After 128 years, France returns beheaded king’s skull to Madagascar

Story by Susan Mbamah 

In a historic gesture, France on Tuesday returned three colonial-era skulls to Madagascar, including one believed to be that of King Toera, who was beheaded by French troops during a 19th-century massacre.

The handover marks the first restitution of human remains under a 2023 French law designed to facilitate the return of colonial-era artifacts. Alongside King Toera’s skull, the remains of two other members of the Sakalava ethnic group were also repatriated.

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King Toera was executed in 1897, with his skull taken to France as a colonial trophy. It had been displayed in Paris’s National History Museum alongside hundreds of other remains from the Indian Ocean island.

“These skulls entered the national collections in circumstances that clearly violated human dignity and in a context of colonial violence,” said French Culture Minister Rachida Dati.

Madagascar’s Culture Minister, Volamiranty Donna Mara, called the return “an immensely significant gesture” and said it signals “a new era of cooperation” between the two nations. “Their absence has been, for more than a century, 128 years, an open wound in the heart of our island,” she added.

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A joint scientific committee confirmed the skulls belonged to the Sakalava people but noted that it could only “presume” that one of them was King Toera’s, according to Dati.

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