THE BENIN BRONZES

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1897 - War Crime and Cultural Vandalism 

On 4 January 1897, James R. Phillips, led a British team accompanied by 250 local soldiers, masquerading as porters and a band. Hiding weapons in baggage, the group journeyed into Benin from the Benin port town of Ughọtọn with the intention to force the king to abolish custom duties on trade with Europeans and on trade with neighbouring communities in the Niger Delta. Warned by locals along the route from the coast to Benin City that the king was forbidden by custom to receive foreign visitors during the period, the party pressed on!  

Oba Ovonramwen, the king of Benin had no problem receiving this August visitors, but Benin chiefs begged to differ and believed that Phillips and his gang would interrupt series of ritual ceremonies that the city and the king were undergoing during this period, considered sacred in the customs of the Benin people. Furthermore, the chiefs argued that the British party has ulterior motive having refuse to halt their movement following several despatches sent to them. Against the background of a recent prediction by the revered Oracle of Ife that a great calamity was in the offing, the chiefs were instructed to go and meet with party to at least find out if it was coming for peace or for war. 

The chiefs attempted to dissuade the British from progressing in the journey but failed, a dispute occurred and all but two of the officials survived the ambush of Benin soldiers at Ugbinẹ about 15 miles from Benin. And that was how the Benin Army’s attempt to stop British encroachment led to the tragic event that came to be known as the “Benin Massacre”. 

War with the British became inevitable. And the reprisal came remarkably swiftly when British soldiers launched a three-prong attack on Benin the following month. With the city falling and the king going into hiding in the villages, the rampaging British soldiers went on a campaign of looting, rape and cultural vandalism, gathering thousands of prized artworks in bronze, brass, ivory, and wood before setting the great city on fire. This was the real massacre! 

The looted artworks are products of over 5 centuries of the creative genius and craftmanship of Benin artists many of which hung on the pillars and walls of the magnificent palace of the King of Benin about which several European explorers and missionaries have written in the 15th and 16th centuries. The looted artworks were shipped to England from where they found their way into the global art market after they were sold by the returning British soldiers and officials. 

How the Benin Bronzes Came to Adorn the World’s Most Prestigious Museums 

After marauding British soldiers and officials walked away with thousands of priceless cultural artefacts from Benin, some were placed on loan to the British Museum by the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs in England, and many more were sold to British and German institutions, as well as private art dealers. According to the British Museum’s website, some of the looters also kept Benin Bronzes for themselves. These artefacts—including plaques, figurines, tusks, sculptures of Benin’s long line of kings, and ivory masks - have since been dispersed around the world, with the bulk of the works now residing with state museums in Europe. 

While the exact number of these artefacts is unknown, it is believed to be over 3,000. Contrary to the name, not all of the works are made of bronze, many were produced from ivory and wood but they have collectively been referred toas the Benin Bronzes. 

The Campaign for Repatriation  

The Benin Bronzes are a painful reminder of the evil of colonialism and its continued impact on the colonised African society. Because they are held in their thousands outside of Africa where they were produced, the Benin Bronzes have faced calls for their return, both by Nigerians and concerned stakeholders all over the world. Today many young men and women of Benin origin live without an understanding of the glorious past of their ancestors who were comparable in genius to Michaelangelo and Leonardo Da Vinci. This has led to people across Nigeria calling for the return of the Benin Bronzes. 

“Generations of Africans have already lost incalculable history and cultural reference points because of the absence of some of the best artworks created on the continent. We shouldn’t have to ask, over and over, to get back what is ours” says Victor Ehikhamenor, a Lagos- and U.S.-based visual artist writing in a New York Times op-ed on the subject in 2020. 

Cultural activists in Nigeria and all over the world have been consistent in the demand that museums and institutions holding the Benin Bronzes return them to the descendants of their original owners. The British Museum has been picketed by activists, scholars, and artists who claim that the institution owns stolen property, largely because the museum holds a vast number of Benin Bronzes in its collection. 

Where Else Are the Benin Bronzes Held Outside Britain? 

Apart from the British Museum, the Benin Bronzes are held in other museums and institutions in all continents of the world. While the highest number is to be in the British Museum which hold about 900 objects, the Berlin’s Ethnological Museum also holds more than 500 objects of the Benin Bronzes and has also faced protests because it keeps works that many activists believe should be repatriated to their original owners from whom they were stolen. 

Many more museums around the world hold more Benin Bronzes. Dan Hicks a British Professor of Contemporary Archaeology at the University of Oxford and Curator of the Pitts River Museum wrote a book to unravel details of the global destination of the artefacts. In his book The Brutish Museums: The Benin Bronzes, Colonial Violence and Cultural Restitution, published in 2020, he compiled a list of over 160 institutions that hold Benin Bronzes. His list includes the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Musée du Quai Branly–Jacques Chirac in Paris, the Vatican Museums, the Australian Museum in Sydney, the National Museum of Ethnology in Osaka, and the Louvre Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates.  

The painful irony of the global dispersal of the Benin Bronzes lies in the fact that there are 45 institutions in the UK and 38 in the US holding these artefacts, only 9 institutions in Nigeria hold any item of the known listing of the Benin Bronzes. In fact, when in 1977, the most popular of the Benin Bronzes, the Idia Mask, was established as the official emblem of FESTAC ’77, an international festival of African arts and culture that held in Lagos that year, and the government of Nigeria made a request of the British Museum to have the artefact on display at the Lagos venue, the British Museum flatly refused.  

Some Benin Bronzes Are Being Returned 

However, a few institutions and individuals have made commitments to returning and some have started to return looted artefacts. As of the end of 2021, the Humboldt Forum in Berlin, parent body of the Berlin’s Ethnological Museum has agreed to start pursuing the process of repatriating its Benin Bronzes. Earlier that year, the University of Aberdeen in Scotland called its 1957 acquisition of a sculpture of the Oba of Benin at an auction in London “extremely immoral” and vowed to send the work home.