How Did the Benin Bronzes Come to Europe? Here’s How Colonial Powers Raced to Loot Them Amid a Program of Imperial Destruction
Author Dan Hicks takes a detailed look at what really happened before and after the UK s punitive raid on the Benin Palace in 1897.
December 16, 2020
Brass plaque looted by Captain George Le Clerc Egerton from
Benin City. Pitt Rivers Museum/Dumas-Egerton Trust (accession number
1991.13.8).
In his acclaimed new book, The Brutish Museums: The Benin Bronzes, Colonial Violence and Cultural Restitution,
archaeologist, anthropologist, and Oxford’s Pitt-Rivers Museum curator Dan Hicks investigates the motivations behind the British raid on the Benin Palace in 1897, which led to treasures being distributed around Western collections.