Bascom’s subsequent conflicts with British officials who demanded the return of the heads in the 1940s, have become matters of controversy and scholarly debate.
Historian Robert Tignor and anthropologist Simon Ottenberg have presented contrasting arguments regarding the affair.
This article draws on material from several archives to shed further light on this discussion, resolve remaining areas of dispute, and explore what the study of this controversy tells us about the nature and practice of anthropology, the impacts of Western exhibitions of African art, and early cultural preservation and repatriation efforts of the late colonial period.
