Cultural Restitution
SHARE ARTICLE
Not only does Dan Hicks' new book provide fresh evidence about the looting that took place at Benin City, it's also an uncompromising polemic against the inertia of western museums that resist the return of Africa's cultural heritage.
There are some who'll find The Brutish Museums uncomfortable reading. Hicks makes a vigorous case why the looted Benin Bronzes should be returned to Nigeria - without fear or apology. But he won't be alarmed by any dissent. Shaking the museum community out of its inertia is one of his principal goals, the other is to replace the existing 'failed' museum model with a brand new one.
They're both unsettling objectives, but he doesn't hold back on providing the ammunition.
The story of the Benin Bronzes is a familiar one: a British expedition launched to retaliate for the massacre of a small delegation of traders in January 1897, followed by the sacking and looting of Benin City and the wide dispersal of thousands of objects of enormous cultural, spiritual and artistic significance, now lost to the Nigerian nation. The expedition has always been considered an isolated event, but his new research points otherwise.
Hicks argues that the raid on Benin City, which took place just one month after the January massacre, had been one of Britain's priorities for many years, part of a larger, more sustained campaign of warfare extending across all of Britain’s interests in East and West Africa between 1887 and 1900.
‘Not a year passed without a war,’ according to Hicks, ‘in fact, not a month passed without some kind of violent incident or act of repression’.
But while the traditional narrative maintains that expeditions like this were launched to settle local ‘troubles’, ‘disturbances’ or ‘uprisings’, Hicks denies this applies to the Benin expedition. This action, he insists, was always intended to support the commercial interests of the Niger Coast Protectorate and the Royal Niger Company in their extraction of the region’s rich resources (palm oil, gum and rubber in particular), not the prosecution of war for military expansion. This kind of enterprise Hicks defines as ‘militarist colonialism’.
Far from being a knee-jerk reaction to the violence inflicted against the January 'trade' delegation, Hicks provides evidence that demands to overthrow the Oba by commercial interests stretched back as far as 1892 – five years before the massacre took place.
He quotes a chilling opinion piece from the Edinburgh Evening News (15 Feb 1896) repeating demands from Liverpool’s Chamber of Commerce to launch a military expedition against the Oba one year before the massacre:
‘It is impossible to develop the resources of the district because of the destructive tactics of the potentate …….. The government is in effect asked to ship out men and Maxims, mow down as need be a few hundreds, or a few thousands of the natives, all for their ultimate good, of course, and by way of introducing them to the grandeur of civilisation’.
One of the reasons why Hicks concludes the assault was no ‘punitive expedition’.
The scale of looting at Benin City that followed the military expedition was considerable but difficult to quantify, with thousands of ivory objects, bronzes, tusks, religious and ceremonial objects, now collectively known as the Benin Bronzes, removed by a British force of 1200 sailors, marines, administrators and traders. The looting was indiscriminate and chaotic, according to Hicks, with the plunder now so widely scattered around the world that Nigeria has been left with a minority holding in its own cultural heritage.
As a Professor of Contemporary Archaeology at Oxford , Hicks has devoted much of his time to identifying and recording objects looted from the Royal Palace and City (the nature of the looting makes it impossible to know just how many objects were looted). And the inventories included in his book represent a useful resource, identifying all the worldwide institutions he believes currently hold looted Benin objects - 161 counted to date, including 45 in the United Kingdom alone.
While Hicks draws on the violence of these events to protest against the refusal of western collections to return stolen Benin artefacts, another new book, Loot: Britain and the Benin Bronzes by Barnaby Phillips, adopts a more nuanced approach to the same tortuous dilemma. Of course, there's overlap with the historical narrative. But by drawing on his wide experience as a journalist covering Africa for the BBC, Phillips brings first-hand knowledge of wider Nigerian priorities, the state of its institutions and the threats and challenges the country would face were it to agree the sort of widespread repatriation that Hicks proposes. Brutal or not, Phillips knows that Nigeria is simply not ready to accommodate large-scale returns.
While Phillips explores the experience and pressures within the Nigerian museums sector to illustrate the hazards of immediate repatriation, Hicks is seemingly not discouraged.
Despite all the other financial and human challenges facing museums, Hicks he even maintains "there is no more important question for western museums today than restitution". Following the global pandemic, it's tough to agree with that conclusion. But despite the lack of action by national collections, his call for western museums "to wash their hands of colonial blood" is resonating with UK regional collections and with museums across the Channel.
Of course, there'll be many in the UK who'll interpret Hicks' strident and polemic language as political posturing against the World museum model. But other museum professionals, especially those already engaged in dialogue with source communities, will be more sympathetic. For them, restitution and reconciliation is the next and logical step in the decolonisation process and the return of Africa's cultural heritage.
While Hicks lays out a vision in his book for a new museum model, dismantling the 'white infrastructure of world culture museums', Phillips focusses instead on Nigerian priorities: how the rampant thefts that took place during the '80s and '90s can be avoided in the future; how long before the country is ready to accept the return of its own cultural patrimony.
Hicks avoids identifying specific objects because he wants everything returned. An unrealistic objective, not least because some Benin objects remaining in western collections are cultural ambassadors for Edo State and Nigeria, a point Phillips is keener to emphasise. And no museums are targeted for their failure to initiate returns (unless you regard the font and styling chosen for the title of this book as an indirect assault on The British Museum). Another failing is the absence of any proposal from Hicks how to overcome the complex judicial and legislative obstacles that continue to prevent returns from national institutions.
While Hicks' arguments may be too vociferous for some, Phillips' are cautious - restitution is a long haul, not a quick fix. However, both studies take us one step further by piling greater pressure on western museums to wash their hands of 'colonial blood' and to help Nigeria on its path to recover more of its stolen heritage.
Dan Hicks, The Brutish Museums: The Benin Bronzes, Colonial Violence and Cultural Restitution. Published by Pluto Press (2020)
Barnaby Phillips, Loot: Britain and the Benin Bronzes. Published by Oneworld (2021)
Photo: Interior of the Royal palace at Benin City during looting
Courtesy of Pitt Rivers Museum
More News
