Displaying Loot the Benin Objects and the British Museum Displaying Loot

The Benin Objects and the British Museum Displaying Loot The Benin Objects and the British Museum Displaying Loot Displaying In 1897, British troops conquered and looted Benin City, present-day Nigeria, and the British Museum acquired the world’s largest collection of Benin loot. Today, the museum suggests in its exhibitions and publications that the Western discovery of these technically and artistically accomplished castings shattered derogatory views of Africans – thanks to the efforts of British Museum scholars. But what truth is there in this story? This book scrutinizes the information presented by the museum and finds that it rests on flimsy or no evidence. On the contrary, the source material reveals a murkier and more sinister past than the museum is willing to disclose. Staffan Lundén Staffan Staffan Lundén teaches at the School of Global Studies, Gothenburg University. This is his Ph.D. thesis in Archaeology. ISBN: 978-91-85245-67-4 Staffan Lundén Displaying Loot The Benin Objects and the British Museum Department of Historical Studies Displaying Loot The Benin Objects and the British Museum Staffan Lundén Displaying Loot: The Benin Objects and the British Museum GOTARC Series B. Gothenburg Archaeological Theses 69 © Staffan Lundén 2016 Front Cover: Benin City, 1897. Printing: Reprocentralen, Humanities Faculty, Gothenburg University ISBN: 978-91-85245-67-4 ISSN: 0282-6860 Distribution Staffan Lundén [email protected] School of Global Studies Box 700 405 30 Göteborg Sweden Abstract Ph.D. dissertation at University of Gothenburg, Sweden, 2016 Title: Displaying Loot: The Benin Objects and the British Museum Author: Staffan Lundén Language: English Department: Department of Historical Studies, University of Gothenburg, Box 200, SE-405 30, Gothenburg. Displaying Loot. The Benin Objects and the British Museum This study deals with the objects, now in the British Museum, that were looted from Benin City, present-day Nigeria, in 1897. It looks at how the museum represents the Benin objects, the Edo/African, the British/West- erner, and the British Museum. According to the museum, the Benin objects provide the “key argument” against the return of objects in its collections. The study pays particular attention to how the museum’s representations relate to its retentionist argument. The museum maintains that it was founded to foster tolerance, dissent, and respect for difference, and that it today shows many different cultures without privileging any of them. The museum’s benevolent impact is exemplified by the Benin objects whose arrival in the West has led to the shattering of European derogatory stereotypes of Africans, thanks to British Museum scholars. The study examines these claims and finds that they rest on flimsy or no evidence. The museum misrepresents and glorifies its own past and exaggerates its own contribution to Benin scholarship and the Europe- an view of Africans. The museum has shown cultures, not as equal, but as placed in a hierarchy, and in the early 20th century its scholars gave scientific legitimization to the stock stereotypes of Africans, such as the likening of Blacks to apes. The analysis of the museum’s contemporary exhibition and accom- panying publications show that the museum – still – represents self and other as different: the Edo/African is portrayed as traditional while the Westerner is portrayed as progressive. The study concludes that, despite the museum’s claim to universal- ity, its representations are deeply enmeshed in, and shaped by, British (museum) traditions and cultural assumptions. Paradoxically, while the statement of objectivity and impartiality is central to the museum’s defense against claims, it seems that the ownership issue strongly contrib- utes to the biases in its representations. Keywords: Benin, Benin bronzes, Benin objects, Britain, British Museum, colonialism, cultural property, Edo, heritage, loot, museums, museum studies, Nigeria, racism, repatriation, representation, restitution, war booty, Westernness. Acknowledgements Many people have contributed to this study in different ways. I would like to express my deep thanks to: Staffan Appelgren, Magnus Berg, Jos van Beurden, Barbara Blackmun, Anna Bohlin, Mattias Bäckström, Victoria Börjesson, Marie Carlsson, Annie Clarke, Steve Dunstone, Bo Ernstson, Jonathan Fine, Klas Grinell, Ingvar Gräns, Ben Hall, Jim Hamill, Christian Isendahl, Håkan Karlsson, Mikela Lundahl, Helen Lundén, Martin Lundén, Per Lundgren, Niclas Mattsson, Colin Renfrew, Åsa Rosenberg, Anna Samuelsson, Jonas Schiött, Kathy Tubb, Sarah Walpole and Helene Whittaker. The staff at the Göteborg University Library has been very helpful in locating rare publications and financial assistance has been provided by the Helge Ax:son Johnssons Stiftelse. A special thanks to near and dear and a very special one to Anna and Astrid. PB i Contents Preface: A “trophy” in the British Museum 1 1. Introduction: The making of Benin objects, the Edo, 7 and the British 2. Modernity, museums, exhibitions, and objects 33 3. The literature on Benin objects and on ownership of 105 cultural objects 4. The 1897 Edo-British war 121 5. Naming and framing the Benin objects 139 6. The Ife objects 217 7. The British Museum’s rationale for retention 1: 225 The foundation of the British Museum 8. The British Museum’s rationale for retention 2: 257 The history of the British Museum PB iii Contents 9. The Western discovery of the indigenous origin of 281 the Benin objects 10. The West discovers African art through the Benin 365 objects 11. The Sainsbury African Galleries: Benin objects on 375 display 12. Alternative forms of making representations 443 13. Making progress at the British Museum? 489 Bibliography 517 Photo Sources and Credits 575 iv Preface: A “trophy” in the British Museum “Trophy.” While browsing through the British Museum’s home- page, looking at how the British Museum represents its collection of objects looted by British soldiers from Benin City in 1897, the word “trophy” in the caption of one of these objects caught my attention.1 The caption read: “Bronze trophy head from Benin, Nigeria, between 1550-1650.” According to the dictionary, a “trophy” – from the ancient Greek tropaion, a victory monument composed of weapons from defeated enemies – is a prize, or memento, symbolic of an achievement or a victory. It is commonly used in connection with the cups and plaques awarded to winners in sporting contests, but may also refer to the head, or other body part, severed from a killed animal and kept as a sign of the hunter’s accomplishment. Alternatively, the word may denote the former possessions of a defeated enemy which have been taken as a token of victory. In this last sense the designation of the head in the British Museum as a “trophy” seemed apt. Yet, I was a little intrigued by the word 1. http://www.thebritishmuseum.ac.uk/world/africa/sculpture.html (accessed 21 October 2006). The British Museum home page undergoes changes and this particular webpage, which introduced the museum’s collection of African “sculpture,” no longer exists. The “trophy head” is illustrated in Barley 2010, 39. PB 1 Preface because I had never seen a museum using it to describe a Benin object before. Reading a bit further I realized that I had made the wrong connection, that is, I had made an association not intended by the use of the word “trophy” in this “explanatory” label. The word did not refer to what this object became in 1897. It “explained” to the viewer what this object was in pre-1897 Edo society (“Edo” is the local name of the ethnolinguistic group which is often called “Benin” in the West).2 The text related one contemporary interpretation of this particular type of head: they were cast by the Edo after victorious wars to symbolize the heads of defeated and decapitated kings, and were put in shrines to commemorate military successes.3 Thus, the word “trophy” had nothing to do with the habit of the European 2. Since the first contacts between the Edo and the Portuguese in the late 15th century, the Edo has generally been referred to in the West with the names “Bini” or “Benin.” These names are derived from “ibinin” or “ubinin,” the name given to the Edo, by non-Edo. Picton 1997, 92, n. 1. I have, after some hesitation, decided to call the objects looted in 1897 “Benin” objects (or loot), rather than “Edo” objects/loot. One of the main reasons for maintaining the name “Benin” here, a name which may be seen as a corrupt “translation” of an “original” (non-Edo) African name into Western idioms, is, as I discuss later on, that these objects have undergone various forms of transformations and translations since 1897, which means that their contemporary (Western) appearances and meanings to a large extent differ from their pre-1897 Edo appearances and meanings. This transfiguration of the objects in some ways parallels how “Edo” in the West has become “Bini” or “Benin.” Thus, I use the term “Benin” to highlight the contemporary hybridity and ambiguity of these objects, comprised today of both “Edoness” and “Westernness.” The reasons for calling these objects “objects” or “loot” rather than, for example “bronzes, “ivories” or “artworks” will be treated below. The word “Benin” in this study is not to be confused with the West African country Benin (officially the Republic of Benin) known as Dahomey until 1975. In this study I refer to points in time through the use of the Gregorian calendar, also known as the Western or Christian calendar. I do not intend the use of this system of ordering time as an endorsement of Christianity or a Western perspective. For early dates I use the abbreviation BCE “Before Common Era” as this term feels somewhat less Christianity-centric than BC “Before Christ.” 3. On this interpretation, which derives from a contemporary Edo interpretation of these heads, see Ben-Amos Girshick 1980, 18, 1995, 26, Plankensteiner 2007a, 375, 463.

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