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The head of a Malagasy king killed by French troops during a colonial-era war has been formally returned to Madagascar.<\/p>\n
The handover of King Toera’s skull – and those of two other members of his court – took place at a ceremony at the culture ministry in Paris.<\/p>\n
The skulls had been brought back to France at the end of the 19th Century and stored at the Museum of Natural History in the French capital.<\/p>\n
It is the first use of a new law meant to expedite the return of human remains from collections in France.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
In August 1897, a French force sent to assert colonial control over the Menab\u00e9 kingdom of the Sakalava people in western Madagascar massacred a local army.<\/p>\n
King Toera was killed and decapitated: his head sent to Paris where it was placed in the archives of the Museum of Natural History.<\/p>\n
Nearly 130 years later pressure from the king’s descendants as well as the government of the Indian Ocean nation has opened the way for the skull’s return.<\/p>\n
It is not the first time human remains from the colonial era have been given back by France.<\/p>\n
Most famous was the South African woman cruelly nicknamed the “Hottentot Venus” who had once been put on display in Europe and whose body was taken home in 2012<\/a>.<\/p>\n But this is the first return under a recent law which makes the process much easier.<\/p>\n It is estimated that at the Museum of Natural History alone there are more than 20,000 human remains brought to France from around the world for supposedly scientific reasons.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n