The Statue of Liberty, a colossal neoclassical sculpture made in France and offered to the American people in the late 19th century, remains one of the most potent political gifts of modern times. Its size and symbolism were intended as a mark of friendship to commemorate the centenary of the 1776 US declaration of independence. Delivered a decade late, it also served as a reminder of France's critical role in helping the US break free from Britain.
Bartholdi's Vision and the Musée d'Orsay Exhibition
The statue is now one of the world's most recognised monuments, though its creator, Frederic Auguste Bartholdi, is less so. Paris's Musée d'Orsay is seeking to remedy this with an exhibition highlighting the sculptor's life and career. The exhibition, which runs until 31 January 2027, features 100 works by Bartholdi and includes an immersive virtual reality journey showing the statue's conception and construction, marking the 140th anniversary of its inauguration and the 250th anniversary of American independence.
The idea for such a spectacular gift was partly driven by self-interest. Over a dinner at Versailles in 1865, the liberal politician Édouard Laboulaye suggested the gesture celebrating American liberty might prompt France's authoritarian ruler Napoleon III, whom he and Bartholdi opposed, to introduce greater freedom at home. Bartholdi agreed, having long sought a monumental project. In his 20s, he had drawn up plans for a lighthouse in the form of a robed Egyptian woman bearing a torch for the Suez Canal, but it was deemed too expensive by Egypt's ruler.
Work could not start until after Napoleon III was deposed in 1870. In 1884, residents around rue de Chazelles in Paris would have seen the statue rise gradually from the workshop, before it was taken to pieces, put on a train to Rouen, and shipped to New York.
The Art and Impact of Gift Diplomacy
Exhibition curators François Blanchetière and Juliette Chevée stress that Bartholdi's concept of liberty was not that of the French revolutionaries. "It is a freedom based on the law, not on violence. The venture is artistic but also political, media related, technical and above all international and diplomatic," they said. Bartholdi and Laboulaye, who did not live to see the statue installed, hoped it would strengthen Franco-American friendship.
In his 2022 book Diplomatic Gifts: A History in Fifty Presents, career diplomat Paul Brummell traced how offerings from the Trojan horse to the Statue of Liberty have been used as political, propaganda, and diplomatic tools since ancient times. "Gifts these days are low-key," he told the Washington Diplomat newspaper. "But looking back into history, diplomatic gifts went right to the heart of the thinking of the great kings. They didn't hold back."
China famously gave the US two giant pandas, Ling-Ling and Hsing-Hsing, after President Richard Nixon visited Beijing in 1972, leading to the phrase "panda diplomacy". In return, the US sent two musk oxen named Milton and Matilda. The pandas' arrival at Washington's Smithsonian National Zoo attracted more than a million visitors in their first month. This week, Xi Jinping repeated the move, sending two pandas he called an "envoy of friendship" to Atlanta zoo. Trump gave Xi a sculpture of a bald eagle, the US national symbol.
From Hit to Miss: The Perils of Gift-Giving
In North Korea, the windowless International Friendship Exhibition, 90 miles north-east of Pyongyang, has 150 rooms of presents given to former leaders Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il. The eclectic collection includes an alligator holding a wooden tray of cocktail glasses from the Sandinistas of Nicaragua, a ZIS-110 armoured car from Joseph Stalin, a basketball signed by Michael Jordan from Madeleine Albright, and a copy of Björk's 2007 album Volta. It is a collection intended to convince North Koreans that their leaders have international support.
Some gifts have been hits, others misses. When Gordon Brown visited Washington in 2009, he gave Barack Obama an elaborate pen holder carved from the timbers of a Royal Navy anti-slavery ship. Obama's gift to Brown was a DVD collection of his favourite films. More problematically, a symbolic button given to Russia by Hillary Clinton in 2009, stamped with the word "reset" in Russian, instead read "overcharge" due to a translation error.
Peter Ricketts, a former British ambassador to France, said gifts between ministers were "a complete pain". "Anything above a few pounds has to be declared and either handed in or bought out of your own pockets, so for politicians they can be a bit of an embarrassment," Lord Ricketts said. "At state visit level it can be a little different. [But] it has to be clever and really stand out as something special to make any difference."
He cited two British royal gifts as "really successful": King Charles presenting Donald Trump with the original brass bell from the second world war submarine HMS Trump, and Queen Elizabeth's gift of a black labrador puppy to Valéry Giscard d'Estaing during his 1976 state visit. Royals regularly receive gifts, including a giant grasshopper-shaped wine cooler from Georges Pompidou in 1972 and a grass penis sheath from a tribe on Tanna island who revered Prince Philip.
In 1826, Muhammad Ali, the pasha of Egypt, sent the French king Charles X a female Masai giraffe called Zarafa, who lived in the Jardin des Plants for 18 years. A camel presented to François Hollande during a 2013 visit to Mali was less fortunate; the animal was slaughtered and used in a tagine, with Mali promising to replace it with a "bigger and better-looking camel".
A few soft-power presents have left a lasting legacy. In 1912, Tokyo donated 3,020 cherry trees to Washington DC, which still flower today. Since 1947, Oslo has sent London a tall Christmas tree every year, and the Netherlands sends 20,000 tulip bulbs to Canada annually in gratitude for sheltering its royal family during the second world war.
