an
outrage and a wrong; and he [Mr Gladstone] deeply lamented, for the sake
of the country, and for the sake of all concerned, that those articles, to
us insignificant, though probably to the Abyssinians sacred and imposing
symbols, or at least hallowed by association, were thought fit to be
brought away by a British army. He admitted that the Trustees of the
British Museum had done their duty by dealing promptly with the
application made to them; but he entirely dissented from the conclusion at
which they arrived”.
Elaborating
on this he continued:
“...
the Trustees [of the Museum] in their letter had apparently, through the
use of an unguarded expression, gone far to sustain the declaration that
these articles were impounded. The expression was that the articles were
‘secured' by Mr Holmes. In as much as Mr Holmes had no authority to
‘secure’ them, he, no doubt, merely suggested that the articles should
be sent to the museum, in order that the Trustees should have an
opportunity of considering whether they should be acquired for the nation
or not. Still, the term was most unfortunate".
Gladstone forcefully
concluded:
“Lord
Napier said these articles, whatever the claim of the Army, ought not to
be placed among the national treasure, and said they ought to be held in
deposit till they could be returned to Abyssinia. It was rather a painful
confession, because, if they ought to be returned, it seemed to follow
that they ought not to have been brought from Abyssinia; but he must say
that he [Mr Gladstone] agreed with Lord Napier”.
That
said Mr Gladstone declared that, in consultation with his colleagues, i.e.
members of his Government, “he could not consent” to Colonel North’s
resolution”, because it contemplated that the articles be purchased
for the nation. "If they were purchased, it should be”, he
insisted, “upon the basis described by Lord Napier, with the view of
their being held only until they could be restored”.
The
British Prime Minister thus spoke in favour of Repatriation!
And
What Now?
And
that, dear Reader, is where the question of the Ethiopian Crown and
Chalice rested on 30June 1871 – and how they have rested ever
since.
But
today, in 2008, we feel that the time for final restoration, then
envisaged by both Robert Napier and William Gladstone, has now arrived,
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