For the first time in this history we are examining an object that is a record of war but which does not glorify war or the ruler who waged it. The Throne of Weapons is a chair – or throne – constructed out of parts of guns that were made all over the world and exported to Africa. If a striking feature of the nineteenth century was the growth of mass markets and mass consumption, the twentieth century can be characterized by mass warfare and mass killing: the two world wars, Stalin’s purges, the Holocaust, Hiroshima, Cambodia’s killing fields, Rwanda – the list goes on. If there is one small, positive side to all this devastation it is that the twentieth century has more than any previous one recorded and articulated the mass suffering of ordinary victims of war – the soldiers and civilians who paid with their lives. Across the world there are Tombs of Unknown Soldiers; the Throne of Weapons is in this tradition. It is a monument to all the victims of the Mozambique civil war and a record of crimes against a whole country – indeed a continent. It is also, most unusually for such a commemorative piece, a work of art that speaks to us of hope and resolution. The Throne of Weapons is about human tragedy and human triumph in equal measure.

Neil MacGregor, A History of the World in 1…, loc. 1483