LOOT: Britain and the Benin Bronzes talk to Winchelsea Literary Society, by Barnaby Phillips, 17 June 2022

Preconditioned by the June heatwave, former BBC West Africa hand Barnaby Phillips revisited the Lit. Soc. with another tale from that corner of the Dark Continent.  On his first visit, his account of the two forgotten West African divisions of Lieutenant-General Slim’s forgotten XIV^th Army, Another Man’s War, had been enthusiastically received.  On this occasion he was to dissect the issues around contentious imperial cultural acquisitions and the practicality and morality of their restitution in his exploration of Britain’s relationship with the Benin Bronzes. 

The Berlin Conference of 1885 effectively fired the starting pistol for European imperialism’s Scramble for Africa.    The British were stripped, spikes on, crouched on their blocks, eyes fixed on the finishing tape and determined to take first place.  Already familiar with the West African littoral from their 18^th century immersion in the Trans-Atlantic slave trade, they had more recently been working their way inland along the rivers of present-day Nigeria in search of resources.  In keeping with a 300-year tradition, they set up the Royal Niger Company to co-ordinate the commercial, administrative and military arms of the enterprise.  Some independent kingdoms still survived in Nigeria’s interior and the largest of these was Benin, home of the Edo tribe and ruled by a king or Oba from the centrally located capital, Benin City.  Benin had a long historical heritage and in previous centuries Portuguese and Dutch traders had admired the extensive, sophisticated earthworks of Benin City and the impressive display of the Oba’s processions.  These kingdoms enjoyed significant agency and exported palm oil directly to Liverpool.  Like the Chinese, the former North American colonists and the Germans before them, the Edo found the allure of Britain’s commercial religion of Free Trade easily resistible.  Undeterred, the British, hearing the secret harmonies of some subliminal, imperial waltz, executed their practised dance steps – establishing a Protectorate on the Niger Coast and inducing the Oba to sign a protection treaty.  This did not protect the Oba from complaints by British traders that he was an impediment to their penetration of the interior.  Deliberating on these, the Consular Service in the Protectorate accepted “something must be done”.

The ”something” proved to be one of those quixotic, ultimately inexplicable tragedies destined to exercise colleagues and future historians indefinitely.  In the absence of the Consul General on extended leave in England, his deputy, James Phillips, a 33-year-old product of public school and Cambridge described by contemporaries as “keen”, had decided that the Oba should be removed and had written to Prime Minister Lord Salisbury telling him of his intention to do that.  In what was to transpire as a posthumous reply as far as Phillips was concerned, London vetoed his plan.  Phillips informed the Oba by letter that he was planning to visit and would be coming unarmed, before setting out with 8 other Britons and 240 native bearers.  En route, Phillips received and ignored the Oba’s reply which advised him to postpone the visit for 2 months until after Ague, a religious festival involving human sacrifice. Phillips did send the military band that was accompanying him back to base.  The mission departed by boat from Calabar on the coast, sailed up the Benin River before branching off to a tributary to Ughoton where they disembarked, intending to complete the journey with a day’s march through the jungle to Benin City.  A few hours later they were ambushed by the Edo, armed with flintlock muskets and machetes.  True to Phillips’ word,  the British were unarmed with the revolvers being carried in wooden cases by their African porters. Seven Britons and an undetermined number of porters were killed but two wounded Britons escaped to safety.

When news reached London, a punitive expedition was quickly organised, arriving in the Niger Delta on 9 February, barely 5 weeks after Phillips’s death.  After a 9-day journey through the jungle where they were subject to constant attacks, an advance guard of 540 soldiers and 840 bearers successfully breached the stockade at Benin City and the Edo fled into the bush to escape the withering fire of the British Maxim guns.  Benin City had succumbed for the first time in 1,000 years.  The victorious expeditionary force found themselves in a veritable slaughterhouse.  There were hundreds of recently decapitated native cadavers, possibly Phillips’s porters and prisoners from other tribes, sacrificed to propitiate native gods as the threat of the impending British assault loomed over the Edo.  Some unfortunates seemed to have suffered ritual execution in quasi-crucifixions while other corpses were unsolicited testimonials to the lethal rapid-fire Maxim guns.  Exploring the conquered city, the British uncovered hundreds of “bronze” plaques, ivory carvings and cast metal heads and statues which were distributed among the British officers according to seniority.  Groups posed for photos beside their loot.  The narrative of a city of blood was shaped by the arrival of Illustrated London News correspondent, Henry Seppings Wright, who in the manner of Catch 22’s entrepreneurial Milo Minderbender arrived with a section of Harrod’s Food Hall in his train. He produced a 13-page Benin supplement replete with florid descriptions of a Golgotha of skulls inviting comparison with modern humanitarian interventions.     Some of the bronzes were given to institutions like the British Museum but most were sold to private collectors and foreign museums when they reached England.  The craftsmanship of the works elicited responses ranging from scepticism to frank disbelief that these pieces could be the work of Africans and Portuguese or Arab influences were initially proposed.  It was to be several decades before Africa received due credit.  While Britain was borne along on the high tide of imperialism during Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations, others had growing anxieties about this cultural pillage.  The Hague Convention of 1899 prohibited it and made no distinction between civilised and uncivilised nations.  Britain was one of the 51 signatories.  These were the first faltering steps on the road to considering restitution. 

Kenneth Murray, a Balliol College drop-out and grandson of the Oxford English Dictionary’s first editor, arrived in Nigeria to teach Art in 1927 and gradually took on the role of first curator of Nigerian culture.  Officially supported by appointments as Surveyor then Director of Antiquities in the 1940s, he set up the Nigerian Museum system and busied himself with attempts to repatriate the bronzes, especially for the new National Museum in Lagos.  As the question of restitution loomed larger in the arena of cultural debate and the glow of imperial greatness dimmed, descendants of members of the 1897 punitive expedition came forward to personally restore bronzes to Nigeria while high profile returns have come from President Macron, Chancellor Merkel, Aberdeen University and Jesus College, Cambridge. Britain’s custodians of culture have temporised with the V&A’s Tristram Hunt waffling about universal museums (in London, of course).  Individual bronzes have sold at auction recently for millions of pounds. 

It must be acknowledged that Nigeria has not helped its case by allowing its state museums to drift into dereliction since independence with many items being stolen and sold on the private market.  Someone who clearly did not get the memo was 1973 head of state General Gowon, the military victor of the Biafran civil war, who presented a restored bronze to Queen Elizabeth on a state visit.  Many Nigerians accept that conservation and presentation of antiquities is expensive, demanding substantial technical and financial resources which their country lacks and reluctantly conclude that the artefacts would be better served abroad. 

Barnaby covered the historical facts and the current debate round the bronzes in a thorough, balanced manner and his audience showed their appreciation in the most tangible way by stepping up in numbers to buy the new paperback edition of his book.

William Doherty