The College of Edinburgh, which was given the cranium in 1907, says the return is a part of an effort to handle its colonial legacy.
The College of Edinburgh has returned the skulls of 4 Paiwan warriors to Taiwan’s indigenous leaders, 150 years after their deaths.
The repatriation is the primary of its type for Taiwan, based on the college, and comes as related establishments in Edinburgh and Europe come to phrases with their colonial previous.
“This repatriation is the fruits of worldwide collaboration between the college and the Taiwanese neighborhood,” Professor Tom Gillingwater, head of anatomy on the college, stated in a press release.
“We’re dedicated to addressing our colonial legacy and this repatriation is the most recent step in our long-standing coverage of returning gadgets to acceptable representatives of the cultures from which they had been taken,” he stated. stated
The skulls had been returned to representatives of the Hindu Council of Taiwan and the pinnacle of Modan Township – a neighborhood in southern Taiwan the place the soldiers had been executed in 1874.
4 Paiwan warships had been victims of a Japanese punitive expedition to Taiwan in retaliation for the bloodbath of 54 sailors within the 1871 shipwreck off the Ryukyu Islands.
Often called the “Madan Incident,” the battle helped launch Japan’s colonial ambitions towards Taiwan, which might coincide with the collapse of China’s Qing Dynasty 20 years later.
The skulls had been transported to Japan as trophies by an American navy adviser, after which handed by way of two different house owners earlier than being given to the college in 1907.
Based on the College of Edinburgh it “holds the most important and most traditionally important assortment of Aboriginal stays, notably skulls”.
The Paiwan are Taiwan’s second largest indigenous neighborhood with a inhabitants of slightly below 102,000 individuals in 2020, based on official figures.