Booty

At the center of this magnificent pictorial atlas is the iconography of „booty takings“ and „misappropriations,“ „confiscations,“ „forced gifts,“ or simply: looted goods. World history is told here not only about objects in the context of their creation or presentation, but in the mirror of the changeable ownership relationships in which they found themselves and the claims of ownership made to them. These relationships inscribed in the objects are still marked today by claims to power and superiority. And: world history cannot be told without colonialism, European modernity cannot be and European modernity cannot be told without racism. This amazing atlas reveals this history and shows that throughout the ages, representations of such misappropriations have also documented injustice. The images are skillfully staged, and always with the intention of, the intention of portraying one‘s own collecting activity as a proof of one‘s own of one‘s own superiority. In their synopsis, which spans a wide historical arc - from the from Neo-Assyrian and Roman-ancient reliefs to caricatures and paintings from the caricatures and paintings from the Napoleonic era to photographs documenting colonialism and current to photographs documenting colonialism and contemporary art - reveals a system of from which museum collections collections and holdings in the Global North and which this volume courageously brings to the forefront of our consciousness. not only to look back, but also to give back. Property has always property has also come through theft. And collecting has rarely been innocent.