The Kingdom Behind Glass

Who owns stolen art? Today on the show, the bloody journey of a Benin Bronze from West Africa to the halls of one of England's most elite universities — a tale of imperialism, betrayal, and the making of the modern world. See pcm.adswizz.com https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences. NPR Privacy Policy https://www.npr.org/about-npr/179878450/privacy-policy

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Speaker 00

  We will learn something on election night, but not everything. There's a lot we will not know, especially when it comes to close races. And we'll know much more the next morning and the morning after that. So save yourself a little time scrolling and listen to Up First. We'll be there when you wake up each and every morning this week with the latest midterm election news.

• 0:24Rund Abdelfatah?

  Before we get started, we just wanted to let you know that this episode contains descriptions of human sacrifice. Now, on with the show.

• 0:34Speaker 02

  OK, so several months back, one of Throughline's producers, Lawrence Wu, came to a pitch meeting with this wild story. It was one of those pitches that immediately made all of us sit up in our seats and listen. It had layers that just kept getting deeper and deeper. And I don't want to ruin it for you. So obviously, I will just say that it's about an object, a thing that just sat around on a shelf for decades, going pretty much unnoticed. But in 2015, that changed. And it changed because a first-year college student decided it needed to change.

• 1:14Speaker 03

  Hi.

• 1:15Speaker 02

  Hey there.

• 1:16Speaker 03

  Sorry, give me a second.

• 1:17Speaker 02

  No problem.

• 1:18Speaker 03

  Sorry, I'm trying to untangle this headphone.

• 1:20Speaker 02

  So you know we have to call her up.

• 1:22Speaker 03

  OK, headphones on.

• 1:23Speaker 02

  OK, awesome. First, how are you?

• 1:27Speaker 03

  I'm good. How are you?

• 1:28Speaker 02

  Good.

• 1:29Rund Abdelfatah?

  Her name is Ore Ogunbi.

• 1:32Speaker 03

  I'm an Africa correspondent at The Economist, and I'm also a graduate of Jesus College, Cambridge.

• 1:38Rund Abdelfatah?

  In 2015, she was in her first year at one of England's most prestigious universities.

• 1:43Speaker 03

  I've lived between England and Nigeria my whole life. I was born in England. I moved to Nigeria when I was seven. And I've been back and forth between both countries ever since. And so, university-wise, my dad always really wanted me to go to Cambridge. In his view, you know, the best place I could end up, which I understand why people see it that way.

• 2:03Speaker 02

  Cambridge is like the Harvard of England. Actually, it's much older. So I really should be saying that Harvard is like the Cambridge of the United States. It's this kind of old, elite institution that, for most of its history, had a student body that came from England's upper classes, mostly male and mostly white. So when Ore arrived on campus, she felt out of place.

• 2:29Speaker 03

  When I got there, it was not very diverse. So settling in in that first term was quite difficult because I just felt like I couldn't find people who I could relate with.

• 2:41Rund Abdelfatah?

  But it wasn't just the lack of diversity among the students that felt alienating for Oire. It was everything she was surrounded by, the physical space itself.

• 2:51Speaker 03

  You go to any college dining hall, you go to prestigious parts of the college, really historical parts of any college in Cambridge, and it's likely to be covered in paintings of old white men who have made some significant contribution to the culture. There's never going to be a black person on those walls.

• 3:09Rund Abdelfatah?

  Oire went back and forth to classes and meals and activities, surrounded by these images of past school chancellors, donors, alumni. It just became part of the background. Maybe that's why, at first, she didn't notice the one object in the dining hall that would change the course of her life.

• 3:28Speaker 03

  In the same way that there was art on the walls, there's things on shelves, there's a whole, you know, bunch of things kind of lying around, I didn't notice it. It felt very much like it was hiding in plain sight.

• 3:43Speaker 02

  The thing she's talking about is a statue, a statue of a rooster, also known as the Okoko, that's at least 125 years old. A few months into her first year, a friend of hers told her where to look for it.

• 3:59Speaker 03

  But the second he drew my attention to it, obviously, I picked up on it the next time I went into the dining hall. It's not massive, it's not too much bigger than your laptop. But it was sat on this shelf.

• 4:12Speaker 02

  And underneath it was a plaque with a message written in Latin.

• 4:17Speaker 03

  Which was basically, this art, or this piece of art, was bequeathed to the college by William Neville and was looted from Benin in the punitive expedition of 1897, something to that effect.

• 4:35Rund Abdelfatah?

  Today, Benin is a country in West Africa. But Benin was also the name of a major kingdom that was located in what's now southern Nigeria as early as the 1200s, a civilization that produced incredible works of art, collectively known as Benin bronzes, like the metal rooster Ore was staring at in her dining hall.

• 4:57Speaker 03

  I was embarrassed that I hadn't picked up on that. I know enough about African art, and I'm familiar enough with what those kinds of antiques look like. My dad has been collecting similar work since I was a child.

• 5:08Rund Abdelfatah?

  But it wouldn't take long for that feeling of embarrassment to turn into something else.

• 5:13Speaker 03

  Then the anger began to seep in because I'm just like, what on earth? Like, in what world is this OK? What is going on? And that, to me, was when the cog started turning. And then we kind of set off down the rabbit hole.

• 5:31Rund Abdelfatah?

  That rabbit hole would take Ore on a years-long journey to uncover how the rooster statue was looted, its journey to her college at Cambridge University, and the fight to return it to Nigeria.

• 5:44Speaker 02

  The origin story of this rooster is a tale of a clash between two major powers, one from Europe and one from West Africa. It's a tale of imperialism, betrayal, and the making of the modern world. And it will remind you that behind every artifact is a universe, a story that will change how you think about your own history.

• 6:08Rund Abdelfatah?

  I'm Rande Abdelfatah.

• 6:10Speaker 02

  And I'm Ramtin Arablouei.

• 6:12Rund Abdelfatah?

  On this episode of Throughline from NPR, the journey of the Cambridge Benin bronze and the war over artifacts.

• 6:55Speaker 04

  Hello, this is Naomi Kemp calling from South Carolina. And you're listening to Throughline from NPR. This is my favorite podcast. I tell people about it all the time. And over the last year, it's been my reintroduction to NPR. Sometimes news is too overwhelming and I have to turn it off for my own mental health. But Throughline is always a breath of fresh air and able to teach me just so much about things that I thought I knew something about already and can always find something new to learn about.

• 7:36Speaker 05

  Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors.

• 7:40Speaker 00

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• 8:04Speaker 06

  The number one issue in America right now is the economy, whether it's the high price of gas, a potential AI bubble, or the unsteady job market. At NPR's The Indicator, we've got you covered. Understand the economy in 10 minutes or less each day. Listen to The Indicator from Planet Money on the NPR app or wherever you listen to podcasts.

• 8:29Speaker 07

  This is Terry Gross. When I was celebrating my 50th anniversary hosting Fresh Air, I asked my guest roast master general Jeff Ross to roast me.

• 8:39Speaker 08

  Terry Gross, a barely living legend.

• 8:46Speaker 07

  Still at it. Listen to Fresh Air on the NPR app or wherever you get podcasts.

• 8:54Speaker 09

  Part one, Blood Medal.

• 9:04Rund Abdelfatah?

  Benin City, 1500s.

• 9:08Speaker 10

  It was nothing short of a marvel.

• 9:12Speaker 10

  It was very vibrant and dynamic.

• 9:16Speaker 10

  It had bustling markets with trade in yams, palm oil, textiles, iron tools, and more.

• 9:26Rund Abdelfatah?

  Located in what's now southern Nigeria, Benin City was the capital of a vast kingdom.

• 9:32Speaker 10

  The kingdom's military was highly effective,

• 9:37Speaker 10

  maintaining stability within the region and controlling all of the key waterways as far as Lagos.

• 9:45Rund Abdelfatah?

  And it was technologically advanced.

• 9:48Speaker 10

  Benin City even had street lighting.

• 9:53Speaker 10

  These large metal lamps filled with palm oil, which illuminated the streets at night.

• 10:02Speaker 10

  Making it one of the first cities in the world with such a feature. And even an underground drainage system.

• 10:17Rund Abdelfatah?

  This is Wando Achebe.

• 10:19Speaker 10

  And I am the Jack and Margaret Sweet Endowed Professor of History at Michigan State University. My main area of concentration is West Africa.

• 10:31Rund Abdelfatah?

  Wando says the Benin Kingdom's Golden Age was...

• 10:34Speaker 10

  Between the 15th and 19th centuries.

• 10:40Speaker 10

  At its height, it was well organized, it was thriving, it was a highly advanced society.

• 10:52Rund Abdelfatah?

  And one of the kingdom's greatest feats was the walls that they built.

• 10:56Speaker 10

  Which stretched over 10,000 miles, making them the largest earthworks in the pre-mechanized world.

• 11:06Rund Abdelfatah?

  The walls, which rivaled the length of the Great Wall of China, took hundreds of years to be built, requiring unfathomable hours of labor.

• 11:16Speaker 10

  Its interconnected earthworks were not just defensive structures, but also a statement of the kingdom's engineering brilliance and power.

• 11:33Rund Abdelfatah?

  These marvels are what greeted the first Europeans who came to Benin City in the 15th century.

• 11:39Speaker 10

  So when European traders and explorers arrived, which is how we know what we know, for the most part about Benin, they were astonished by what they saw. For instance, you had a Portuguese captain remarking that Benin City was larger than Lisbon and described its streets as seemingly endless.

• 12:04Rund Abdelfatah?

  And the Benin Kingdom's power and wealth would only increase as they started trading with Europeans. They would trade raw materials like...

• 12:13Speaker 10

  Pepper, ivory, and eventually rubber.

• 12:17Rund Abdelfatah?

  And in return...

• 12:18Speaker 10

  European traders are offering firearms, textiles, and other goods.

• 12:28Rund Abdelfatah?

  Firearms that helped the kingdom conquer their neighbors and expand their territory.

• 12:35Speaker 11

  The Benin Kingdom would use the guns to raid villages, to steal people, and sell them.

• 12:42Rund Abdelfatah?

  This is Diadria Farmer-Palman.

• 12:44Speaker 11

  I'm executive director of the Restitution Study Group, and we fight for reparations for descendants of enslaved Africans globally.

• 12:54Rund Abdelfatah?

  Like with any kingdom, there's almost always a dark side. The Benin Kingdom had long participated in the slave trade in West Africa. And when the Europeans arrived, the Benin Kingdom began selling them enslaved people too, making them a part of the transatlantic slave trade.

• 13:14Speaker 10

  During the late 15th and 16th century, the kingdom is actively participating in the slave trade. These are captives from all of its military campaigns. And sometimes it would be captives or these tributary states made offerings to Benin. Right? In addition, the kingdom also enslaved individuals who were convicted of crimes.

• 13:40Rund Abdelfatah?

  In exchange for slaves, the Europeans would give the Benin Kingdom...

• 13:44Speaker 10

  Brass manillas.

• 13:46Speaker 02

  Manila is derived from the Portuguese word for bracelet. They often came in the shape of a horseshoe of various sizes, usually made of brass, bronze, or copper. And they were used as slave trade currency throughout West Africa by European traders.

• 14:03Speaker 11

  The Benin Kingdom required that the Portuguese pay for human captives with these manillas. And roughly at the beginning of their trading, you could buy an enslaved captive for seven manillas. Probably towards the end, a male would cost 57 manillas, a female would cost 50.

• 14:28Speaker 02

  These manillas were used to fuel the kingdom's artistic tradition.

• 14:32Speaker 10

  These renowned artisans would mount these bracelets down to create these intricate bronze and brass sculptures and plaques.

• 14:41Speaker 02

  Sculptures like the rooster statue that Ore Ogumbe saw in the dining hall at Jesus College.

• 14:48Speaker 10

  And it's these so-called Benin bronzes that we're talking about today.

• 14:52Speaker 02

  What Diadria now refers to as...

• 14:56Speaker 11

  Blood metal.

• 15:01Speaker 02

  Blood metal, meaning that the price for these works of art were the lives of enslaved West Africans sent into the abyss of the Middle Passage. And the principal purpose of creating these bronzes was in service of Benin Kingdom's royal family.

• 15:18Speaker 10

  The royal palace was adorned with copper engravings and brass plaques that celebrated victories. They recorded Benin's achievements and reflected the kingdom's grandeur. So these engravings and plaques told stories.

• 15:38Speaker 02

  And at the center of the Benin royal family was the oba.

• 15:42Speaker 10

  The oba, or king, wasn't just a political leader, but held divine status, acting as a spiritual bridge between his people and the gods.

• 15:55Speaker 02

  The Benin Kingdom was ruled by a long line of obas. They were like religious, political, and military leaders rolled into one. And for centuries, they enjoyed control over the trade routes in their kingdom. But all of this would begin to change when Europeans started making their way into the region's local economies and politics.

• 16:17Rund Abdelfatah?

  Starting with the Portuguese, and eventually, by the 1800s, the British became one of the primary trading partners with the Benin Kingdom.

• 16:30Speaker 10

  With the introduction of the pneumatic tire by J.B. Dumlock in 1888, rubber became a critical raw material for industries in Europe, especially for bicycles and later automobiles, right? Benin had vast rubber forests.

• 16:50Speaker 02

  This was an era of massive industrial growth in Europe, especially in England. And so, natural resources like rubber and palm oil were in high demand. And it turns out that many of those resources were in what's now southern Nigeria, the land the oba ruled over. So throughout the 1800s, the British tried to insert themselves more and more into the rubber and palm oil trade. It became a struggle over control of resources.

• 17:19Rund Abdelfatah?

  It got so bad that the oba would periodically shut down trade, frustrating the British. And so the British tried to fix this by proposing a treaty in 1892,

• 17:32Rund Abdelfatah?

  which historians say

• 17:33Speaker 10

  undermined Benin's sovereignty.

• 17:41Speaker 10

  Allowing for free trade, it allowed for the presence of Christian missionaries, and it required the king, the oba, to consult with British on governance.

• 17:56Rund Abdelfatah?

  In other words, the oba would need British approval for dealing with anyone else. Yet, according to the British, the oba signed this treaty, something historians like Wando Achebe call into question.

• 18:09Speaker 10

  So a number of historians have actually suggested that if he did sign this treaty, he probably didn't understand what he was signing.

• 18:17Rund Abdelfatah?

  The answer is still, to this day, unclear. But another perspective from historians is that the oba only had one question on his mind as the British were trying to explain this treaty. Were they declaring peace or war? The British reassured the oba that it was a peace treaty. And so the oba might have signed the treaty in the hopes that it would quell tensions, that it might prevent an all-out war.

• 18:45Speaker 10

  But despite this treaty, the oba maintained control over trade. And it's this control that frustrated the heck out of British ambitions.

• 18:58Speaker 02

  The oba continued to exert control, even though the British claimed he was violating their treaty. This would set the stage for a confrontation, one that would change the course of West African history.

• 19:20Speaker 02

  Coming up, an unannounced guest.

• 19:34Speaker 12

  This is Sanjay from San Jose in California, and you're listening to Two Line by NPR, brought to you by the best podcast show host ever, Rampage and Run, who transform by indifference to the subject of history in middle and high school to curiosity and joy as I listen to every episode.

• 19:51Speaker 05

  Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors.

• 19:55Speaker 13

  This message comes from Thumbtack. Some tasks can feel easy, but home projects can bring second guesses. Is that noise normal? Is that water damage? Who should be called? That's where Thumbtack comes in. Just upload a photo or voice note, and it uses AI-powered search to match with the right top-rated local pro. So instead of guessing, there's clarity and confidence when hiring. For your next home project, try Thumbtack. Hire the right pro today.

• 20:23Speaker 14

  This week on Short Wave, truth and fraud. That is the beating heart of the movie You Can See Everything. But can you spot a liar in action?

• 20:32Speaker 15

  Lying doesn't come with emotional and behavioral stereotypes that we think.

• 20:42Speaker 14

  How to detect deception for real. On Short Wave, the science podcast from NPR.

• 20:47Speaker 16

  In the much-talked-about new movie, Wicker, Olivia Colman plays a woman who commissions a husband literally made of wicker. Yes, wicker. We'll tell you why the silly and body new movie is also a nice, cozy fall watch. Listen to Pop Culture Happy Hour via the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 21:09Speaker 09

  Part two, The City of Blood.

• 21:29Rund Abdelfatah?

  By the late 1800s, the British Empire and the Benin Kingdom were on the brink of a conflict over control of key trading positions in West Africa. The British claimed that the oba, or king, was violating a treaty they'd signed. The oba, for his part, shut down trade whenever he felt the British were becoming a threat. Both sides were at an impasse.

• 21:53Speaker 10

  In comes James Phillips.

• 21:55Rund Abdelfatah?

  James Phillips.

• 21:57Speaker 10

  He was acting British consul.

• 22:00Rund Abdelfatah?

  Which meant his job was to oversee trade in West Africa on behalf of the British Crown. He'd basically been raised to eventually have this kind of job. He...

• 22:10Speaker 10

  Grew up in a family with strong clerical and military background. We know that he was educated at Upingham School, which was a prestigious independent boarding school. Phillips later attended Trinity College, Cambridge, where he studied law.

• 22:26Rund Abdelfatah?

  By his early 30s, James Phillips, like many other upper-class British bureaucrats, decided to pursue his fortunes overseas, working for the empire.

• 22:36Speaker 10

  A lot of these young European men were going for adventure, making a name for themselves.

• 22:44Rund Abdelfatah?

  By the way, this is Wando Achebe, a history professor at Michigan State University.

• 22:49Speaker 10

  And I think that was a propelling force for a lot of these European men in Africa during this time period.

• 22:57Rund Abdelfatah?

  And that propelling force would put Phillips in the center of a national scandal, a news story that would grip all of England in the late 1890s.

• 23:15Speaker 17

  The King of Bannin has continued to do everything in his power to stop the people from trading and prevent the government from opening up the country.

• 23:24Speaker 02

  This is from a letter James Phillips sent to the British Prime Minister in 1897, arguing that they should take action.

• 23:31Speaker 10

  In order to fully open the region to British trade.

• 23:36Speaker 17

  I am convinced from information which leaves no room for doubt, as well as from experience of native character, that Pacific measures are now quite useless and that the time has come to remove their obstruction.

• 23:51Speaker 02

  Basically, Phillips is like, "Look, if we want to efficiently extract resources like rubber and palm oil, things England needed to fuel its rapid industrial growth, we need to get the Bannin Kingdom's king, or Obah, out of the way."

• 24:07Speaker 17

  I therefore ask for his lordship's permission to visit Bannin City in February next, to depose and remove the King of Bannin. Monday, 16th of November, 1896.

• 24:19Speaker 02

  Well, the British Prime Minister basically left Phillips on read for several weeks. Still, Phillips was an ambitious young man, and he decided to send a letter to Bannin's king, requesting a meeting.

• 24:33Speaker 10

  So Phillips requests to meet with the Obah?

• 24:38Speaker 02

  And he does this, even though he'd already made it clear in his letter to the British Prime Minister that he wanted to depose Bannin's king.

• 24:47Speaker 10

  The timing of this request clashed with the sacred Igue festival, during which the Obah was secluded to perform rituals that renewed his spiritual authority. Remember, Obah of Varanwen was semi-divine.

• 25:12Speaker 02

  And Phillips gets a response.

• 25:14Speaker 10

  The king said, "No, you cannot visit. Why don't you come back in about two moons, two months?" Phillips ignored all of the cultural imperatives, and he proceeded toward Bannin City.

• 25:41Rund Abdelfatah?

  January 1897.

• 25:53Speaker 18

  He set out with eight other white men and with an uncertain number of servants, but perhaps over 200 carriers.

• 26:02Rund Abdelfatah?

  This is Dan Hicks.

• 26:04Speaker 19

  I'm professor of contemporary archaeology at the University of Oxford, curator at the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford.

• 26:11Rund Abdelfatah?

  And he wrote the book, The Broodish Museums, which, among other things, tells the story of James Phillips and his crew, most of whom were African workers hired by the British.

• 26:22Speaker 18

  They reportedly took no firearms, except for revolvers, we're told, in some of the accounts.

• 26:30Rund Abdelfatah?

  Along the way, a royal agent of the Oba warned Phillips that any white man visiting the city would be killed.

• 26:38Speaker 17

  We have been threatened and solemnly warned at every step that the soldiers of the King of Benin are waiting to fire on us.

• 26:45Rund Abdelfatah?

  Despite the warning, Phillips' party continued working their way towards Benin City.

• 26:51Speaker 19

  The road, or rather path, we went along was rather broader than the usual West African brush path, but only fit for marching in single file.

• 27:00Rund Abdelfatah?

  This is from an account of a British officer who was there.

• 27:03Speaker 19

  It was then about 3:00 PM, and we were walking in much the same order as when we started.

• 27:10Rund Abdelfatah?

  They stopped at villages along the way to rest. In the afternoon, they were about 14 miles into their march, when...

• 27:18Speaker 19

  Suddenly,

• 27:21Speaker 19

  a shot rang out a few yards behind us.

• 27:26Rund Abdelfatah?

  Followed by rapid fire.

• 27:28Speaker 19

  That seemed to go back almost to the last village we had passed. At the first shot, we couldn't believe that the firing was in earnest and thought, as someone suggested, that it was only a salute in our honor.

• 27:42Speaker 02

  Phillips' party, in their confusion, thought they were being welcomed by soldiers from the Benin Kingdom. In fact, Phillips told his men not to get out their revolvers.

• 27:58Speaker 02

  This was a mistake because soon they were facing a hail of ammunition.

• 28:04Speaker 19

  The idea was soon exploded by the cries from our wretched carriers and yells from the Benin men.

• 28:10Speaker 02

  A surviving British officer recounted a chaotic scene of gunfire and machetes.

• 28:16Speaker 19

  On a strip of road about 15 yards long with the bodies of some six or seven of our unfortunate carriers lying on the road.

• 28:24Speaker 02

  It was carnage.

• 28:27Speaker 10

  Phillips does not survive. Phillips is killed.

• 28:33Speaker 02

  The exact numbers of dead are still to this day unclear, but it's thought that most of the Europeans in Phillips's party were killed along with many of the African workers they'd hired. Word quickly got back to England. Newspapers there called it a massacre.

• 28:51Speaker 18

  The circumstances of how the killing comes about and the nature of that expedition, was it hostile? Was it seeking to provoke? Was it an inexperienced administrator sent off in order to provoke a response? All of that's unclear.

• 29:10Speaker 02

  But the damage was done.

• 29:13Speaker 10

  It's this ambush that outrages Britain to no end.

• 29:19Rund Abdelfatah?

  Over the next several weeks, some of the British press began running stories about what a horrible place Benin City was. They published disturbing accounts of human sacrifice and brutality.

• 29:31Speaker 10

  By the time the punitive expedition was launched in 1897, the British public had been primed to see it as a moral crusade.

• 29:43Speaker 19

  "One body was on a crucifix tree with the arms and legs outstretched." The Manchester Guardian, January 1897.

• 29:51Speaker 18

  You know, they didn't hold back, you know, imaginative accounts as they possibly could of the blood and guts.

• 29:58Speaker 19

  "At various parts of the city, there were corpses, some headless or armless or otherwise mutilated."

• 30:05Speaker 18

  The idea of the city of blood was associated with Benin City.

• 30:09Speaker 10

  Portraying Benin as a barbaric society.

• 30:14Rund Abdelfatah?

  We should note here that there is historical evidence of human sacrifices being carried out at the royal court.

• 30:20Speaker 18

  Without a doubt, you know, there, you know, this, this was a royal court that continued to practice forms of court slavery, almost certainly forms of human sacrifice.

• 30:31Speaker 10

  But these descriptions often lacked any kind of context.

• 30:36Rund Abdelfatah?

  Benin City became known among many in England as the city of blood.

• 30:53Speaker 02

  Just weeks after Phillips's party was ambushed in Benin, the British government prepared for a revenge attack. It would come to be called the Punitive Expedition. A very large force with hundreds of sailors and soldiers was amassed. A flotilla of ships was stocked with heavy weaponry.

• 31:16Speaker 20

  A dozen seven-pounder RML mountain guns.

• 31:20Speaker 02

  Think of a small cannon.

• 31:22Speaker 20

  Fourteen Maxim guns to be carried across the land.

• 31:26Speaker 02

  Machine guns.

• 31:28Speaker 20

  Twenty-four Maxims on the warships, six rocket tubes.

• 31:33Speaker 02

  Early form of a rocket launcher.

• 31:36Speaker 20

  One thousand two hundred rifles, more than three million brass bullets.

• 31:43Rund Abdelfatah?

  By February 1897, British forces sailed for Benin.

• 31:52Rund Abdelfatah?

  Coming up, the battle for a kingdom begins.

• 32:09Speaker 21

  Hi, this is Jill McAfee from Atlanta, Georgia, and you're listening to Throughline from NPR.

• 32:17Speaker 05

  Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors.

• 32:21Speaker 13

  This message comes from Thumbtack. Some tasks can feel easy, but home projects can bring second guesses. Is that noise normal? Is that water damage? Who should be called? That's where Thumbtack comes in. Just upload a photo or voice note, and it uses AI-powered search to match with the right, top-rated local pro. So instead of guessing, there's clarity and confidence when hiring. For your next home project, try Thumbtack. Hire the right pro today.

• 32:49Speaker 22

  On a new episode of Your Turn with Alison Aubrey, two dream analysts explain the power of dreams as a guide for self-exploration.

• 32:57Speaker 23

  Sometimes dreams really contain the secret that we need to overcome difficulties, get unstuck, see a different way, and move forward.

• 33:06Speaker 22

  All this and more on Your Turn, available on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 33:13Speaker 24

  Want to survive the holiday conversation? Come prepared. Pop Culture Happy Hour gets you up to speed on the movies, music, and TV shows everyone is talking about. This way, you'll have a hot take at the table instead of quietly eating a dinner roll. Listen to Pop Culture Happy Hour on the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 33:35Speaker 09

  Part Three: As Much Mine As It Is Yours.

• 33:46Speaker 25

  Imagine a country of 2,500 square miles, one mass of forest.

• 33:56Speaker 25

  Imagine this forest stocked with trees, some 200 feet high.

• 34:03Speaker 25

  Imagine the fact that you might easily walk for an hour without seeing the sun overhead and only at times get a glimmer of a sunbeam across the path.

• 34:14Speaker 25

  And you have an elementary conception of the bush country of Benin, Reginald Bacon.

• 34:20Speaker 02

  This is an account from a naval officer who took part in the punitive expedition.

• 34:37Speaker 10

  So in February 1897, a force of about 1,500 British soldiers were equipped with Maxim machine guns, artillery, and rockets.

• 34:57Speaker 02

  They set off in three columns, attacking villages along the way.

• 35:02Speaker 18

  And they've got barbed wire, and they've got electric lighting, and they've got all these sort of modern forms of weaponry.

• 35:09Speaker 02

  Weapons that were not used by most West African forces.

• 35:14Speaker 10

  And it was with these that they launched their punitive expedition against Benin.

• 35:39Speaker 02

  Over the course of nine days, the British violently ripped through the rainforest and zeroed in on Benin City.

• 35:49Speaker 25

  A searching volley soon disclosed the enemy who commenced the attack, never venturing into the open, but keeping inside the cover of the bush and firing their long guns at us.

• 36:01Speaker 10

  The Benin defenders were regrettably armed with outdated weapons.

• 36:08Speaker 25

  To these, we replied with sectional volleys and the deadly, sweeping fire of the Maxims.

• 36:18Speaker 10

  And because their weapons were outdated, they were quickly overwhelmed.

• 36:27Speaker 02

  Eventually, the British soldiers arrived in the heart of the kingdom.

• 36:33Speaker 10

  They enter Benin city on February the 18th, 1897.

• 36:38Speaker 25

  Wildfire is the only name for describing the flames.

• 36:44Speaker 10

  They razed the Obaz Palace. They razed sacred sites.

• 36:49Speaker 25

  The air was filled with a thin, black smoke, which gusts of wind swept in every direction, curling and wreathing it in fantastic shapes.

• 37:00Speaker 10

  They erased much of the kingdom's physical and cultural heritage.

• 37:06Speaker 25

  Soon, everything seemed in a blaze.

• 37:14Speaker 18

  I think the sheer scale of the destruction is something that's hard to get a sense of.

• 37:19Speaker 02

  This is Dan Hicks again, author of The Brutish Museums.

• 37:24Speaker 18

  The fact that this was a desecration of a religious as well as a royal landscape, and that literally they burned everything to the ground.

• 37:33Speaker 18

  They absolutely, you know, leveled the place to the ground.

• 37:39Speaker 02

  After the attack, the British forces did as they wished, including...

• 37:44Speaker 18

  The British built themselves a golf course, never mind other things.

• 37:49Speaker 02

  A golf course?

• 37:50Speaker 18

  Yeah, yeah, there's a golf course there within, uh, within the first month.

• 37:55Speaker 02

  A nine-hole golf course. As for Obah Obamamwen, the king, he fled the city and hid out in the rainforest for six months.

• 38:05Speaker 10

  He later surrenders in 1897, and he was exiled to Kalaba, where he remained until his death.

• 38:17Speaker 02

  With the Obah out of the way, the British incorporated the Benin Kingdom's lands into its own holdings in West Africa.

• 38:26Speaker 10

  Marking the end of Benin Kingdom sovereignty, which is what the British wanted to do from the get-go.

• 38:41Rund Abdelfatah?

  Among the rubble in Benin City, the British forces found treasure beyond their wildest dreams.

• 38:48Speaker 25

  Buried in the dirt of ages in one house were several hundred unique bronze plaques suggestive of almost Egyptian design, but of really superb casting.

• 39:02Speaker 10

  The British encounter an unparalleled number of cultural treasures. So it is estimated that over 4,000 treasures were looted, including brass plaques, ivory carvings, ceremonial regalia, and textiles. These treasures were distributed among British officers.

• 39:26Speaker 18

  So it's a chaotic free throw. They were taken back to London by soldiers and sailors and administrators, some kept in families over generations, some sold immediately on the open market. And so within weeks, the artworks, items that were royal, sacred, ancestral art, were being brought up in Berlin, in London, in Oxford, and were being put on display. And the message was very clear. This is a dead culture.

• 39:58Rund Abdelfatah?

  And over the next century, many of these artifacts, known collectively as Benin bronzes, ended up in museums.

• 40:06Speaker 10

  So today, these treasures are housed in museums worldwide, with the British Museum holding the largest collection of about 700 treasures.

• 40:18Rund Abdelfatah?

  And others ended up in private collections and universities.

• 40:25Rund Abdelfatah?

  Like the rooster statue that Ore Ogumbe first spotted in her college dining hall.

• 40:32Speaker 03

  This piece of art was bequeathed to the college by William Neville.

• 40:37Speaker 18

  Who was a Liverpool trader and a banker in Lagos, who donated this item to Jesus College, Cambridge.

• 40:47Speaker 18

  Yeah, the reason supposedly was the form of the cockerel or the rooster is an emblem of the college that sits there in the dining hall of Jesus College for decades.

• 40:59Rund Abdelfatah?

  Until 2016, after Ore and her peers began organizing for it to be taken out of the dining hall and returned to Nigeria.

• 41:08Speaker 03

  We were asked to present to the ethical affairs committee.

• 41:14Speaker 03

  And yeah, they asked us a bunch of questions about where it's going to go. Can they look after it?

• 41:19Rund Abdelfatah?

  Ore and her classmates had done their research, and the college had even gotten a letter from the Nigerian government formally requesting the return of the rooster statue.

• 41:28Speaker 03

  So we thought that might help our case.

• 41:31Rund Abdelfatah?

  But...

• 41:32Speaker 03

  Nothing.

• 41:38Rund Abdelfatah?

  And then, one day, sort of out of nowhere, the statue disappeared. But it wasn't clear what they were going to do with it. A spokesperson said at the time that the college and university would discuss and determine the best future for the Okoko, including the question of repatriation.

• 41:57Speaker 02

  Jesus College declined to comment further on this issue.

• 42:01Rund Abdelfatah?

  As for Ore and her peers, their hope started to wane.

• 42:05Speaker 03

  I don't think there's anything more we could have done. It just felt like no progress was being made. I mean, I just, I'd given up on this thing happening, to be quite honest. But I was still going to these meetings convincing myself that I don't know, maybe this one next meeting would be different.

• 42:20Rund Abdelfatah?

  So in the meantime, Ore went on with her life.

• 42:24Speaker 03

  By the time I graduated, I was like, okay, they've succeeded in wearing me down. I'm not screaming and kicking up a fuss about this anymore. It's clearly not going to happen.

• 42:31Rund Abdelfatah?

  But then, in 2019, Jesus College decided to return the statue. And a few years after that, Ore gets an email.

• 42:40Speaker 26

  Friday, 15th of October, 2021. Dear Jezza Win, I'm now pleased to share that the college is to return the Benin Bronze Cockerel to Nigeria's National Commission for Museums and Monuments on Wednesday, 27th of October. This will be the first institutional return of its kind.

• 42:56Speaker 03

  And I was like, what?

• 43:00Rund Abdelfatah?

  All those years of fighting for the Benin bronze to be returned to what Ore and her peers believed to be its rightful place was finally going to happen. It was going back to Nigeria.

• 43:11Speaker 27

  Welcome everyone here to the Frank Panamudatorium at Jesus College as we gather for the ceremony to formally hand over this Benin bronze, this Okoko, which does not belong to us. I'm Sneezer Lai.

• 43:25Rund Abdelfatah?

  This is the video from the ceremony of Jesus College formally handing over the Benin bronze. The head of the college, the director of Nigeria's Commission for National Museums, and the younger brother of the sitting Oba are all in attendance. And center stage on a white pedestal is the rooster statue. And in the crowd were Ore and her fellow students, watching what they had started six years earlier, come to fruition.

• 43:51Speaker 03

  And to see it happening, especially when you had, well, I had definitely given up on the idea that it ever would. It was crazy.

• 44:10Speaker 02

  Cambridge University's Jesus College would be the first institution to return a Benin bronze. Shortly after, other institutions and even museums started following suit. Countries like Germany pledged to return looted Benin artworks. And so did the Smithsonian Institution here in the United States, which had a total collection of 39 Benin bronzes.

• 44:35Speaker 11

  In 2022, I saw an article in the New York Times that the Smithsonian would be returned in the bronzes. I was quite shocked.

• 44:42Speaker 02

  This is Deidre Farmer-Palman again, who's the executive director of the Restitution Study Group.

• 44:49Speaker 11

  The moral claim is that the bronzes for us are the embodiment of our enslaved ancestors. And they are the source of our education about who we are.

• 45:03Speaker 02

  Diadria argues that the Benin bronzes should also belong to the descendants of the people, the Benin Kingdom, sold to European slave traders.

• 45:12Speaker 11

  I have Isan DNA, and by the way, anyone listening to this program that has Isan DNA from their ancestors who were enslaved are literally coming from the Benin Kingdom.

• 45:26Speaker 02

  The Isan people were part of the kingdoms neighboring the Benin Kingdom. So when Diadria found out about the Smithsonian's decision to return its collection of Benin bronzes to Nigeria, she was shocked.

• 45:40Speaker 11

  Their justification was that they were looted, that they were stolen artifacts. They had been taken by colonizers.

• 45:49Speaker 02

  But Diadria was like, well, the colonizers, the British, took these bronzes from the kingdom that enslaved my ancestors. So why should Nigeria have full control over them?

• 46:02Speaker 11

  These are very expensive relics. The value of the bronzes is something people don't like to talk about. One overhead sold not long ago for about 12 million US dollars.

• 46:17Speaker 02

  Diadria and her organization filed a petition to stop the Smithsonian from returning the bronzes to Nigeria. The goal: to allow the descendants of people sold into slavery by the Benin Kingdom to have a say in their fate.

• 46:32Speaker 11

  So, you know, I sent them documentation, not just, you know, from all of the scholars around bronzes, but from their own website and their own publications.

• 46:45Speaker 02

  In an email exchange at the time, the Smithsonian told Diadria more research was needed to concretely link the objects in their collection to the slave trade.

• 46:55Rund Abdelfatah?

  For institutions like the Smithsonian, the question of ownership and repatriation is a tricky process.

• 47:02Speaker 18

  The process of return is not something that is simply about a decision by the British Museum, or by the British government, or by the Metropolitan Museum in New York or whatever. It's about hundreds of institutions and individuals who, at the moment, are caring for these items and the decisions that they make. It doesn't mean that you can suddenly, you know, decolonize the museum. It doesn't work like that. It's case by case. It takes time.

• 47:31Speaker 28

  So what we found was that 29 of the Benin bronzes that we had here at the Museum of African Art were from the raid of the Benin Kingdom in 1897.

• 47:44Rund Abdelfatah?

  This is Linda St. Thomas. She's the chief spokesperson at the Smithsonian Institution and was interviewed by NPR culture correspondent Chloe Veltman about how museums go about repatriation of artworks like the Benin bronzes.

• 47:58Speaker 28

  And they were beyond questionable. I mean, they were obviously stolen from their, you know, place of origin and then sent to museums and private collectors around the world in the early 1900s. Therefore, we did not want to keep them in our possession anymore, and we wanted to return them.

• 48:18Rund Abdelfatah?

  As for Diadria's argument that descendants of slaves should have some form of ownership over the Benin bronzes, Linda declined to comment. Instead, she pointed us to the district court's decision where a judge ruled that Diadria and the restitution study group lacked valid claims to challenge the Smithsonian's transfer of their Benin bronzes.

• 48:40Speaker 02

  After they were denied, Diadria and the restitution study group appealed to have their case brought up to the Supreme Court. The court would ultimately decline to hear Diadria and her organization's petition against the Smithsonian. The Smithsonian had already begun transferring much of its collection to Nigeria's National Commission for Museums and Monuments.

• 49:03Speaker 10

  I agree 100% that African Americans, African Caribbean people, Africans have every single right to this history, to these treasures.

• 49:23Speaker 10

  It is our heritage. It is that which makes us who we are. And so what I'm saying is, I agree 100% with her characterization. It's as much hers as it is mine.

• 49:39Rund Abdelfatah?

  But historian Wando Achebe does not agree with Diadria about where the Benin bronzes should be housed or who should really have control over them.

• 49:49Speaker 10

  Treasures that were stolen away from Africa should remain in Africa. It is a heritage that should be enjoyed on African soil. And if the Benin Kingdom, if the Federal Republic of Nigeria decides that it wants to loan Europe, the US, wherever, our treasures for a period of time, then we do so.

• 50:19Rund Abdelfatah?

  For Diadria, this is about more than just control over the bronzes.

• 50:25Speaker 11

  Part of this whole effort is to ensure that we have access to these relics so that we can learn our history. The willingness to sit and work together is about sharing cross-cultural education and just ending what essentially is a war. You know, it hasn't ended yet. It won't end until we sit down together and we work together and heal.

• 50:48Rund Abdelfatah?

  Which brings us back to Ore and the rooster.

• 50:52Speaker 03

  This isn't just a pretty thing to sit on a shelf. It's not just a fancy trophy of your war. It's history. It means things to people and has meant things to people for centuries. So you can't understand this object without all of that history because it's not just an object. It is all those things.

• 51:20Rund Abdelfatah?

  That's it for this week's show. I'm Rund Abdelfatah.

• 51:23Speaker 02

  I'm Ramtin Arablouei, and you've been listening to Throughline for NPR.

• 51:28Rund Abdelfatah?

  This episode was produced by me.

• 51:30Speaker 02

  And me and? Lawrence Wu.

• 51:32Rund Abdelfatah?

  Julie Kane.

• 51:33Speaker 14

  Anya Steinberg. Casey Minor. Christina Kim. Devon Katayama.

• 51:38Rund Abdelfatah?

  Irene Noguchi. Voiceover work in this episode was also done by Aidan Crowe, Greg Hards, Felix Salmon, Jonathan Levin, Chris Springthorpe, and Gilen Carden-Reddy.

• 51:51Speaker 02

  Thank you to Johannes Sturgie, Tony Cavan, Nadia Lancy, Jay Vanasco, Chloe Veltman, Edith Chapin, and Colin Campbell.

• 52:01Rund Abdelfatah?

  Fact checking for this episode was done by Kevin Vogel. This episode was mixed by Robert Rodriguez. Music for this episode was composed by Ramtin and his band Drop Electric, which includes?

• 52:13Speaker 29

  Navid Marvi. Sho Fujiwara.

• 52:15Rund Abdelfatah?

  Anya Mizani.

• 52:17Speaker 02

  And finally, if you have an idea or like something you heard on the show, write us at [email protected].

• 52:26Rund Abdelfatah?

  Thanks for listening.

• 52:40Speaker 13

  Stay tuned for the following announcements and messages from our sponsors.