The London History Show: The Benin Plaques
The London History Show: The Benin Plaques
Hello all. We are learning about the British Museum at the moment, and that includes a lot of world cultures that were unfamiliar to me, such as that of the Kingdom of Benin. As such, I’m sure there are a lot of good sources out there that are inaccessible to me or that I did not find here in my London lockdown. I’ve given my sources below, but…
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Not Stolen, booty.
Not Stolen, war bootx.
This issue is probably due an update. Germany gave back several hundreds of them and paid for a Museum to be build in Nigeria – and the way Nigeria handled it immediately illustrated why repatriation often is a really bad idea.
When will Nigeria be paying compensation to the descendants of the people they enslaved? Or are they proposing that compensation should only flow one way?
In 2020 Germany pledged to return to Nigeria 1,100 Benin Bronzes from 20; museums in their country. When the first plaques arrived in Nigeria, questions started to be asked. I mean, Nigeria was like "Hi, British Museum…It's Nigeria here. What about my bronzes?"
And the BM was : "Hi Nigeria… What the…..Sorry! I can't hear you ,xxrrrshk. You're breaking up!!! Xxxrr. shrrrkkk" 😅
Many of these objects come from countries that are war torn, corrupt or have no stable government whatsoever. While the means of procurement weren’t the best, these objects are in the hands of professionals and are in a safe environment.
Here is an account by a doctor who witnessed the culture you've for some reason skipped over important details of to make them sound innocent:
"As we neared Benin City we passed several human sacrifices, live women slaves gagged and pegged on their backs to the ground, the abdominal wall being cut in the form of a cross, and the uninjured gut hanging out. These poor women were allowed to die like this in the sun. Men slaves, with their hands tied at the back and feet lashed together, also gagged, were lying about. As we neared the city, sacrificed human beings were lying in the path and bush—even in the king's compound the sight and stench of them was awful. Dead and mutilated bodies were everywhere – by God! May I never see such sights again! . . ."
There's a good reason the British were not ashamed of their actions. While it's very likely there was exaggeration of the scale of human sacrifice (probably usually around 8 people per year) by European sources, there was an increase just before the punitive expedition. The British freed more slaves during the expedition than people they killed (they were currently trying to end slavery world wide), it led to mass emancipation of slaves in the area (Benin being the worst offender of slavery at the time) and it ended the capability of Benin to continue their slavery and human sacrificial practices.
Yes, we should return the bronzes because theft is still wrong, but trying to pass off Benin as poor innocent victims of European racism is far from the truth. Current Nigerians have none of those customs, are lovely people, and deserve their history back. But history is ugly on all sides, and it does everyone a disservice to obfuscate details. But the myth of Europeans having a monopoly on evil is a useful one, so sadly it's not going to go away any time soon…
Excellent
Permanent loan…? How's that work?
It's because UK Parliament made a law decades ago blocking the return.
Its like with the Elgin Marbles: museum curators have been skirting the law for decades for loopholes to send them back, but the government smacks down every time and lumps the blame onto the museums as scapegoats.
Thank you so much.
Thorough. Insightful. Engaging. Balanced. Sober. Enlightening.
Thank you.
The works that you and your
contemporaries are creating is building a new encyclopaedia for generations to come.
Personally, I believe that everything should go back to its country of origin. Then pieces could be on permanent loan to museums around the world for others to enjoy.
They are amazing but they should go back…?
learning about the Benin metalwork as part of one of my Open University courses was one of the first times I learned PROPERLY about some of the atrocities carried out in the name of the British Empire. I went to the British Museum to see them. I was so grateful to be able to see them, but at the same time was so angry that they were there in the first place. Thank you for making this video ❤
Give them back so no one will ever see them again nor will anyone even know they every existed. They can go back to Bini and be sold off to other museums so that rich of Bini can get richer. Don't kid yourself that is exactly what would happen. Good thinking
Everyone, just give the stolen shit back. And if the repatriated items are never seen again, so be it, they were never meant for our eyes anyway.
Your pronunciation of Itsekiri is impeccable.
These probably actually should go back.
A lot of time when this is said the descendants of the people who made them aren't really reasonably the ones who would receive them (such as pieces depicting Mesopotamian gods in now Islamic countries with a history of destroying the things) or we traded for them rather than taking them in such a dramatic way. (Most Chinese artifacts from when we were trading, most of the artifacts from Egypt, etc.) But these should go back, and if Nigeria Lacks the security of facilities to protect them the British museum should pay for them.
Australians just want the Aboriginal bones that the English "explorers" took our ancestors from their home country.
You know, here in Portugal we know about the portuguese in the kindgom of Benin, Portugal had Benin nobility studying in the Coimbra university, Benin nobles would stroll around Lisbon and the royal palace.
Scan the plates, send the originals back to the Oba and display the replicas. If the Oba wants to keep the orignals out of the public eye, share the scans with the museums in Nigeria so they can display the replicas aswell.
What I find the most annoying is that British museums are the only ones that are so unwilling to give back stolen goods. Museums all around Europe are already doing it.
I heard a piece on NPR about the Benin Bronzes and the British Museum and repatriation… I think the absolute worst thing about this was that these pieces were how the Edo recorded their history, and so the ORDER of the plaques in the palace was extremely important. And obviously, when they were looted, the British soldiers didn't care about that, so the order was completely lost. As someone who intended to go into archaeology, this kills me. So much history lost, because people didn't pay attention to context!!
The NPR piece interviewed a scholar named Dan Hicks who recently published a book named "The Brutish Museum," which discusses repatriation with a focus on the Benin Bronzes. I really want to read it. Repatriation is so freaking important, and the excuses not to do it are numerous and often racist themselves – like when the Elgin Marbles weren't returned because Greece couldn't possibly care for them as well as the British could. 🙄 Seriously? Of course there are other excuses now, but… let's open those floodgates already.
Aren't some of the items that have been donated stolen as well tho ? Just the museums didn't steal them themselves
London's?
That music at the end… It's so beautiful!!!!!! It's the sound of a rising sun.
Is maybe a whimple too much similar to an hijab? Note: my mother, and other women in North America back during 1950s and early 60's wore fashionable "head scarves."
Give them back and they may not be protected, tough call
Was the invasion due to Benin's ruler being reluctant to end the selling of slaves and the murder of a British anti-slaving expedition?
2:51 I saw these and I whispered to my mom “wow such lleagky optamied objects”
The metal came from Germany as payment for the slaves purchased and sent to the Americas.
You make a good case for return but a time of war has been the reset for human relations since "the art of war" was discovered. It's not just Britain that has "stolen" BBs. The Humboldt Forum in Berlin has some and sent some back. If their weren't enough of them on the market they would probably be unknown and no one would be interested in them.
If you wanted to try to reset the result of all colonial and wartime plundering throughout history illegal today but not so then – is anyone not owed something by someone? People are expecting better behavior from countries today than anyone in the past could expect.
Life for all the people's on this planet has been a matter of doing what you can until you are opposed by a force greater than your own. WE expect better than that in civilized conditions under a rule of law but if that isn't there and there is no common agreement on the law, than doing what you can get away with rules the situation. There was no UN over 100 years ago. There was no international tribunal of any kind. The Pope and emperors were the largest scale available. Nothing could encompass the whole world. And every ruler had their own self serving biases.
BTW – If all the BBs were still in Benin and there had never been a colonial period would anyone know they existed today? And would Africa have changed in the slightest if Europe hadn't grown as competitive, organized and powerful as it became? It was a game of empire builders being eaten by bigger empire builders. Where and how did the Oba's brass artists get all their copper and would anyone today really think it was a better or fairer system of government and acquisition? It is fashionable now to over criticise the colonialists. It never sounds very much better than exploitation when I hear about ancient African life. It's also a harder life than it looks. To be sure europeans also had a much harder life than it looks like now . Maybe Europe doesn't sound or look quite as sophisticated as it tended to think it was. But if the white man was the devil to Africa's angels he knew just how to turn the situation to his advantage. Was the Oba selling some of his people for the copper and he could afford a more baroque phase of the art? Elaborate "baroque" art always says to me big incomes and loads of workmen looking for something to make a living at and willing to spend endless hours doing it. The greater elaboration means the workmen live with more intense competition and many are vertu good and fast at providing the greater detail and precision. ..
Did the Oba ever do anything more with all that money than turn it into plaques to hang on his palace walls? Louis XIV's lavish expenditures at Versailles were the tip of of the iceberg of government expenses. The French were very busy building a powerful machine to take over the world. What was the Oba doing with his funds? Maybe the African's should criticise the old Obas for their negligence and even corruption?
I had no idea those masks and plaques were supposed to gleam. Wow.
Perhaps something can be done chemically to draw the hydrocarbon molecules out of the metal?
Due to the transatlantic ST I can trace my ancestry back to Benin and Togo. Going to the British museum about 7 years back was wild. I was unaware of my history at that point but still was like “hmm this doesn’t seem right”