Two Benin bronzes were returned to their ancestral home 125 years after British soldiers looted them from West Africa.
A colorful ceremony on Saturday February 19, 2022 marked the return of sculptures, one of a cockerel and the other the head of a king, to the Oba palace in Benin City in Nigeria. “They are not just art but they are things that underline the significance of our spirituality,” a spokesperson for the Oba palace, Charles Edosonmwan, said.
The University of Aberdeen and Jesus College Cambridge became the first institutions in the world to return Benin bronzes when they handed it back to the Nigerian High Commission in 2021.
During the colonial era, many pieces were acquired illegally and ended up in European collections.
As a result, some estimate 80% to 90% of sub-Saharan African cultural heritage landed in Western museums.
Musée du Quai Branly–Jacques Chirac in Paris alone holds around 70,000 African objects and the British Museum in London has tens of thousands more.
Britain, Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany have all received requests from African countries to return lost treasures.
Last year, Germany announced plans to send hundreds of bronzes back to Nigeria.
As Nigerians hailed the return of the two bronzes to Benin City on Saturday February 19, 2022, the president of the neighboring nation of Benin, Patrice Talon, opened an exhibition of historic artworks returned by France last year.
The 26 pieces were stolen in 1892 by French colonial forces from the former Dahomey kingdom, in the south of modern-day Benin.
The “Benin art yesterday and today” exhibition was “returning to the Benin people part of their soul, part of their history and their dignity,” Culture Minister Jean-Michel Abimbola told the AFP news agency.
Abimbola said discussions were ongoing to return other objects, including the legendary sculpture of the god Gou, which is still in the Louvre in Paris.
The ‘Benin Bronzes’ (made of brass and bronze) are a group of sculptures which include elaborately decorated cast plaques, commemorative heads, animal and human figures, items of royal regalia, and personal ornaments.
They were created from at least the 16th century onwards in the West African Kingdom of Benin, by specialist guilds working for the royal court of the Oba (king) in Benin City.
The Kingdom also supported guilds working in other materials such as ivory, leather, coral and wood, and the term ‘Benin Bronzes’ is sometimes used to refer to historic objects produced using these other materials.
Many pieces were commissioned specifically for the ancestral altars of past Obas and Queen Mothers.
They were also used in other rituals to honour the ancestors and to validate the accession of a new Oba.
Among the most well-known of the Benin Bronzes are the cast brass plaques which once decorated the Benin royal palace and which provide an important historical record of the Kingdom of Benin.
This includes dynastic history, as well as social history, and insights into its relationships with neighbouring kingdoms, states and societies.
The Benin Bronzes are preceded by earlier West African cast brass traditions, dating back into the medieval period.
One element of the history of the Kingdom of Benin represented on the brass plaques and sculptures is the kingdom’s early contacts with Europeans.
Trade and diplomatic contacts between Benin and Portugal developed on the West African coast from the 15th century.
These early connections included Portuguese and Benin emissaries voyaging between the capitals and courts of Benin and Portugal as these two powers negotiated their new relationship.
There are over 900 objects from the historic Kingdom of Benin in the British Museum’s collection.
Over 100 can be seen in a permanent changing display within the Museum’s galleries.
Objects from Benin are also lent regularly around the world.
The British Museum’s collections additionally include a range of archival documentation and photographic collections relating to the objects from the Kingdom of Benin and their collection histories.
The Benin Bronzes come from Benin City, the historic capital of the Kingdom of Benin, a major city state in West Africa from the medieval period.
Benin City became part of the British Empire from 1897 to 1960 and is now located within the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
The modern city of Benin (in Edo State) is the home of the current ruler of the Kingdom of Benin, His Royal Majesty Oba Ewuare II.
Many of the rituals and ceremonies associated with the historic Kingdom of Benin continue to be performed today.
During the second half of the 19th century, the balance of power between West African kingdoms like Benin and the European nations they traded with shifted towards European control.
In the late 19th century, industrialised European nations accompanied by new military technologies began to exert greater power across the African continent.
This political and commercial movement developed into the territorial land-grab known as the ‘Scramble for Africa’.
This period of West African history was also significantly affected by the transatlantic slave trade.
This vast traffic in humans supplied labour to the colonies and plantations in the Americas, including those of Britain.
While by the late 19th century this trade had been largely abolished, its increasing scale and barbarity in the preceding centuries had a massive impact on West African societies.
The desire to further extend British power and influence in the region ultimately led to a clash with the Kingdom of Benin.
The gradual expansion by the British into territory neighbouring the kingdom and an increasing reluctance to accept Benin’s trading conditions created an atmosphere of distrust and animosity.
In January 1897 an allegedly peaceful but clearly provocative British trade mission was attacked on its way to Benin City, leading to the deaths of seven British delegates and 230 of the mission’s African carriers.
This incident triggered the launch of a large-scale retaliatory military expedition by the British against the Kingdom of Benin. In February 1897 Benin City was captured by British forces.
Benin suffered a bloody and devastating occupation.
No exact figure can be given for the number of Benin’s population who were killed in the conquest of the city.
However, it is clear that there were many casualties during the sustained fighting.
The occupation of Benin City saw widespread destruction and pillage by British forces.
Along with other monuments and palaces, the Benin Royal Palace was burned and partly destroyed.
Its shrines and associated compounds were looted by British forces, and thousands of objects of ceremonial and ritual value were taken to the UK as official ‘spoils of war’ or distributed among members of the expedition according to their rank.
This included objects removed from royal ancestral shrines, among which were ceremonial brass heads of former Obas and their associated ivory tusks.
The looted objects also included more than 900 brass plaques, dating largely to the 16–17th century, found in a storage room within the palace.
Having previously decorated the palace walls, these plaques were key historic records for the Benin Court and kingdom, enabling illustration of historic practices and traditions.
Following the occupation, the Oba was later captured and sent into exile, while a number of Benin chiefs were executed.
Justified as legitimate military action against a ‘barbarous’ kingdom, this brutal, violent colonial episode effectively marked the end of the independent Kingdom of Benin.
In the autumn of 1897, the British Museum displayed 304 Benin plaques on loan from the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and subsequently petitioned successfully to receive 203 of these as a donation.
The majority of the remaining plaques were sold to UK and German museums and to private dealers, while a few were retained by the Foreign Office.
Other early collections were purchased or donated by members of the Benin expedition.
The British Museum collection only grew to its current size following the acquisition of major private collections, such as that of Harry Beasley in 1944, William Oldman in 1949 and Sir Henry Wellcome in 1954.
In 1950 and 1951 the Museum de-accessioned some of the Benin plaques in the collection and these were subsequently sold, exchanged or donated to the Colony and Protectorate of Nigeria (25 in number) and the government of the Gold Coast or Ghana (1).
These plaques were later accessioned into the collections of newly established West African museums.
At the time these objects were seen as ‘duplicates’ of other objects retained in the collection, something which later research has shown to be incorrect.
A further number of such plaques (12) were sold to or exchanged with private dealers and collectors between 1972 and 79.
In addition to objects that directly relate to the 1897 expedition, the Museum cares for objects from or associated with Benin City that sit outside the context of the 1897 expedition, including brass castings, carved ivories, contemporary artworks, textiles, casts and replicas, and archaeological finds.
