This article introduces the concept of object diplomacy to analyse how cultural restitution can be mobilised as political currency in global politics. Moving beyond accounts that treat restitution primarily as historical redress, it argues that transfers of colonially acquired objects can accompany, or be staged alongside, less reconciliatory negotiations over geopolitics and influence. Drawing on documentary sources and fieldwork in Senegal, the article analyses France’s 2019 ceremonial handover of the sabre attributed to El Hadj Omar Tall, tracing how it intersected with security cooperation and was shaped by museum infrastructure and legal discretion. Rather than adjudicating the moral status of cultural restitution, the framework shows how, when such transfers are not legally required and objects carry high symbolic weight, governments can stage and sequence them in ways that generate reputational credit while aligning symbolic gestures with material interests. The article concludes that such performances may reproduce, or at least leave intact, the hierarchies they claim to dismantle.
Rouven Symank (Fri,) studied this question.