This lecture examines the same historical period as the previous one, namely the last third of the 19th century. The museums of the imperial powers benefited from colonial control, through the great scientific and/or punitive expeditions organized by the metropolis, in Africa, Asia and Oceania. For example, during the sacking of Benin City in 1897, British troops dismantled bronze and brass plaques dating from the 16th to 18th centuries that adorned the royal palace, and transported them to England, enriching the British Museum. The Benin City bronzes told stories, constituted visual libraries: deprived of these works, the local populations were deprived of their memory.
So-called "ethnographic" collections were added to museums in a twofold logic. On the one hand, the colonizers were well aware that they were changing cultural practices and, as the British anthropologist Sir Ross explained in 1903, it was necessary to document before destroying. On the other hand, the collection of material evidence and the recording of practices made it possible to get to know the populations in order to control them better, both economically and politically. So it was not the aesthetic dimension of the objects that prevailed.
Felix von Luschan, head of African collections at the Berlin Ethnographic Museum, explained the logic shared by museum directors: they could enrich their collections at low cost, thanks to punitive colonial expeditions. The Royal Siege of Dahomey, for example, was immediately exhibited at the Musée Ethnographique du Trocadéro in Paris: its cartel mentioned General Alfred Dodds, who led the punitive expedition in 1892 and donated the spoils of war to the museum. London, Paris and Germany all competed to own and exhibit important ethnographic collections.
