This monograph offers a comprehensive self-reflection on how Europe and its institutions might reckon with museum collections acquired during the colonial era, from the early American expeditions through the Dutch Golden Age to the mid-twentieth century. Carsten Stahn, Professor of International Criminal Law and Global Justice at Leiden University, writes within an institution that has seriously engaged with these questions. Since the inception of this study, Stahn has convened numerous conferences and symposia bringing together international and domestic experts on colonial legacies and the restitution of cultural property.

As such, this work does not stand alone; rather, it functions as an intellectual biography of a broader modern societal project, seen through the lens of a committed scholar. Stahn is dedicated to deep reflection on how to approach these objects, artworks tainted by the violent and shameful history of European colonisation across much of the world.

Stahn introduces the book with its cover and a commentary on Tipu’s Tiger, a beloved and sensational object housed in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Taken in the aftermath of the carnage of the Anglo–Mysore War, this object raises a “problem”, Stahn writes, concerning the mediation of colonial ideology through the presentation of colonial objects.

The methods of investigation are distinctive and compelling, delving into multidisciplinary research in diverse areas, encompassing a truly comprehensive, perhaps almost exhaustive list of solutions, themes, and questions relative to colonial objects in western European museums. Interestingly, Stahn uses “takings” as a term for objects mostly removed by force during colonial expeditions, proposing a differentiation between “Forcible Expeditions” and “Other Types of Acquisition”. The book offers a guide, moving object by object or collection by collection (e.g. the French punitive expedition to Korea in 1866; the Lombok expeditions in 1894), asking in each case about the violence and context surrounding the removal. Its most original legal insight lies in how different legal effects are derived from the historical circumstances of the taking.

What the book does not do is offer a revision of international law in the critical sense. While the author mentions the ambivalent force of international law in colonial history, international law itself remains (mostly) free from scrutiny. References to The Gentle Civilizer of Nations by Marttii Koskenniemi (2002) are conspicuous by their absence. This might reflect a methodological choice that brackets international law from engagement with these key critical histories. Overall, references to works that review the role of international law in colonial history are scarce. The author adheres to the traditional reading of Bartolomé de Las Casas (at 48; at 320) and not the one proposed in Imperialism, Sovereignty and the Making of International Law by Antony Anghie (2005). International law just happens “to be there”, as a simple medium between the metropole and its peripheries.

Ultimately, Stahn conveys a strong faith in international law, while simultaneously highlighting its double edge: international law as both the enabler of the colonial collections and now, the means by which equitable outcome will be restored.