Jos van Beurden

The status of colonial objects in European museums touches upon a matrix of legal and historical issues. This article engages with some of them, while referring to the case of a Sri Lankan object in the possession of the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam (RMA) in the Netherlands: a ceremonial cannon looted by the Dutch from the King of Kandy in 1765. The article offers a historical overview of the European colonial domination of Ceylon, distinguishing between the Portuguese, Dutch, and British periods, and for each period distinguishes the nature and the size of the confiscated heritage. It also analyses Sri Lanka’s legal title to the cannon, and the discrepancy between the international and mostly Euro-centric legal regime and Sri Lanka’s own legal framework. The article moves on to analyses of and reflections about the type of provenance research practiced by the RMA, as well as the broader efforts in the Netherlands for better provenance research. The importance of the cannon for both Sri Lanka and the Netherlands, as well as earlier efforts to retrieve it, are also described and evaluated. In its conclusions, the article proffers suggestions for more balance and equality in the provenance research efforts. The contribution covers legal studies, history, and museum studies and is based on the literature, historical catalogues, and other documents, as well as the practice of UNESCO’s Intergovernmental Committee for Promoting the Return of Cultural Property to its Countries titution in case of Illicit Appropriation (ICPRCP).

This commentary offers an overview of the restitutions and claims processed in the Netherlands until recently, and the legal framework in which they took place. Although the focus is on restitutions to and claims from Indonesia, those to and from a number of other former colonial possessions occur as well. It thus looks at Dutch cultural heritage regulations and laws concerning colonial possessions. Next, the current situation is reviewed, with special attention paid to the Dutch Heritage Act of 2016 and the 2021 Policy Vision on Collections from a Colonial Context, and possible frictions between the two. In the final part, two comparisons are made. One is between how the Netherlands has been dealing with claims for Nazi-looted art works and with claims for items looted from colonial areas. The second comparison is between the current measures for dealing with colonial loot by the Netherlands and Belgium. For several years now, both countries have taken up more seriously the decolonization of state-owned collections from colonial contexts. However, the new policies of both countries have their limitations as well. For the Netherlands, the author concludes that this former major colonial power is in an intermediate phasein the process of developing new rules for dealing with objects and collections from colonial contexts.