Mitchel Stuffers
Assistant Editor at CIGH Exeter & PhD Candidate in History, University of Exeter

From a French draft bill on returning African colonial items to Japan’s possible reinstatement of imperial military titles, here are this week’s top picks in imperial and global history.

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French Senate approves draft bill to simplify return of colonial-era artefacts

Editorial Team
France24

The French Senate on Wednesday adopted a draft legislation to facilitate the return of artworks and other prized artefacts looted during the country’s colonial era. This new procedure could help address requests already submitted by various countries, including Mali, Algeria and Benin French senators adopted a bill on Wednesday to simplify the return of artworks looted during the colonial era to their countries of origin.

The draft legislation was unanimously approved by the upper house and will next be sent to the National Assembly lower house before it can become law. France still has in its possession tens of thousands of artworks and other prized artefacts that it looted from its colonial empire. President Emmanuel Macron has gone further than his predecessors in admitting past French abuses in Africa. [Continue reading]

EU must become a ‘genuine federation’ to avoid deindustrialisation and decline, Draghi says

Vincenzo Genovese
EuroNews

The former Italian prime minister said the European Union risks subordination, division and deindustrialision all at once if it does not pull closer together. “Europe risks becoming subordinated, divided, and deindustrialised”, if it does not turn itself into a “genuine federation”, former Italian Prime Minister and President of the European Central Bank Mario Draghi said in a speech at the Belgian KU Leuven University on Monday.

According to Draghi, “power requires Europe to move from confederation to federation” because the global order is “now defunct”. In his speech, delivered as he received an honorary degree from the university, Draghi painted a picture of a failed global order, tracing its decline to China’s joining the World Trade Organisation and Western countries beginning to trade with a state “with ambitions to become a separate pole itself”. [Continue reading]

Iran Labels European Armies ‘Terrorist Groups’ In Tit-For-Tat Move

Pranay Maniar
News18.com

Iran has declared European armies as “terrorist groups” in retaliation for the European Union decision to designate the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a terrorist organisation over its role in a violent crackdown on recent nationwide protests. Announcing the move on Sunday, Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf said the decision was taken under Article 7 of Iran’s “Law on Countermeasures Against the Declaration of the IRGC as a Terrorist Organisation”.

“Europeans have, in fact, shot themselves in the foot and once again, through blind obedience to the Americans, acted against the interests of their own people,” Ghalibaf said. The EU’s move was announced on Thursday by its foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas, who said the designation was a response to Iran’s violent repression of protesters. “Repression cannot go unanswered,” she said, adding that “any regime that kills thousands of its own people is working toward its own demise”. [Continue reading]

Tajikistan says three ‘drug traffickers’ killed on Afghan border

Editorial Team
Al Arabiya – English

Tajikistan said Friday it had killed three drug traffickers crossing over from Afghanistan, in the latest clash on their mountainous border. Tajikistan shares a 1,350-kilometre (840-mile) frontier with Afghanistan and has tense relations with the Taliban. The Khovar state news agency quoted Tajik officials as saying that three out of five “drug traffickers” were killed in the southern Khatlon region after showing “armed resistance.”

Two others “managed to escape towards Afghanistan under the cover of darkness.” This is the sixth deadly incident on the border that Tajikistan has reported since November. According to a count by AFP based on official Tajik data, 19 people have been killed in total. [Continue reading]

Japan’s military leads backlash against government plan to bring back WWII-era titles

Maroosha Muzaffar
The Independent

Japan’s ruling coalition government’s plan to bring back military titles once used by its armed forces before and during the Second World War has sparked a debate over the country’s postwar pacifist identity. Since the SDF’s creation in 1954, Japan deliberately adopted rank names that distanced the modern force from the imperial military. Terms such as “issa” (first field officer) replaced older titles like “taisa” (colonel).

Although English translations already match global standards, the plan’s proponents believe restoring traditional Japanese terminology would strengthen morale and signal recognition of the SDF as a legitimate “national defence force”, The Asahi Shimbun reported last week. The proposal reportedly emerged from an agreement between the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and its coalition partner, the Japan Innovation Party (Ishin), which argued that the Self-Defence Forces (SDF) should align more closely with “international standards”. The coalition is planning to implement the changes by the end of 2026, local media reported last week. [Continue reading]