| Summary: | This chapter examines the personal and public ways in which Europeans dealt with a specific Iegacy of imperial violence: losing, finding and repatriating the human remains of 'white people' who had lost their lives in colonial conflicts. The chapter offers a new approach to the topic of human remains, by exploring a hitherto neglected aspect of colonial history and material culture. It focuses on the role of collection and repatriation of European skulls in the resolution of the collective sense of crisis generated by conflict and loss, and discusses how the dramatic narration of the circumstances and consequences of death shaped actual historical events. During the colonial period of the nineteenth and early twentieth century, the deaths of 'white people' and the disappearance of their bodily remains in tropical countries became significant in politicaI, emotional and religious terms. These issues prompt an assessment of the intersection of individual, family and nationallives in an era of high imperialismo ln this context, practices of collecting, repossession, repatriation and (re)burial of human remains were criticaI to the articulation of identity and power by Europeans in the face of human and politicaI uncertainty.
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