During Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet’s state visit to France in January, President Emmanuel Macron pledged support for returning more Khmer artifacts and for technical assistance to expand the National Museum of Cambodia.
A few months earlier, the Musee Guimet in Paris agreed to return the head and body of a seventh-century Khmer statue, taken in the 1880s, to Cambodia on a five-year loan agreement.
Cambodia’s Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts, is in contact with museums in Britain and Paris about their extensive Cambodian antiquities collections. Several Austrian museums and a major museum in Berlin have also asked for a review of their collections.
In Cambodia’s database is also information on private collections across Europe.
However, scholars say the return of artifacts taken because of colonization can provide significant soft-power benefits for European countries and an ample opportunity to rebrand.
Expert Cameron Cheam Shapiro: “These repatriations are a gesture of good faith, a commitment to international law, a symbol of their willingness to recognize and correct past wrongs, and a stepping stone towards better relations with foreign governments and peoples.”
Despite Dutch museums returning hundreds of artifacts to Indonesia last year, it refused to hand over the remains of the “Java Man”, the first known fossil of the Homo Erectus species discovered during the colonial era.
