1897 and the long way home

February 1897

By the 1890s, Oba Ovonramwen stood in the way of British and Itsekiri traders who wanted roads into Benin and its forest goods. The quarrel led to a British invasion.² On 18 February 1897, after ten days of fighting, British naval and Protectorate forces entered Benin City. The people had left. The troops camped in and around the palace, and began at once to take the brass, ivory, coral, wood and terracotta of the royal court.¹

Over the next days they cleared the altars, storerooms and courtyards. Photographs show the ancestral altars stripped bare, piles of ivory tusks, and rows of brass heads laid out on the ground. From 19 to 21 February the force destroyed chiefs’ compounds, shrines and the queen mother’s palace, and on 21 February fire reached the Oba’s palace. Looting went on in the city and villages around it for months, and in places for years.¹ Oba Ovonramwen was exiled to Calabar, where he died in 1914.²

Where the plaques went

The brass plaques were found stored in the Oba’s compound. The British consul-general, Ralph Moor, sent them to London as official “prize”: 304 arrived in March 1897 and 11 more in July 1898. The British Museum showed them in 1897 and then argued to keep two thirds. In 1898 the 315 were shared out like this:¹

More than a century of asking

1. 1914

   Oba Eweka II is crowned in an emptied, burnt palace. He rebuilds it, has new brass heads cast for his father’s altar, and is said to have asked a British official for the royal stools.^3,2

2. 1935

   Oba Akenzua II makes the first recorded request for named objects: two royal stools, traced to Berlin. Berlin refuses, and sends copies instead. The Oba has them inscribed to say the originals were taken in 1897.³

3. 1938

   Parts of Oba Ovonramwen’s coral regalia are given back to Akenzua II by Lord Plymouth. They are still used in ceremonies.³

4. 1976

   The British Museum refuses to lend its ivory mask of Queen Mother Idia for FESTAC ’77, the festival of Black and African arts in Lagos, which had chosen it as its emblem.³

5. 1997

   A hundred years after the invasion, Benin holds the Great Benin Centenary. Oba Erediauwa asks Bernie Grant, a London MP, to make formal requests for return on the palace’s behalf.³

6. 2021

   Jesus College, Cambridge, returns a brass cockerel: the first institution in the world to return a Benin work.⁴

7. 2022

   Germany and Nigeria sign a joint declaration. Berlin’s museums transfer ownership of all 512 of their Benin works to Nigeria, with about a third staying in Berlin on loan.^3,5

8. 2023

   A presidential gazette declares that returned works belong to the Oba. A planned return from Cambridge is put on hold while this is worked out.^3,6

By 2024 the Oba and Nigeria’s National Commission for Museums and Monuments had agreed to work together: the Oba as owner and traditional keeper, the Commission caring for and showing the works.³ Thousands of works are still abroad.