Biafra War

The Biafra War. Within the first five years after it gained independence, Nigeria was confronted with a number of terrifying occurrences. The nation’s problems with regional and ethnic chauvinism, political intolerance, victimization, lawlessness, government incompetence and corruption, and nepotism all came to a head on January 15, 1966, when a military coup d’état took place.

The military takeover, which was intended to save the country from impending disintegration, was misunderstood as an Igbo plot to take control of Nigeria. The incompetence of General Ironsi, who was an Igbo and the ruler of a state, appeared to reinforce the suspicions of northerners of a planned Igbo takeover. Lt. Col. Yakubu Gowon was installed as head of state following a countercoup that occurred on July 29, 1966. This coup resulted in the overthrow of General Ironsi.

In September and October of 1966, in the aftermath of this countercoup, Igbo people living in the northern area were brutally murdered. At the conclusion of this premeditated act of genocide against the Igbo people, nearly 10,000 of their people had been killed. Several thousand more individuals were injured or deprived of their property, and 1.5 million people were forced to flee their homes and become refugees within their own nation.

The criminals who were responsible for this horrible act were not brought to justice, and the victims did not get any form of recompense. The inability of the government to put an end to the atrocities persuaded the Igbo that the only place where they could be sure of their safety was in the eastern area, which was commanded by an Igbo named Lieutenant Colonel Emeka Ojukwu.

Given these circumstances, the eastern portion of Nigeria did not acknowledge Gowon as legitimately holding the position of head of state in Nigeria. All efforts at mediation, both inside and outside of Nigeria, were ultimately unsuccessful due to a mix of factors, including ill faith, mutual distrust, deceit, and the incompatible styles of Ojukwu and Gowon.

For instance, an excellent chance for the peaceful resolution of the situation arose in January 1967 when General Ankrah, the military head of state of Ghana, intervened in the issue. This presented itself as a fantastic opportunity for the peaceful resolution of the problem. In order to settle the issues that existed between Ojukwu’s administration and Gowon’s federal government, he called a conference of the Nigerian Supreme Military Council on January 4 and 5, 1967, and held it in Aburi, Ghana.

The following resolutions were approved at the Aburi conference: the non-use of force in the resolution of the crisis; a confederal status for the regions without boundary adjustments; a veto power for all members of the supreme military council that would enjoin a unanimous concurrence of the regions before any major decision could be taken; the payment of salaries to all displaced persons until March 31, 1967; and finally, the head of the federal military government should assume the position of the commander-in-chief of the armed The chances of there being peace in Nigeria were, however, just temporary. After conducting an in-depth analysis of the Aburi pact, federal government employees informed General Gowon that Ojukwu had successfully outwitted him.

Gowon began to have second thoughts about the deal, and on March 17, 1967, he issued Decree No. 8, in which he rejected several of the measures that were included in the Aburi agreement.

In response, Ojukwu dismissed Decree No. 8 as invalid. As a result, the groundwork for a confrontation between the military rule of the federal government and the eastern area had been laid. At the end of March 1967, Ojukwu issued a series of edicts in an effort to protect the economic interests of the region. The United States government responded to the region’s continued economic instability by imposing economic sanctions.

The confrontation lasted until May 26, 1967, when Ojukwu called a meeting of the Eastern Region Consultative Assembly and the Advisory Committee of Chiefs and Elders in Enugu. Both of these groups were comprised of senior citizens. Ojukwu was given the authority to proclaim the eastern area an independent sovereign state on May 27 when the assembly released a communiqué giving him that authority. The new state was to be called the Republic of Biafra.

The Nigerian federal administration moved quickly, taking action the same day to divide the country into twelve states. In accordance with Decree No.14, which censored the press and prohibited participation in political activities, Gowon was granted extensive new powers. Ojukwu’s proclamation of the Republic of Biafra on May 30, 1967, was the moment that brought the so-called “cold war” to its climactic point.

The move was deemed invalid by the federal government, and it was immediately made plain that the administration intended to put an end to the secession. In addition to this, it began an extensive campaign of military mobilization and acquisition of armaments. Ojukwu started a campaign of propaganda in Enugu, which was the capital of Biafra. He said that no power in black Africa could beat Biafra.

On July 6, 1967, the federal government began an offensive against Biafra that consisted of two distinct parts. Biafra showed an initial vigorous fight against the invasion of the federal government from its northern border at Nsukka, but it continued to struggle with a lack of supplies of ammunition throughout the conflict. Within a week and a half, the Biafran troops were driven out of the university town of Nsukka by the military of the federal government. The Biafrans put up a poor fight against the superior artillery and firepower of the federal soldiers stationed at the GarkemOgoja front.

Biafra continued to endure hardships as a result of a lack of available armament. Biafra was hampered by a naval embargo, a lack of international assistance, and internal conflict, whereas the federal authorities were able to draw upon their immense personnel and material resources. Independence was bound to fail despite the magnificent performances of the Biafran people via technical inventiveness and steely persistence. A significant portion of the Biafran populace perished as a result of starvation.

At the beginning of the war in Biafra, it is believed that between 3,000 and 5,000 people a day were killed there. Towards the end of the conflict, this number increased to approximately 10,000 per day. By July of 1968, the federal government had successfully taken control of the majority of Biafra’s strategic and significant towns. In spite of this, Biafra was able to salvage some measure of success by retaking Owerri in April of 1969.

Biafra, on the other hand, did not have the resources necessary to build on its gains. Around this time, Biafra had been reduced to a size that was one-third of what it had been originally. The uprising in Biafra was put down on January 11, 1970, when General Ojukwu escaped to the neighboring country of Côte d’Ivoire.
On January 15, General Gowon recognized Major General Philip Effiong’s unconditional surrender of Biafra and said that there was “no winner and no vanquished.”

Gowon’s post-civil war rehabilitation was half-hearted, incongruous with the goals that his administration had publicly stated, and little more than window dressing to assuage the international community’s concern about reprisals against the Igbo. The Igbo people were subjected to discrimination once more in Nigeria during Gowon’s rule, and they were given unfavorable peace terms by the federal government that ultimately emerged triumphant.

At the conclusion of the civil war, authorities in different regions of the country determined that they had deserted their estates. They were not allowed to return to their old places of employment because of this decision. In the years following the end of the civil war in Nigeria, the future of the Igbo people is still uncertain.

Egypt is plainly a part of Africa, and yet this simple truth has been disputed by Western researchers, who tried to tie ancient Egyptian culture to Near Eastern civilizations for quite a long time. The link between Egypt and Africa was thus portrayed as a one-way flow, as the spread of cultural features or parts of an “advanced” or “higher” civilization over an “uncivilized” continent. This notion has to be considered within the framework of Western scientific heritage and is, it is hoped, a matter of the past.

The real understanding concerning the link between ancient Egypt and Africa (with the exception of Nubia) is, however, still limited. Most of the cultural achievements of African peoples south of the Sahara that were once regarded as markers of a sophisticated civilization, such as divine kingship, ironworking, inhumation ceremonies, and ram religious worship, have been traced back to Egypt. The foundation of these arguments has mainly been superficial parallels between ancient Egyptian practices, approximately five thousand years old, and African cultural elements of today.

Over the decades, quite a list of presumed correspondence has been compiled. Their scientific or methodological foundation needs to be viewed as poor, and few of these diffusionist hypotheses are today recognized by Egyptologists or Africanists. Over the last few decades, the argument about the link between ancient Egypt and Africa has gotten more and more heated and ideologized. In the course of this history, several of the abovementioned notions have been resurrected by Afrocentrists, who in some cases have naively embraced what can be demonstrated to be unscientific illusions.

Beyond apparent similar cultural aspects, the discussion on the link between ancient Egypt and Africa has concentrated on the subject of the “racial” affinity of the ancient Egyptians. Egyptologists and anthropologists in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries endeavored to establish that the Egyptians could not possibly have had black skin, nor could they have belonged to the “Negro race.” With the same vehemence, the African reaction, under the leadership of Cheikh Anta Diop, was obligated to establish that the ancient Egyptians had been black as proof of the African roots of the ancient civilisation.

Especially among Afrocentric groups, the subject of the race of the ancient Egyptians is still of significant relevance, although lately the very notion of race has been challenged by geneticists. The debate over Egypt’s relationship with Africa is still dominated by dogma and prejudice. This appears to have made significant research in a variety of subjects impossible, and the results of such research are still lacking.

Old Egyptian language is a member of the so-called Afroasiatic phylum, which also includes Semitic, which is spoken in both Asia and Africa; the Berber languages, which are spoken in northern Africa; Cushitic, which is spoken in northeastern Africa; Omotic, which is spoken in Ethiopia; and Chadic, which is spoken in present-day Chad. This particular linguistic phylum may be found in northeast Africa, most likely in what is now known as the Sudan. The colonization of Egypt was consequently brought about by the movement of people from Africa into the Nile Valley.

Exploration and colonization of the territories to the south of Egypt’s original territory began as early as the country’s founding. Ivory, incense, ebony, and animal skins were among the goods that were traded with the southern regions during the time before the Dynastic Period. The well-known burial narrative of Harkhuf, who lived during the Sixth Dynasty, makes reference to the importation of a pygmy or dwarf. It is possible to trace the genesis of this appellation back to its Cushitic language roots. The region of Chad, which could be accessible by historic valleys of the Nile and caravan routes that headed to the west, is also likely to have piqued the interest of the ancient Egyptians because of its accessibility.

However, to this day, there has been no discovery of any indication of an excursion to the west. Punt was a nation that had a role in ancient Egyptian history on several occasions due to its proximity to Egypt. The ancient Egyptians made reference to this area of Africa as early as the fifth dynasty. This was the location from which they acquired myrrh, electrum, fragrant plants, ivory, and gold.

On the walls of Queen Hatsheput’s temple at Deir al-Bahri, which is located close to Thebes, a narrative of a trip to Punt can be found that is particularly lengthy. Not only do we discover information on the trip here, but we also get images of everyday life and the people who lived in Punt. Only Egyptian records have the term Punt, and nothing is known about the names that the Puntites used for themselves or their homelands.

The word “punt” is only found in Egyptian records. Therefore, despite the fact that it has been going on for more than a century, people are still debating where exactly Punt may be found geographically. Following an in-depth analysis of the textual and visual sources as well as the archaeological data, there appears to be a growing consensus that Punt may be found inland from the shore of the Red Sea.

It is possible that it is connected to the cultures that existed in the Gash delta region of eastern Sudan. These cultures left traces of their presence in the Ethiopian highlands and the Upper Nile basin. Around the beginning of the twelfth century BCE, almost all historical references to Punt disappeared, and it would appear that the city’s commerce went out of business.

In spite of the fact that there is a good deal of evidence suggesting that ancient Egypt and Africa were connected in some way, it has only very seldom been feasible to connect current African designations with African items, locations, or peoples that were referenced in Egyptian texts. This huge gap in our knowledge might be filled one day if we put more emphasis on linguistic and ethnoarchaeological research that is free of ideological bias.

When an unexplained ancient language was discovered on the bandages of a mummy’s wrappings in the 1800s, Egyptologists were perplexed. It took decades to solve, but it rewarded researchers with an important insight into the Etruscan writers.

The Museum of Zagreb in Croatia, which was then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, received a female Egyptian mummy in 1868. Her previous owner removed her packaging but retained it. She had been a commoner, not a member of royalty or the priestly caste. However, her wrappings included an intriguing conundrum. The writing on the linen strips was not Egyptian hieroglyphics, as noticed by the German Egyptologist Heinrich Brugsch. It was a script he was unaware of.

Two decades later, in 1891, museum officials decided to transfer the wrappings to Vienna in an effort to decipher the inscriptions. Jakob Krall, an Austrian Egyptologist, inspected the bandages and was ultimately able to crack the code. The letters were not Coptic, as some had hypothesized, but rather Etruscan, the language of the pre-Roman society that governed Italy. Whoever covered the tomb all those years ago tore pieces out of an Etruscan book of linen.

The discovery was extraordinary. Numerous classical works contain references to Etruscan linen books, but surviving examples have been hard to locate. Egypt’s arid climate, combined with the desiccants used to dry the mummies, created ideal conditions for preserving the delicate fabric. The wrappings of the mummy were not only the earliest entire linen Etruscan writing discovered, but also the longest Etruscan text ever discovered. It might be a treasure trove of knowledge about the culture.

The identification of the Linen Book of Zagreb (also known by its Latin name, Liber Linteus Zagrabiensis) by Krall prompted several doubts regarding its contents and date of composition. How an Etruscan book came to cover an Egyptian mummy was of equal curiosity.

The Unsolved Mysteries of Etruria

The ancient Etruscans originally hailed from an area roughly corresponding to the contemporary Italian province of Tuscany. In the ninth century B.C., Etruria emerged as a trading power that also produced exquisite works of art in metalworking, painting, and carving for the benefit of Greek colonists. Goods from Etruria, Greek deities, and the Euboean Greek alphabet all made their way to the area via trade. It was reworked by the Etruscans into their own, right-to-left writing.

Compared to other European languages, Etruscan is remarkably unique. The Indo-European languages that came to Europe thousands of years ago are the ancestors of nearly all of the languages spoken there today, English included. However, Etruscan, as an exception, stands as an exception: a language that not only predates but also survives the Indo-European invasion.

The Etruscans, the oldest rulers of Rome, left their mark on the city’s history. The Etruscan word phersu, meaning “mask,” is the origin of the Latin words “persona” and “person.” But as republican Rome grew stronger, it absorbed Etruscan culture, leaving only relics, colorful tomb art, and inscriptions that became harder and harder for the general public to read.

Claudius, the Roman emperor in the first century AD, was one of the last classical-era persons to study and master Etruscan. Claudius wrote a 20-volume history of the Etruscans, but unfortunately, it has been lost to history.

Evidence compiled

The Linen Book of Zagreb was once a sheet measuring around 11 feet in length and including 12 columns of writing before it was torn into bandages. It is estimated that the 1,330 words retrieved from the bandages represent almost 60% of the original text. When Krall figured out the language of the linen book in 1891, it greatly increased the amount of text that could be used to study the ancient Etruscan language. Before that, only about 10,000 short inscriptions had been studied.

Initially, academics assumed the linen book was a funeral artifact, leading them to wonder if it was connected to the corpse it had covered. The Croatian man, Mihail Baric, bought the mummy in the 1840s from Alexandria. His residence in Vienna, where he kept the mummy, was a secret. Once he passed away, his family gave the mummy and its wrappings to a museum in Zagreb.

The mummy’s wrappings included not only the Etruscan linen book but also several other texts. Additionally, a papyrus copy of the Egyptian Book of the Dead was utilized as part of the wrappings. Experts now assume that the lady whose body was mummified is the one mentioned in this Egyptian text, a woman known as Nesi-Khons (“the mistress of the home”). It was determined in the late 20th century that she was born between the 4th and 1st centuries B.C. and passed away when she was in her 30s.

Titles and rubrics in the book’s red pages were written with cinnabar, a scarlet mineral used to make paints. The black ink was manufactured from burnt ivory. The balsam used in the mummification process obscured much of the Etruscan text, but in the 1930s, advances in infrared photography allowed 90 more lines of the Etruscan to be deciphered, providing further evidence that the book served as a ritual calendar documenting rites carried out at various times of the year, as previously believed by scholars.

The Etruscan text provides guidance on how and when to offer homage to various deities, including suggestions for libations and animal sacrifices. Nethuns, an Etruscan water deity, is mentioned; he is linked to Neptune, the Roman sea god. The Etruscan sun deity Usil is mentioned, as he is comparable to the Greek sun god Helios.

Words and place names were discovered via additional research that directly related to the origin of the material. The linen book was likely produced in the area around the contemporary Italian city of Perugia, according to Etruscan specialists. Although the linen was dated to the fourth century B.C., the literary evidence indicates that the writing was created considerably later. The inclusion of January 1 as the beginning of the ceremonial year is the most convincing evidence that the book was composed between 200 and 150 B.C. If this later date for the passage is correct, it gives a glimpse into a way of life that would soon be wiped out by the spread of Roman power.

A Yearly Ceremony

How this Etruscan writing came to be in Egypt is a mystery that has baffled scholars for a long time. Some possible explanations have been proposed. The mummy was acquired in the city of Alexandria in the 19th century, and this is significant for a number of reasons. Because she lived in a port city, it is likely that books from different civilizations were readily available there, and thus her body was likely mummified using whatever materials were at hand. The key premise of this idea is that the book in question had no special significance in the eyes of the recently deceased woman. All that was available to the mummifiers was utilised.

An opposing notion suggests that linen books were also interred with the dead in Etruscan tombs, much like the Egyptian Book of the Dead. If the dead woman was of Etruscan descent, her family might have buried her with both the Egyptian Book of the Dead and the Etruscan linen text, which is how both of these cultures do things.

The phrase “Iron Age” is both useful and deceptive as a historical indicator. It suggests a dramatic break with what came before and a transformative effect on all that followed. In reality, the use of metals in Africa developed extremely gradually and coexisted with the continuous use of stone tools. In the end, however, the result was revolutionary, fostering not just increased economic output but also increased lethality in conflict.

Iron and other metals have had an equally deep cultural influence, but one that is more diversified and difficult to measure historically. Sub-Saharan Africa has a greater understanding of the history of metallurgy than North Africa. In the Sahel and the areas to the south, it is likely that metals have been mined for over 2,000 years. The producers of these metals and the artifacts they fashioned have played significant roles in the subcontinent’s history.

In several creation myths, the advent of metalworking is seen as a defining moment, while iron, copper, and gold have long played prominently in political, economic, social, and religious life. Africa’s gold reserves were so rich that, for centuries, the continent was synonymous with the precious metal, first in the Arab and Indian Ocean nations, then among Europeans. However, in Africa itself, iron has been the dominant metal in all sectors of life, from the utilitarian to the sacred, while copper has historically been regarded as more valuable than gold in many communities.

Ironworking in Africa: Materials and History

The red soil that characterizes much of Africa south of the Sahara consists of exposed lateritic crust, or low-grade iron. Metallurgists typically mined the richest resources of oxides, including hematite, magnetite, and limonite. Gold, in both alluvial and reef forms, is far more widespread across the continent than is often believed, but not all sources have been exploited.

Copper deposits, on the other hand, are limited in West Africa, with the exception of sections of the southern Sahara in Mauritania and Niger and tiny concentrations in eastern Nigeria, but are abundant in regions of central and southern Africa. Lead occurs sometimes, notably in association with copper; tin was also mined in a few locations, particularly in southern Africa and probably in Nigeria’s Bauchi plateau.

Despite persistent Portuguese notions to the contrary, silver is scarce throughout Africa, and its usage is very recent, with the exception of the Sahara and Sahel. During the time from around 500 BCE to 500 CE, the use of iron and copper evidently expanded simultaneously throughout the whole continent; there is no indication of a progression from copper to arsenical copper or bronze and then to iron, as in the Middle East and Europe.

The subject of origins remains unanswered, in part because the chronology of metalworking in the places from which it was previously believed to have reached Africa is quite imprecise. Some researchers hypothesize that Africa may have evolved metallurgy independently due to the absence of apparent routes of dissemination.

Technically, this would have been challenging because iron smelting requires precise control of temperature and gases within the furnace. It is difficult to imagine how mastery of these factors could have been attained without extensive experimentation with metals that are easier to manipulate, such as copper and its alloys, or without kiln firing of ceramics, which also requires high temperature pyrotechnology.

Early dates related with iron smelting in the Termit area of Niger have nonetheless enhanced the likelihood of independent innovation. If these dates are confirmed, there is still a difficulty in explaining the sporadic spread of this throughout West Africa. Long ago, it was believed that the expansion of metalworking throughout the Congo Basin and into eastern and southern Africa was connected to the movement of Bantu farmers.

Except in southern Africa, modern archeological and language reconstructions have contradicted this notion. Simultaneously, stone-using hunter-gatherers and iron-using farmers coexisted in numerous regions, indicating that the technology spread in complicated patterns. In fact, ironworkers continued to utilize stone tools for crude forging up until quite recently.

Further, the existence of iron technology is no longer seen as the determining factor in Bantu expansion; rather, it is generally recognized that non-Bantu speaking peoples were closely involved in the creation of iron technology even before the Bantu. Iron tools and weapons enhanced the efficacy of agriculture, hunting, fishing, and fighting, contributing to the emergence of complex societies defined by surplus production, craft specialization, and social stratification.

Iron, copper, and gold joined trading routes. Raw iron and copper, as well as forged products, were exchanged locally with individuals who lacked access to resources and experts. Copper and brasswares were important imports into West Africa with the rise of trans-Saharan commerce throughout the first and early second millennia CE, and were frequently swapped directly for gold.

In the second part of the fifteenth century, the opening of maritime channels between Europe and West Africa led to an exponential growth in these imports and, for a brief time, exports of gold. Eventually, iron bars also became a standard European import. The mineral richness of Africa was a primary impetus for European colonization and conquest.

Ironworking in Africa: Technology

As more sites are examined and excavated throughout Africa, the tremendous magnitude of precolonial iron smelting becomes evident. While some industries merely produced enough to meet local demands, others participated in intensive production, frequently over extended time periods.

The Middle Senegal valley, the Bassar region of western Togo, Kano and its surrounds in northern Nigeria, and the Ndop Main of Cameroon are the most well-known of these proto-industrial hubs; however, Futa Jallon and Yatenga may have also been significant producers.

Almost all copper deposits in Sub-Saharan Africa, with the exception of certain deep ores in what became known as the Copperbelt (in Zambia), were discovered and exploited by indigenous metallurgists prior to the colonial period, according to modern geological studies.

African smelters utilized a vast array of furnace types to manufacture bloomery iron or raw copper, including open bowls, low shaft, high shaft, permanent, and temporary furnaces. It is now hard to determine whether the shape of furnaces was determined by the characteristics of local ores or the charcoals employed almost everywhere as fuel.

The tall shaft furnace that depends on natural airflow, sucking air into a multitude of holes around the base, rather than bellows, is a uniquely African innovation; outside of Africa, just one specimen is recorded from Burma. Such a furnace uses fuel inefficiently, but eliminates the labor-intensive efforts of bellows operators.

In certain regions, a single artisan smelted and forged iron and copper. In previous societies, smelters and blacksmiths, as well as those who created tools and ornamentation of copper, brass, or gold, were highly specialized.

In addition, these jobs were and still are frequently inherited, particularly in the western Sudan. However, blacksmiths and smelters were always male, while women and children performed a substantial amount of mining, ore preparation, and charcoal production.

As far south as the Cameroon Grasslands, the skill of lost-wax casting attained a stunning degree of excellence throughout West Africa. This entails constructing a wax model of the thing to be cast, followed by encasing it in clay. When the wax is melted, the metal is poured in to take the desired shape.

Discoveries from three minor sites at Igbo Ukwu in southern Nigeria, dated to the ninth to tenth centuries BCE, contain bronze pendants, staff heads, and jugs that demonstrate a mastery of the technology and a virtuosic joy in imitating natural elements in metal.

African brass casters have added their own innovations to a technique that stretches back to ancient Egypt. Thus, both Akan and Grassfields artists frequently connect crucibles to molds to limit the formation of gases and improve the flow of molten metal.

Despite the fact that conventional lost-wax casting employs copper alloys such as bronze or brass due to their lower melting temperature and higher ductility without undesired gases, some of the iconic heads and figures from Ife were cast in pure copper, a technological marvel of the highest order.

Ironworking in Africa: Role of Metallurgists and Metals in Culture

While much of the literature emphasizes the “otherness” of the African smith, this is most prevalent among West African peoples such as the Mande, where smithing is restricted to certain endogamous “castes,” and pastoral societies such as the Masai, where smiths are looked down upon because they perform manual labor.

Where the skill is not inherited, candidates are sometimes required to pay expensive apprenticeship and initiation fees, which tend to limit entry. Smiths may also be sculptors, diviners, amulet makers, circumcisers, and morticians; their women are frequently potters and circumcisers. The complicated and sometimes ambiguous opinions regarding blacksmiths stem largely from the recognition of their strength.

The rest of society, from farmer and hunter to king and priest, depends on their capacity to change inanimate matter into hoes, spears, symbols of power and prestige, and emblems of the spirit-objects that are thought to be imbued with action. Because metalworkers physically “play with fire,” they must collect a wealth of ceremonial knowledge.

This is particularly true of smelting, the primary act of transformation, which frequently takes place in seclusion and involves making offerings to the ancestors, strictly observing sexual and menstrual taboos, and making extensive use of medications.

Similar rites may accompany the installation of a new forge or the production of a new hammer or anvil. Due to their obvious access to supernatural power, blacksmiths are frequently associated with monarchy, particularly in central Africa, where they may play a significant role in royal investiture and the production of regalia.

Similar to chiefs, smiths are frequently viewed as potential sorcerers or witches, as the power they hold may be either beneficial or harmful.

Smiths, like chiefs, may have power over reproduction, both symbolically and even literally. Particularly, smelting rituals usually cite the human paradigm of gender and age to explain and guarantee transforming potential.

Ironworking in Africa

The Benin Kingdom was located in the western Niger Delta. A variety of councils and societies made up of chiefs and counselors supported the oba, the traditional leader. The Edo-speaking Bini people lived in the kingdom. In the latter half of the fifteenth century, the kingdom was one of the first on the coast that Europeans encountered. Benin and the British were in constant communication. The consular authority and travelers’ accounts had a significant impact on the history of relations in the late nineteenth century.

The former represented a policy that relied on individual authority and ill-defined political goals while highlighting the benefits of free trade. Britain’s informal empire in the region was first established on the island of Fernando Po in the 1840s, and it later became entrenched in Lagos after 1851. Travelers included consul Richard Francis Burton, who went to Benin in 1862 and painted a possibly distorted picture of human sacrifices and moral decay, according to later scholarship. This visit was a key factor in creating the British perception of the kingdom at the end of the nineteenth century.

The Niger Coast Protectorate, another British colony in the Niger Delta in addition to the Royal Niger Company, was a department of the Foreign Office with its administrative seat in Old Calabar and several centers in coastal commercial hubs like Warri and Sapele. In 1892, deputy consul Gallwey signed a treaty with Oba Ovonramwen, who had been ruling since 1888, extending the consular jurisdiction to the kingdom. As some experts say, Benin leaders most certainly misread the deal.

The Bini middlemen in the trade of rubber and palm oil, which was in high demand in the European market following the Dunlop company’s invention of the pneumatic tire in 1887, were thus avoided, according to the British interpretation of it as the kingdom’s formal submission to British economic requirements to permit free trade.

The protectorate put growing pressure on Benin to permit economic activity on its territory based on the terms of the treaty. The oba and Benin leaders appear to have perceived these at the same time as a rising propensity to infiltrate the kingdom and topple its rule. A temptation that had been prevalent on the West African coast existed in the protectorate to use force to overcome Benin’s opposition.

Ralph Moor, the protectorate’s consul general, spoke with the Foreign Office in the years before 1897, signaling his desire to employ force against the Benin Kingdom as early as 1895. The Foreign Office rejected the idea and forbade Moor and acting consul James R. Philips from advancing their careers by carrying out tasks akin to Gallwey’s. There is no doubt that these individual professional objectives played a significant role in the expedition’s attack by soldiers from Benin in January 1897, which resulted in the deaths of seven Europeans, including Philips.

On the one hand, Philips’s mission was conducted without the Foreign Office’s approval, a matter that was being pushed by Moor in London, even if it was first sent as a peaceful diplomatic envoy. On the other hand, its obvious goal was not stated and most definitely was not informed to the authorities in the Benin Kingdom.

The British group was informed that the oba could not meet them because the Ague festivities, a significant event, were in progress and outsiders were not permitted to visit the king. Philips continued moving forward despite warnings. Later investigations revealed that Philips most likely survived the assault and was sent to Benin City, where he most likely passed away from his injuries or was executed, contrary to assertions made at the time.

Since the consul had already prepared a military attack and the acting consul had started an unlawful diplomatic mission, both Moor and Philips went outside the bounds of their authority. Political and military officials in Benin misread the situation since they were the only ones who heard about the arrival of a sizable party.

Although it was not proven that they were armed, ongoing worries in the past led them to prepare to protect the independence of the kingdom from an impending assault. A rapid wave of events led to the public outcry in England and the ensuing punitive expedition. When British forces took over Benin City two months later, the oba and the majority of his chiefs left. To recoup the expense of the mission, the city was set on fire and stripped of its ivory supply.

Some of the most elegant and valuable works of art from royal Africa are bronzes, which were either donated to the British Museum or sold at auction. The museums in Berlin and Vienna made numerous purchases of artifacts.

Images of murder and human sacrifice that were depicted in accounts of the city were used to support the British invasion in discussions at the time. The bulk of the Benin Kingdom chiefs and the oba returned, and Alfred Turner was chosen to start the British government. His initial goal was consolidation and the expression of peaceful purpose; this strategy was successful. In addition to a prosecution of the oba, Moor pushed on a trial of the chiefs who were thought to be accountable for the fatalities in the Philips party.

The oba was deposed and ultimately exiled to Tenerife, while two chiefs received death sentences. Three war chiefs put up a fierce fight, including Ologbose, who had received a death sentence for his involvement in the ambush, and it took British military force until 1899 to finally overcome them. The Southern Nigerian Protectorate is now in charge of a protracted reorganization that began with Ologbose’s death sentence.

The native council, which was made up of former oba’s court officials, served as the colonial government’s administrative intermediaries. The new oba, who was installed in 1914, symbolized the revised British strategy in the area—an effort to impose indirect authority.

In many respects, the punitive expedition against the Benin Kingdom was a typical illustration of British expansionist policies in West Africa throughout the 1890s and 1900s. The Ijebu campaign in 1892, Jaja’s removal in 1894, or the Ashanti war in 1896 are three instances of small-scale operations against autonomous nations and political subdivisions that defied British interests. Many comparable activities, including the Aro campaign from 1902 to 1911, which saw further similar unlawful actions stopped by legal steps, were taken in order to consolidate colonial southern Nigeria.

These extremely contentious battles were mostly carried out by former protectorate officials who were replaced by colonial officials. However, the theft of the Benin bronzes from the palace is still a contentious matter and a painful reminder of 1897 and forceful imperial invasion and oppression.