The Saber of El Hadj Omar Tall: Reconciling Repatriation for Postcolonialism

Written by Kate Snagshall, McGill University

Edited by Anna Robinson

In 1992, while addressing the International Council of Museums, President Konaré of Mali declared that Africans needed to “kill” the Western model of the museum.[1] Konaré was not merely criticising the objectifying practices of European encyclopaedic institutions but instead he was calling out the thousands of African cultural heritage objects which remained housed in European museums, after being stolen, looted, or illicitly purchased off subjugated African peoples. It is only today, over three decades later, that progress has slowly begun, not only as global awareness of repatriation and cultural heritage has grown but as nations such as France and Germany, have begun returning objects to African nations.

Generally, the terms ‘repatriation’ and ‘restitution’ refer to the de-acquisition of human remains and material objects held in museum collections back to their place of origin or to the descendants of their original custodians.[2] Such terms have recently formed the basis of several bodies of “soft law”: UN declarations, codes of ethics, policy documents and position statements by various institutions and scholarly associations, papers published by various national ministries of culture, and more.

One such document was the Report on the restitution of African cultural heritage commissioned and published by the French Government in 2018, known colloquially as the Sarr-Savoy report for its two authors, Senegalese academic and writer Felwine Sarr and French art historian Bénédicte Savoy.[3] This report aimed to assess the historic and present state of publicly owned French collections of African artworks originating from illicit or otherwise disputed acquisitions, as well as to provide recommendations for restitutions and steps to be taken by the French government. Despite markedly slow progress in a tense cultural and legal climate, this report has been widely praised as leading to the repatriation of a number of important objects to countries throughout Sub-Saharan Africa. One such object was the nineteenth century sabre of Senegalese political leader and Islamic scholar El Hadj Omar Foutiyou Tall. However, the sabre’s return has not been without tension, and even criticism, thus reflecting the many nuances of repatriation of cultural heritage objects in the 21st century. This essay explores these complexities by analysing the return of the sabre of Omar Tall, revealing how repatriation, even when well-intentioned, can remain entrenched in Eurocentric and colonial frameworks of ownership, authority, and preservation.

I. The Return of the Saber

On November 28th, 2017, French President Emmanuel Macron declared, “Within five years, I want the conditions to be in place for the temporary or permanent repatriation of African heritage to Africa," thus commissioning the Sarr-Savoy Report.[4] Within this report, the sabre of Omar Tall, which had been housed as the Musée de l’Armée, was given particular emphasis as an object deserving of return. The authors of the report, having consulted with the Omarian family,  noted the importance that this sword, alongside other artefacts belonging to Omar Tall, had to the family, as they organised annual gatherings around the spiritual heritage of their shared ancestor.[5] The report also criticised the loan of the sabre for temporary exhibition in Dakar, Senegal’s capital, in 1998 and 2008, while French authorities had responded to requests for restitution with ‘a staunch refusal invoking the inalienability of French National Collections.’[6]

However, following the groundbreaking publication of the Sarr-Savoy Report, the French government subsequently introduced legal and cultural policies allowing for the return, or preparation for the return, of a number of important artefacts to Benin, Cameroon, Senegal, and Mali.[7] The first object to be repatriated under this new system was Omar Tall’s sabre which was returned on the 17th of November 2019 in Dakar. In a grand ceremony, Senegalese president Macky Sall received the sabre from the prime minister of France, Edouard Philippe in the presence of the direct descendants of Omar Tall.[8] Philippe highlighted the significance of the gesture stating, ‘This sword symbolises an important episode in the history of Senegal and its neighbouring countries. It also symbolises friendship, respect, [and] the mutual admiration that unites our two peoples today.’[9] This initial ceremony celebrated a five-year ‘deposit’ of the sword, while a bill passed by the French Government in late 2020, confirmed the permanent return of 26 objects, including the sabre.[10]

This act by the French Government was quickly praised by the international community, heralding it as opening “a new era” for the future of restitution and relations between Senegal and France.[11] However, the return of the sword was also quickly subject to criticism, many questioning why the sword was returned to Senegal, and whether this was the most effective method of rewriting centuries of wrongdoing.

II. Ownership and its Implications

Modern repatriation practices, such as that which resulted in the return of Omar Tall’s sabre, have entrenched, a narrow, legalistic notion of ownership which fails to account for the spiritual or cultural value which ought to be derived from such objects.  

The 1954 Hague Convention introduced the idea of “cultural property” defining it as “movable or immovable property of great importance to the cultural heritage of every people” and providing examples such as “monuments of architecture, art or history.”[12] This definition has, of course, been the subject of much debate, to which this essay does not seek to engage. However, it must be noted that the language used was ‘stirringly internationalist’ and appeared entirely antithetical to singular claims of cultural heritage as belonging to one nation or another, nor one person or another.[13] Yet, half a century later, this attitude seems to have fallen out of favour, seen in the Sarr-Savoy Report’s distinct delineation between sub-Saharan African nations, and the objects which rightfully belong to each. Thus, the Report promotes a unitary idea of property, in which an object belongs to one nation, which has been criticised as betraying a ‘usable idea of heritage’, let alone the shared internationalist model promoted in the Hague Convention.[14]

Accordingly, cultural heritage in the 21st century has become the ‘brainchild of legal theory’ and thus no longer takes its form in cultural value derived from objects, but instead emerges from Western judges, lawyers, law professors, and bureaucrats.[15] This becomes all too evident when analysing the return of Omar Tall’s sabre, an object which had already been displayed in Dakar since 2018, when it was ‘formally returned’, thus resulting in little to no tangible change. Moreover, the Omarian family, whose connection with the sabre is stressed by Sarr and Savoy, have not experienced any meaningful shift in access or control, following the sword’s repatriation. Notably, the repatriation proposed in the Sarr-Savoy Report, returns these objects to national museums, thus seeing them continue to be displaced from the indigenous and local communities to whom these items traditionally belong, or who would hold the closest relationship with them.

Thus, as European nations have sought to physically transfer objects from their own museums into those of their former colonies, they have prioritised ownership within legal bounds, providing scare recognition to alternate, non-western means of ownership and possession. Notably, the pompous ceremonies often involved in such transfers, as occurred in November 2019 for Omar Tall’s sabre, neglect the notion of inalienable possession, whereby cultures and peoples continue to possess an object, through an intimate cultural connection, regardless of the legal and physical boundaries around such an object. Therefore, as the sabre was returned to the state of Senegal, the French government, in effect, neglected claims of the enduring connection between the sabres and its rightful owners, even when the sabre was on display in France. Instead, modes of repatriation promoted by the Sarr-Savoy report enshrine a notion of ownership built upon materiality, and the physical placement of an object.

III. The Gaps in a State-Centric Framework

Moreover, the claims to possession that Senegal did have were far from straightforward but instead have been critiqued as the product of colonial narratives of nationhood. Understanding such fraught claims to ownership are found within the history of Omar Tall, and his sword.

An Islamic scholar and military commander in the early 19th century, Omar Tall was known for his devotion to converting pagan Africans to Islam, having established and lead the vast Toucouleur Empire, which spanned territories of Senegal, Guinea and Mali.[16] Yet Omar Tall was also known for collecting slaves, war booty and waging paths of religious and physical destruction, considered by many, especially in Mali, as a violent invader who brough the ‘ideal of an Islamic state into bad repute’.[17] However, having been born in a village along the border between Senegal and Mauritania, Omar Tall remains heralded in Senegal as a historical figure of anticolonial resistance.[18] Thus, the return of the sword to Senegal has been justified through Senegalese narratives of nationhood and anti-colonial conquest, which have sought to erase problematic campaigns of violence from collective memory. In discussion of the sabre’s return, Appiah notes that national identities will ‘almost always subsist on fictional narratives’ but warns that imbuing such claims with definitive authority will lead to alternate histories being neglected.[19]  Here, the celebration of the sword in the event of its return, has likely contributed to the silencing of voices of marginalised communities which were subjugated by Omar Tall’s empire.

Such concepts of nationhood further appeal to Eurocentric ideals of nationality and abide by those borders which were drawn by European powers at the Berlin West Africa Conference, of 1884-5. Today, historians know that Dakar, where the sword is now displayed, was never part of Omar Tall’s Toucouleur empire, which was located further east, partially in Senegal but primarily in Guinea and Mali.[20] Moreover, the sword was not confiscated in 1893 by French troops from Omar Tall, but from his son, Ahmadou, who was never a resident of Senegal, and who died in battle in modern-day Mali.[21] Hence, Mali has similarly raised its own convincing arguments for possession of the sword. And lastly, the blade of the sword, an 1821 infantry sabre, was forged by Coulaux et Compagnie in modern-day French Alsace,[22] thus further complicating the national ownership of the item.

 The Sarr-Savoy Report fails to recognise the contested nationality of the sword, instead attributing it solely to Senegal, thus appeasing traditional, Westernised notions of nationhood. Beyond merely this sword, the report listed a series of modern sub-Saharan nations, and the objects in the French national collection which rightfully belonged to each nation. Thus, by solely recognising modern nation-states, practices of repatriation often neglect alternate stakeholders, such as indigenous peoples, local communities, families or diasporas.[23] Notably, while the Sarr-Savoy Report focussed on the Omarian family, noting the spread of descendants across Senegal, Mali, Mauritania, and Guinea,[24] the repatriation of the sword adopted a state-centric framework which had little regard for the actual wishes of the Omarian family or for the spiritual significance of the sabre.[25] Thus, as European nations have sought symbolic repatriations to modern-day African nations, they have inadvertently enhanced colonial legacies, recognising westernised borders which came about through Colonial rule in the 19th and 20th centuries.[26]

IV. European Power in the Postcolonial

While repatriation, undeniably seeks to return objects to their owners, there is a strong argument that such practices consolidate cultural power in Europe, and restrict the agency of sub-Saharan African nations. 

While the media widely covered the return of the sword in November 2019, there was little reporting of the Senegalese purchase of three OPV58 patrollers from the French company Kership and missiles from the France-based group MBDA for a few hundred million euros.[27] For more than three centuries, Senegal was the centre of French territories in Africa, and even today, it remains ‘the place to be in West Africa for Europeans, especially for French citizens, devoted to African arts and culture,’ while also maintaining stable political ties with its former coloniser.[28] Hence, it was no coincidence that Senegal was the first country to which France restituted artefacts, instead it was reflective of the colonial power dynamics which continue to play a major role in the bilateral relationship between Europe and Africa.[29]

The Sarr-Savoy Report, itself being commissioned and published by the French Government, positions French national collections in an inevitable position of power over former French colonies. Thus, modes of repatriation are scarcely collaborative, anti-colonial practices as much as they are ‘performance[s] of political asymmetry’ casting African nations solely in the position of the victim under the prowess of European power.[30] Through retaining such objects, and proposing such formalised processes for their return, European nations have reconsolidated their former colonial powers, promoting the idea that in order to gain access to cultural heritage, African nations ought to appease their former colonisers, or at very least, stay in their good graces.

Moreover, one of the central questions within the debate sparked by the Sarr-Savoy report has concerned the local capacity of sub-Saharan African nations to appropriately preserve these objects of cultural heritage. The report itself, in its recommended ‘second phase’ suggests workshops should be implanted ‘to share and establish a common “know-how” regarding the restitutions and the accompanying of their return from France to Africa.’[31] Such workshops, coupled with UNESCO’s calls to ‘build local capacity’,[32] inherently promote a singular notion of the Western museum as the only appropriate means of preserving and displaying cultural objects.

The first museums established in Africa were not built for, nor by, the native population, but instead for the European colonial population, based on ‘naturalist patterns of cabinets of curiosity’, which promoted to local populations ‘retrograde images of themselves.’[33] While some progress has since been made, the return of Omar Tall’s sabre into a museum which continues to follow Eurocentric modes of display continues a colonial legacy, whereby Africa has been objectified and commodified by the West.[34] Moreover, the very museum which houses Omar Tall’s sabre, The Museum of Black Civilisations, was built on behalf of a $34 million investment from China.[35] Thus, while Senegal may no longer be subject to violent colonial oppression, it still operates subject to the soft power of foreign nations.

While the advent of museums, such as The Museum of Black Civilisations are not cause for outrage or anger, the colonial practices which are inherently embedded within them must be considered. Moreover, the notion that such museums are appropriate, let alone necessary for successful repatriation of cultural heritage objects, should be questioned as a reinforcement of a Eurocentric approach to heritage.

V. Conclusion: After Sarr-Savoy

Thus, while Sarr and Savoy urged that “the French State must not impose its rhythm and political agenda onto the African States”, it has become difficult to escape colonial power structures in the return of cultural objects promoted by the report. This is not to say that the return of objects, such as Omar Tall’s sabre, is a wrong turn in correcting the ongoing traumas imposed by colonialism. However, the means by which such return occurred, as promoted by the Sarr-Savoy Report, are mired in Eurocentric concepts of ownership and nationhood, and have ultimately consolidated the power of foreign nations within Africa. Hence, modern practices in repatriation, while well-intentioned, can often be condensed into ‘a sequence of proxy arguments that usurp legitimate post-colonial concerns voiced by African scholars to advance intra-European politics.’[36]

Accordingly, alternatives ought to be considered, such that cultural heritage can return without its inherent ties to European practices of preservation and power. Many experts, including the authors of the Sarr-Savoy Report, have turned to the digital sphere, as a means of allowing greater accessibility to heritage from all corners of the globe. However, even this can result in the asymmetry in power and access to objects, when done without proper consultation of rightful owners or without consideration of the value derived from objects. Responses to the Sarr-Savoy Report have thus emphasised the need for multicultural collaboration in addressing the demands of the Report, such that repatriation may be mutually beneficial for both nations and appropriately address local conditions and concepts of possession. Lastly, it must be understood that return of cultural objects will not in itself revive this cultural heritage, nor will rewrite years of being deprived of important material culture objects.[37] Instead, true repatriation must be understood as a long-term, relational process which allows for the cultural agency of future generations in sub-Saharan Africa.

Hence, recent repatriation efforts, such as that to return the sabre of El Hadj Omar Foutiyou Tall, can scarcely be seen as killing the western model of the museum, as President Konaré of Mali called for, over three decades ago. Instead, modes of repatriation in recent years have reinforced the very colonial hierarchies, which they seek to dismantle. – 2721 words

Endnotes

[1] Clémentine Deliss, “Rapid Response Restitution,” Multitudes 78, no. 1 (May 18, 2020): 185.

[2] Martin Skrydstrup, “Theorizing Repatriation,” Ethnologia Europaea 39, no. 2 (July 1, 2009): 54/

[3] Bénédicte Savoy and Felwine Sarr, “The Restitution of African Cultural Heritage. Toward a New Relational Ethics” (Ministère de la culture, November 21, 2018).

[4] Simonis, Francis. “The First Work That Is ‘returned’ to Africa Is a European Object,” November 24, 2019, https://www.lemonde.fr/afrique/article/2019/11/24/la-premiere-uvre-qui-est-restituee-a-l-afrique-est-un-objet-europeen_6020342_3212.html.

[5] Savoy and Sarr, “The Restitution of African Cultural Heritage. Toward a New Relational Ethics,” 33.

[6] Savoy and Sarr, 101.

[7] Padraig McAuliffe, “Complicity or Decolonization? Restitution of Heritage from ‘Global’ Ethnographic Museums | International Journal of Transitional Justice | Oxford Academic,” International Journal of Transnational Justice 15, no. 3 (November 2021): 682.

[8] Deliss, “Rapid Response Restitution,” 185.

[9] “France Returns Historic Sword to Senegal - ArtReview,” accessed June 5, 2025, https://artreview.com/news-19-nov-2019-france-returns-historic-sword-to-senegal/.

[10] Ministère de l’Europe et des Affaires étrangères, “Return of Cultural Goods,” France Diplomacy - Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs, accessed June 4, 2025, https://www.diplomatie.gouv.fr/en/country-files/africa/cultural-exchanges/return-of-cultural-goods/.

[11] “France Returns Historic Sword to Senegal - ArtReview.”

[12] Roger O’Keefe, “The Meaning of ‘Cultural Property’ under the 1954 Hague Convention,” Netherlands International Law Review 46, no. 01 (May 1999): 26.

[13] Kwame Anthony Appiah, “Whose Heritage? Preservation, Possession, and Peoples,” Markets & Society 1, no. 1 (2024): 35.

[14] Appiah, 44.

[15] Skrydstrup, “Theorizing Repatriation,” 60.

[16] Hadja Tall, “Al Hajj Umar Tall: The Biography of a Controversial Leader,” Ufahamu: A Journal of African Studies 32, no. 1–2 (2006), .

[17] Appiah, “Whose Heritage? Preservation, Possession, and Peoples,” 41.

[18] Hélène Quashie, “What Does Restitution Mean in Francophone Postcolony? Reflections from Senegal,” Jahazi Journal. Culture, Arts, Performance 10, no. 1 (February 2022): 87.

[19] Appiah, “Whose Heritage? Preservation, Possession, and Peoples,” 44.

[20] “The First Work That Is ‘returned’ to Africa Is a European Object.”

[21] Herman Lebovics, “In the Diaspora, Not Dead: Africa’s Heritages in French Museums,” French Cultural Studies 32, no. 2 (May 1, 2021): 108–31.

[22] “The First Work That Is ‘returned’ to Africa Is a European Object.”

[23] Lily Martinet, “Longing, Belonging and Owning: How to Untangle Competing Claims over Colonial Cultural Objects?,” in Representing the Absent, vol. 27 (Baden-Baden, Germany: Nomos Publishing, 2023), 156.

[24] Savoy and Felwine Sarr, “The Restitution of African Cultural Heritage. Toward a New Relational Ethics.”

[25] Lily Martinet, “Longing, Belonging and Owning: How to Untangle Competing Claims over Colonial Cultural Objects?,” 151.

[26] Saadia Touval, “Africa’s Frontiers: Reactions to a Colonial Legacy,” International Affairs (Royal Institute of International Affairs 1944-) 42, no. 4 (1966): 641–54, https://doi.org/10.2307/2610156.

[27] Jérémie Eyssette, “Restitution vs. Retention: Reassessing Discourses on the African Cultural Heritage,” African Studies Review 66, no. 1 (March 2023): 101–26, https://doi.org/10.1017/asr.2022.153.

[28] Quashie, “What Does Restitution Mean in Francophone Postcolony?,” 79.

[29] Aurora Hamm, “(8) German and French Colonial Restitution -’New Relational Ethics’ or Using the Legacy of Empire?,” Amsterdam Bulletin of Ancient Studies and Archaeology, no. 6 (September 2023): 92.

[30] Quashie, “What Does Restitution Mean in Francophone Postcolony?,” 80.

[31] Savoy and Felwine Sarr, “The Restitution of African Cultural Heritage. Toward a New Relational Ethics.”

[32] UNESCO, “Reframing the Return and Restitution of Cultural Property in Southern Africa as Healing: A New Bold Step toward Putting Communities First,” accessed June 4, 2025, https://www.unesco.org/en/articles/reframing-return-and-restitution-cultural-property-southern-africa-healing-new-bold-step-toward.

[33] Germain Loumpet, “Cooperation between European and African Museums: A Paradigm for Démuséalisation?,” in Museum Cooperation between Africa and Europe: A New Field for Museum Studies (Bielefeld Germany: Transcript Publishing, 2018), 47.

[34] Quashie, “What Does Restitution Mean in Francophone Postcolony ?”

[35] Benjamin Sutton, “A Large, Chinese-Funded Art Museum Opened in Senegal.,” Artsy, December 7, 2018, https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-large-chinese-funded-art-museum-opened-senegal.

[36] Deliss, “Rapid Response Restitution.”

[37] Lily Martinet, “Longing, Belonging and Owning: How to Untangle Competing Claims over Colonial Cultural Objects?,” 160.