Normative Expectations and the Colonial Past: Apologies and Art Restitution to Former Colonies in France and Germany

Abstract

Abstract I argue that the field of transitional justice is a useful lens to explore the politics surrounding apology and restitution between former colonizers and the formerly colonized. While existing scholarship has so far treated apologies and restitution of looted art restitution as separate ways of atonement, this paper investigates both as indicators of a country's norm change toward postcolonial reconciliation and justice. The paper analyzes the political debates in France and Germany surrounding apologies and art restitution as instances of belated “coming to terms” with their colonial past. I argue that both form part of a broader societal change surrounding a state's history and its current identity. In response to increasing demands for apologies and restitution from African states, changing international norms of addressing colonial violence, and domestic mobilization, both states have made slow and incomplete progress toward postcolonial reconciliation and justice. They have agreed to return certain objects and apologized for specific colonial atrocities, albeit not for colonialism writ large. Ultimately, the debates highlight how these transitional justice forms each come with their own political, legal, and cultural challenges that complicate and delay engagement with the past. It was ultimately various social pressures from within and outside, in the form of lawsuits by victim groups and official demands for apology and restitution, that led to domestic mobilization toward more open engagement with colonial pasts.