After years of steadfast resistance, the French government declared on Nov 23 that it would return 26 sculptures and other artefacts to the Republic of Benin, a nation in West Africa formerly colonised by France. This move, ordered directly by President Emmanuel Macron, is not just a policy reversal - it also marks a startling break with a cherished national self-conception.
As Mr Macron himself has put it, France is among the very few countries in the world "obsessed with universality", what he admitted some might see as a "pretension... to speak on behalf of the whole of humanity".
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