The Magnificent Boat: The Colonial Theft of a South Seas Cultural Treasure

From an eminent and provocative historian, a wrenching parable of the ravages of colonialism in the South Pacific.

Countless museums in the West have been criticized for their looted treasures, but few as trenchantly as the Humboldt Forum, which displays predominantly non-Western art and artifacts in a modern reconstruction of the former Royal Palace in Berlin. The Forum’s premier attraction, an ornately decorated fifteen-meter boat from the island of Luf in modern-day Papua New Guinea, was ...