For the British colonial authorities, the seizure of the royal regalia from Mandalay into the ‘safekeeping’ of the South Kensington (now V&A) Museum was a logical act of imperial authority. For the Burmese, it felt like a dispossession of their sovereignty and identity.

When Burma (now Myanmar) was granted independence in 1947, it was understandable why they wanted the collection back.

The Mandalay Regalia, along with other royal treasures, were seized in 1885 at Mandalay, the palace of Thibaw Min (1859-1916), the last Burmese monarch during the Third Anglo-Burmese War . A British force of 11,000 men, led by General Harry Predergast, marched upon the Palace and, after meeting minimal resistance, demanded the unconditional surrender of King Thibaw and his kingdom.   Thibaw's life was spared, but he was sent into exile, reportedly spending the rest of his life as a recluse in India.

Meanwhile, after officially annexing the country on 1 January 1886, the British Government was quick to recognise that the importance of Thibaw's regalia extended beyond its artistic and didactic merits. This was confirmed in a note dated 1 July 1890 from Whitehall, now held in the V&A’s archives: ‘[T]he Burmese regalia... were the outward and visible tokens of a sovereignty which we have extinguished and .... should be retained and placed in one of our public museums as a memento of our annexation of Burmah’. *

A consequence of colonialism was that ownership of an item acquired on occupation, including those items with a symbolic value of sovereignty, passed directly to the occupier following military conquest.

However, the question now arose: once colonial occupation has ceased, where does the right of ownership belong, in particular, for objects so clearly identified with the former colony’s sovereignty?

The Mandalay royal regalia had remained in the V&A’s collection since arriving at the Museum in 1886. 

The exact grounds on which the Museum’s trustees considered the return of this collection are not clearly documented, although it's likely the Museum’s right to continued ‘ownership’ of another country’s sovereign regalia must have weighed heavily on their minds.

In 1964/65 the Museum finally agreed the return of the Mandalay regalia and, as an act of recognition for their ‘safekeeping’, the Burmese Government presented the V&A with a 19th century gold and jewelled container (a Betel box and stand, no. IS.246&A-1964), which once also formed part of the regalia of King Thibaw, the last king of Burma.

* Ana Filipa Vrdoljak, International Law, Museums and the Return of Cultural Objects (Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 70-71. Click for extract  . 

Photo: The Victoria & Albert Museum, London