Day: May 1, 2021
A month ago, the University of Aberdeen in Scotland committed to repatriating to Nigeria its lone Benin Bronze, becoming the first Western institution to return any of the thousands of bronze sculptures looted from the Kingdom of Benin (part of present-day Nigeria) in 1897. This week, the government of Germany became the second, promising to return to Nigeria in 2022 all Benin Bronzes held by state-run museums. The Ethnological Museum in Berlin alone holds over 500 Bronzes.
The 1897 Benin Punitive Expedition stands as a monument to the greed and destruction of colonialism. At the behest of corporate interests looking to get ahold of new resources, James Phillips, the new Acting Consul General for the Royal Niger Company set out to overthrow the Oba, or King, of Benin. The Oba didn’t want to trade with the Brits, and forbade his people from doing so on punishment of death. Warned of Phillips and his party approaching, the Oba set an ambush. Only two of Phillips’s party escaped with their lives. Phillips wasn’t one of them.