How Britain Looted African Arts
Western countries took part in the theft of thousands of works of African art during colonization and war.
This is the tale of how African artifacts were looted by Britain’s anti-slavery mission and the effort to have them returned. These days, Boko Haram is well known for having abducted 276 children from the quiet northern Nigerian town of Chibok.
But 115 years ago, this small farming community on a hilltop put up one of the strongest fights against British colonization. Due to the town’s yearly raids along British trade routes in Borno state, about 170 British soldiers launched what the country’s parliament referred to as a “punitive expedition” against it in November 1906.
Chibok villagers used poisoned arrows to attack the soldiers from their hilltop hideouts during an 11-day siege as a form of defense. According to a report submitted to the British parliament in December 1907, the fiercely independent “small Chibbuk tribe of savages” were “the most determined lot of fighters” ever encountered in what is now modern-day Nigeria. Only after they found their natural water source and “starved them out” did British forces finally annex Chibok, a process that took an additional three months, according to the report.
But negotiations with the British Museum have often reached an impasse. Britain’s government recently adopted a “retain and explain” stance for state-owned institutions, meaning that monuments and contested objects will be kept but contextualized. European state-owned institutions require new laws to be able to return their collections.
This has been enacted in France and Germany, but British institutions are still prevented from doing so by the British Museum Act of 1963 and the National Heritage Act of 1983. The UK government has said it has no plans to amend those laws to enable return.
Also Read: Yoruba States: Incredible Trade and Conflict, 19th Century
The Benin Dialogue Group, a network of Nigerian representatives and European museums, including the British Museum, has been engaged in decades-long discussions about loaned returns with few tangible timelines. “We thought that this is the group that will enable the United Kingdom to succumb to the issue of repatriation,” says Tijani, but “this process is not very clear.”
He says Nigeria “will not relent” and hopes to “talk more with the British Museum and then come up with a very concise, concrete, timely repatriation of our objects.”
The British Museum told Al Jazeera it was “engaged in a series of dialogues with different parties in Benin, especially the Legacy Restoration Trust, and is aware of widespread hopes of future cooperation.” It would not offer any clarification on a date for loaned returns.
Slavers Turned Merchants
Britain was the largest enslaver nation, enslaving approximately 31.1 million African men, women, and children during its involvement in the trade. The trade was outlawed in 1807, followed by additional acts in 1811 and 1833, after frequent uprisings by enslaved people eventually caused prominent figures in British society to express concern about their heinous treatment.
Ignatius Sancho, an abolitionist, was enslaved in the Spanish West Indies after being born on a slave ship bound from Guinea. At the age of two, he was sold once more and made to labor as a house slave in London until he reached adulthood. Sancho became the first Black Briton to cast a ballot in an election after running away when he was 20 years old and learning to read.
His letters detailing his experiences as a slave, which he published in 1782, had an impact on British Foreign Secretary Charles James Fox and helped pave the way for abolition. The anti-slavery bill that became law was put forth by Fox. However, slavery brought Britain enormous wealth and fueled sectors like banking, insurance, and shipbuilding.
Politicians, in need of new sources of income, came up with the concept of “legitimate commerce,” in which resources produced by African forced labor in African nations would be shipped to Britain to enrich it.
In order for Britain to declare itself the legitimate ruler, its military officers negotiated “treaties” with African rulers that established British trade. These treaties were opposed by the mega-kingdoms of Africa, some of which had served as middlemen by selling their prisoners of war to Europeans.
Therefore, in an effort to “protect” Africa from slave traders, the British military began to form alliances with local leaders who supported British trade and to brutally overthrow African kings who opposed these agreements or this commerce. Britain’s expenses from these wars were covered by stolen artifacts from the conquered kingdoms.
Africa’s oldest empires were destroyed as a result. The fight against slavery also made it possible for it to ruthlessly gather colonies and plunder the artifacts of other civilizations. This included riches and artifacts from kingdoms that are now in Ghana and Nigeria.
Shipbuilder Macgregor Laird formed the African Inland Commercial Company in 1831. He had a great passion for “legitimate” trade in Nigeria as a substitute for slavery and estimated that one resident could be forced into harvesting a tonne of palm oil a year to supply Britain’s flourishing soap industry.
“An able-bodied slave is at present worth about four pounds’ worth of British goods, and when he is shipped he can produce nothing more. But supposing he was kept in his native country, he might [by] very slight exertion produce one ton of [palm] oil per annum, which would be worth eight pounds or purchase double the quantity of British goods,” wrote Laird and R A K Oldfield, a surgeon who travelled with him, in a book about their travels in West Africa in the 1830s.
Their expedition was led by British explorer Richard Lander who removed what is thought to be the first artefact taken from Nigeria during Britain’s process of colonisation. It was an intricately carved Yoruba stool that is ironically now named after Lander and held in the British Museum.
Like other European powers, Britain rushed to control African land not just for palm oil but also gold, ivory, diamonds, cotton, rubber and coal. “Trade in produce has been gradually growing up and gaining upon the Slave Trade in proportion as the enterprise of the British merchant,” it was noted in Britain’s parliamentary papers in 1842. And by 1845 the British government abolished duties on palm oil observing that imports “had nearly quadrupled”.
However, because of the huge profits involved, some British merchants continued to engage in slave raiding. As a result, Britain began to more vigorously promote “legitimate” trade routes and later granted companies charters to take advantage of trade throughout West Africa.
The most prosperous was the Royal Niger Company (RNC), which was run from 1879 to 1900 by merchant George Goldie. By founding mineral companies in the area, Goldie played a key role in the colonization of South Africa and Nigeria.
He established administrative positions with officers who employed the same forms of violence and intimidation that had been prevalent during the slave trade. In his book Portrait of a Colonizer: H., historian Felix K. Ekechi makes the case that… “Colonial officials, and particularly the earlier administrators, were not only imperious, overbearing but consciously callous and brutal towards Africans,” according to M. Douglas in Colonial Nigeria, 1897–1920.
The tariffs RNC imposed made it extremely lucrative. According to parliamentary papers, it earned shareholders a six percent profit annually.
After the Berlin Conference of 1884 endorsed European claims to African territories, Goldie led punitive expeditions against the Nigerian kingdoms of Nupe and Ilorin in 1897, removing their rulers for opposition towards its military outposts in the region. RNC subsequently controlled swaths of territory covering a population of more than 30 million people.
In 1899, Henry Labouchère, the MP for Middlesex, described the process by which territory was acquired during a parliamentary meeting. “Someone belonging to one company or another meets a black man. Of course, he has an interpreter with him.
He asks the black man if he is proprietor of certain land, and if he will sign a paper he shall have a bottle of gin. The black man at once accepts; a paper is put before him, and he is told to make his mark on it, which he does.
Also Read: Yoruba States: Incredible Trade and Conflict, 19th Century
And then we say that we have made a treaty by which all the rights in that country of the emperor, king, or chief, or whatever you call him, have been given over to us. That is the origin of all these treaties.”
In one case, RNC was expected to recognize Britain as “the paramount power” and pay the Sokoto empire in northern Nigeria between £300 and £400 a year in mining rights.
Officers were aware that the actual value was £1,000 annually, or £132,000 in today’s currency. However, Sokoto was later brutally subjugated and nothing was paid. The Ekumeku movement, which translates to “the silent ones,” was an organized opposition to the company that was formed by the Igbo communities in Delta state, southern Nigeria.
Britain bought out the RNC’s territories because of the ongoing uprisings and concerns that Germany or France might seize control of the region. Until the middle of the 20th century, military expeditions to defeat the Ekumeku persisted, and officers during those conflicts collected Igbo artifacts that eventually made their way to London.
The William Lever-owned company Unilever, which extracted palm oil in Ghana, Nigeria, and the Gambia for use as a major component in its soaps, acquired RNC’s subsidiary in 1929. Unilever claims that the various African artifacts it owns were gifts given to its staff.
However, during conflicts between Britain and different local kings who were overthrown and replaced by dishonest “puppet” rulers, more artifacts would be confiscated. In the area, it is known as “indirect government,” according to Britain’s National Archives.
To carry out colonial policies, local chiefs were used. Although Britain would be in control, traditional authorities would appear to be in charge. British soldiers used early machine guns called maxims to attack the Yoruba kingdom of Ijebu in 1892. The punishment for obstructing trade was the looting of the kingdom’s artifacts.
The roads that led to Lagos’ coastal ports were under the control of Ijebu’s king. In 1891, Captain George Denton, the acting governor of Lagos, traveled to Ijebu-Ode, the capital, to facilitate trade for British businesses. However, British officers threatened to use force if they did not sign a treaty, and the Ijebu king refused.
British officials had Ijebu people who lived abroad sign it for the Ijebu king and his chiefs after they protested that they couldn’t read English. According to parliamentary records, this stoked more animosity, and when the Ijebu refused to let a British officer pass through their territory, a punitive expedition was launched for allegedly violating the terms of the signed treaty.
More than a thousand Ijebu soldiers are thought to have died, according to historical accounts. Frederick Lugard, the later governor-general of Nigeria, recalled in his 1893 book, The Rise of Our East African Empire, that “I have been told that’several thousands’ were mowed down by the Maxim on the West Coast in the ‘Jebu’ war, undertaken by Government.
By 1895, British forces had taken control of the majority of the Yoruba kingdoms, including Ibadan, Oyo, and Abeokuta. They then advanced inward toward the Benin Empire, the ancient kingdom of the Bini people.
Britain sent out another “punitive expedition” in February 1897 with 5,000 colonial troops and 1,200 naval soldiers. Benin was completely destroyed by fire during the ten-day massacre. The British convoy, led by Captain James Phillips, had demanded control over the palm oil and rubber trade, and the Benin king’s men killed seven of its officials in retaliation.
At the time, Benin Kingdom, which is now Edo State in southern Nigeria, was a self-sufficient country encircled by ancient civilizations that were collapsing due to European invasion. According to Siollun’s research, Benin City, which was established in the 12th century, was among the first cities in the world to have street lighting.
Metal street lamps that were several feet high and powered by palm oil were used to illuminate the 120-foot-wide roads leading to the oba’s palace at night. Before the mechanical age, archaeologists said its earthwork walls were the biggest in the world.
It was a successful slave trader, specializing in war prisoners. According to colonial records, the official narrative was that soldiers rescued the Bini people from a place where “slavery” and “barbarism” were practiced. According to British reports, Benin was known as the “city of blood” and was heavily involved in human sacrifice. Parliamentary documents state that soldiers discovered “several deep holes in compounds filled with corpses.
However, according to Nigerian accounts, some of the deceased were hastily buried by villagers prior to their escape from the besieged city. Siollun tells Al Jazeera that one explanation is that British soldiers “had been firing long-range artillery, rockets, machine guns, for hours and days even before they entered Benin,” which means that many of the corpses they observed might have been the result of their own attacks.”
Benin deaths were not counted, but the House of Parliament was informed of eight British deaths. Although the exact number is unknown, at least 3,000 artifacts were stolen from the royal palace and nearby residences. Some looted artifacts still have noticeable burn marks from the fire.
In what historians believe was a prearranged loot, the bounty was auctioned off in London to private collectors and galleries throughout the West. According to correspondence documents preserved in Nigeria’s National Archives, Captain Phillips wrote to Britain’s Foreign Office in November 1896, adding, “I would add that I have reason to hope that sufficient ivory may be found in the king’s house to pay the expenses in removing the king from his stool.
American and British newspapers praised the capture of Benin. A portion of the loot was retained by British soldiers. To recreate their profitable scheme, they donned blackface and costumed themselves as native people.
The Benin Bronzes, a collection of sculptures and plaques crafted from carved ivory, bronze, and brass, are more than just works of art; they tell the history of Benin, including its accomplishments, discoveries, and beliefs. They are now in over 160 museums around the world.
Within months of the kingdom being destroyed, the British Museum held an exhibition of the largest collection, 928. The second-largest collection, 516, is kept at the Ethnological Museum in Berlin.
There are 105 at Oxford University’s Pitt Rivers Museum, 160 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Met) in New York, 173 at the Weltmuseum in Vienna, and 160 at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology at Cambridge University.
The community was under the control of a colonial power. According to Tijani of Nigeria’s National Commission for Museums and Monuments, “they stole, set fire to everything, and took away what they stole from the people,” she tells Al Jazeera. Although eight were purchased in the 16th century, a representative for Austria’s Weltmuseum Wien admits that 13 of its 173 Benin Bronzes “have been linked definitively to the British invasion.”
More investigation will aim to determine the origin of the remaining items,” she emailed Al Jazeera. Returning items is not within the museum’s authority. The government makes these choices. In order to build an online database of over 5,000 items kept in public institutions around the world by 2022, Weltmuseum Wien has committed to lending through the Benin Dialogue Group and sharing digitized archives as part of the Digital Benin project.
“The Museum fully acknowledges the destruction and looting inflicted upon Benin City during the British military expedition in 1897, and the circumstances surrounding the acquisition of Benin objects explained in gallery panels and on the Museum’s website,” the British Museum said in a statement to Al Jazeera.
Before a new museum is constructed on the site, the British Museum declared in November 2020 that it would assist with archaeological excavations of the royal palace’s ruins. There is ample evidence of the Benin Kingdom theft. Nevertheless, Benin Bronzes continue to generate profits for their owners, as individual pieces have sold for over $4 million at auction houses. “These items need to be returned to us because the way these things were done is illegal, as everyone knows,” Tijani states.
Also Read: Yoruba States: Incredible Trade and Conflict, 19th Century
