Empire in a Glass Case: The Diaspora of Atlantic Artifacts in the British Museum

Empire in a Glass Case: ENDNOTES The Diaspora of Atlantic Artifacts in the British Museum

Vague Vocabularies and Victorious Collectors

The western world is accustomed to dialogues surrounding property rights, especially within the context and language of settler colonialism. There is, however, very little conversation about property and objects of cultural significance in the same manner. Sacred, royal, or powerful objects are “equally inalienable,” to the extent that they cannot be freely given away.1 The museum is built on the foundation of material culture, where the concept of ‘the gift’ and ‘acquisition’ have been embedded into the infrastructure of the museum since its Enlightenment inception. Today, many museum scholars and anthropologists would agree that it is “to our collective disciplinary and professional shame” that no similar theory of “looting, plunder, dispossession has been written.”2 A central function of militarist colonialism, looting and pillaging of objects were ways in which Victorian Europeans amassed collections to fill their museums, justified empire, and propagandised ‘race science.’ The very first example of this was the British Museum, founded in 1753 as the first national public, secular museum in the world. Today, it houses an estimated eight million artefacts, making it one of the largest museums of classical antiquities.3 In its mission statement, the British Museum states that “[t]he Museum’s aim is to hold a collection representative of world cultures and to ensure that the collection is housed in safety, conserved, curated, researched and exhibited.”4 This collection is one born from the violence of colonialism, beginning with Sir Hans Sloane, an Irish physician who began amassing his collection in 1687, when he served as physician to the colonial governor in Jamaica.

While on the island, enslaved Africans assisted Sloane in his collection of 800 plant and animal specimens.5 Sloane returned to Britain with his newly acquired collectables. He continued to add to his collection, using profits from sugar plantations to amass more items.6 He purchased items from other travellers and ‘explorers,’ eventually filling his two homes with 32,000 coins and medals, 50,000 books and manuscripts, 334 pressings of dried plants, and much more.7 One of the first items proven to be of African origin that was acquired from the Sloane collection is a drum, one that was found in the colony of Virginia. According to the Sloane register records, this drum was described as “Indian.” It is listed as item 1368, and detailed as “an Indian drum made of a hollowed tree carved, the top being brac’d [sic] with peggs [sic] and thongs, wt [sic] the bottom hollow, from Virginia, by Mr Clerk.”8 The drum is goblet shaped, made of wood, deer or antelope skin, and corn. It is decorated on the lower half with a series of carved notches, designs

of rectangles and squares. The drum is meant to be played with an open hand, as part of eighteenth-century West African drum groups or ensembles.9 When compared to other drums of West African origin, it becomes clear that the drum found in Virginia was actually created in West Africa. In 1906, anthropologist David Bushnell postulated that the drum was not “Indian” but “probably made by negroes, and may even have been taken to Virginia from Africa.”10 It is very likely that this drum was brought to the Americas on a slave ship from West Africa in the eighteenth century.11 Upon his death in 1753, Sir Hans Sloane bequeathed his vast collection to the nation. After King George II assented to the British Museum Act of 1753, Sloane’s 79, 575 objects became the founding collection of the British Museum.12

An Agent of Empire

Since its inception, the British Museum has remained “a trope of empire,”13 in that it continues to be an imperialist institution that embodies past British colonial exploits. It was designed around the removal of objects from the “colonial periphery” to the “imperial centre,” acquired by aggressive tactics, such as the looting of African communities.14 One example of this is the British punitive expedition to Benin City in 1897. On this occasion, British soldiers stole thousands of sacred and royal objects as a means of exerting colonial power. The major pre-colonial kingdom of the Niger Delta once controlled the land and river systems that connected the interior of Africa with the Bight of Benin and the Atlantic world. Beginning in the sixteenth century, the kingdom gained more power and importance due to its involvement in the transatlantic trade with Portuguese, British, and French traders. By the late nineteenth century, the Oba (king of Benin) and Edo peoples held a monopoly on palm oil and other important commodities.15 This inspired various claims and frustrations over trading rights between Britain and the Oba. In January 1897, a small party of British officers were ambushed on their way to Benin, and between five and seven British men were killed.16 Because of this, the ‘punitive expedition’ of twelve hundred British soldiers was launched to punish the Oba “for the massacre of the political expedition.”17 Benin City was completely destroyed by British forces in a mere nine days.

It was during this punitive expedition that British forces ‘discovered’ Nigerian art. Benin is well known for its rich tradition of artwork, especially their work in brass, “which represent one of the oldest living traditions of art on the African continent,”18 developing well before European contact by the Portuguese in the fifteenth century. What has become known today as the Benin Bronzes are rectangular brass relief plaques. For centuries, thousands of these bronzes adorned the wooden pillars of the royal palace in Benin, depicting important cultural and historical moments in the Kingdom.19 These bronzes were seized by the British forces on behalf of the British Foreign Office, and eventually three hundred were given to the British Museum.

Three hundred bronze reliefs sent to Britain by Sir Ralph Moor and placed at the Foreign Office, Sydney Dvorak, 2022, graphic design.

One such plaque in the British Museum’s collection, which can be seen here, was ‘collected’ by Consul-General Sir Ralph Moor.20 According to the British Museum, it was created around 1700. It is a traditional rectangular relief-plaque, cast in brass and richly decorated with leaf patterns, stippling, and rosettes in the bottom corners. It depicts an Oba with a beaded crown, mudfish legs around his waist, and a leopard tail in each hand. Nail holes can be seen in each corner, and the remains of iron nails fill both the top and bottom left corners, where they once affixed this piece to the palace pillars. These bronzes are part of a time-honoured tradition of Edo art. In the Edo language, the verb sa-e-y-ama means “to remember,” but the literal translation is “to cast a motif in bronze.”22 This valuable form of cultural memory was unceremoniously ripped from the walls of the Benin palace and shipped to Britain, where the Victorian masses could look upon them with a vague ethnographic interest, proof of racial inferiority, and justification for colonialism. More Edo bronze art examples are brass figures, specifically cockerels and leopards, taken from shrines.23 Included in these specimens is this cockerel sculpture in the British Museum. While the exact date of creation is unknown, the Museum has determined it was made during the eighteenth century.24 The cockerel sculpture is a lost-wax cast in brass, and the eyes are inlaid with coral. The sculpture details the plumage, comb, wattles and spurs. It stands upright on a square base, the sides of which are decorated with interlace patterns.

For the first time, people at the imperial centre of Britain could view “objects of exotic delectation”25 from the edges of the empire. The looted objects were on display in Britain no more than six months after the 1897 expedition, and the Illustrated London News reported on Benin culture as the “habits of disgusting brutality and scenes of hideous cruelty and bloodshed, ordained by the superstitions of a degraded race of savages.”26 This is exemplary of the European racialized attitudes toward Africa, analysing a grand tradition of Edo art with only western aesthetic criteria, resulting in discourse that praised the ‘civilising’ aspects of imperialism. Some Europeans went so far as to believe that the bronze figures, such as the cockerel sculpture, were too beautiful to have been created by Africans, and claimed that they must have been created by Portuguese sailors as they travelled through Benin.27

Edo Plaque, ca. 1700. Brass, iron, 49 x 34 cm. The British Museum, Fair use.

Edo Pendant Mask; Regalia, ca. 1700. Elephant ivory, copper, 24.50 x 12.50 cm. The British Museum, Fair use.

“Busy Packing Loot!”

The total figure of what was looted could be up to 10,000 bronzes, ivories and other objects, but an exact number would be impossible to calculate given that there is so much hidden in private or family collections. Other than the items that were sent directly to the British Foreign Office, many looted objects ended up in the private possession of the looters themselves. In addition to the bronzes, hundreds of ornaments worn for palace ceremonies made of copper, iron, wood, coconut and coral-bead were taken.28 For example, one of the more famous ivory hip-pendants of Queen Idia was taken by Sir Ralph Moor, who oversaw the transfer of loot to the Foreign Office. These hip-pendants represent Queen Mother Idia, the mother of Oba Esigie who ruled Benin in the sixteenth century. This type of mask was worn by the Oba, on the hip, during important ceremonies. The regalia is a human figure carved from ivory; the hairstyle is carved in low relief. The top of the hip mask is inlaid with copper alloy and decorated with heads of Europeans, representing Benin’s alliance and control over the Portuguese.29 It was recorded to have been found in the bedchamber of the Oba.30 Upon his suicide in 1909, the ivory, which Sir Ralph Moor had kept for himself, was bought by anthropologist Charles Seligman. It was then acquired by the British Museum in 1910.

Much evidence of British soldiers’ looting exists to this day. Personal diaries and official records provide insight into the attitude of the plunderers. The personal diary of Captain Herbert Walker details “All the stuff of any value found in the King’s palace and surrounding houses has been collected in the Palave house.”31 There is an almost giddy quality to Walker’s writing, especially in the way he describes packing for their return home, “Start for Gwato tomorrow, en route for England. Busy packing loot!”32 In addition to written records, there is also photographic evidence. There were many cameras present at the punitive expedition, perhaps numbering more than a dozen, both personal and for professional reporting. This photograph, in the British Museum’s collection, is one of many that depicts the objects taken from the palace at Benin. The soldiers can be seen seated in front of their booty, wearing their pitch helmets. Soldiers and administrators took photographs as tourists would while on vacation. In some cases, administrators developed multiple copies of the photographs they took so they could be included in soldiers’ diaries and personal photo albums.33

Possession is Power

In 1754, the trustees of the British Museum decided on the motto for the seal of the museum. They chose bonarum artium cultoibus, “For the devotees of human pursuits.”34 This motto can still be seen in the twenty-first century British Museum, and is often used to

prop-up the idea that the Museum is a one for the world. This idea of a “world museum” has been debated between those who find themselves in either the cultural internationalism or cultural nationalism schools. Cultural nationalists argue that cultural property should remain within its country of origin, while internationalists believe that cultural property should belong to the world and therefore placed in whatever institution has the greatest resources. Museums are essential to the formation of national identity and cultural memory, and as such “Power can be demonstrated by possessing cultural property from source countries or by possessing items belonging to a nation’s claimed heritage.”35 Holding cultural objects from another country of origin can be a sort of imperial power-play.

This leads to modern disagreements over cultural property and many cases for repatriation of stolen art. In 1970, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) met for the Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property. The UNESCO Convention expanded the definition of cultural property, an attempt to “include all possible aspects of life,” ranging from natural specimens to musical instruments.36 This definition encompasses nearly all of what is housed in the British Museum, especially from the founding collection of Hans Sloane.

Repatriation, the process of returning disputed artefacts or art to its country of origin, emerged as early as the sixteenth century, but cases for it have grown since the twentieth century. For example, between 1970 and 1999, the British Museum received twenty-seven repatriation requests.37 While international law defines the British Museum’s collections as cultural property, it does not compel the Museum to return any of the artefacts to their countries of origin. This is largely because the British Museum Act of 1963 details that the Museum’s trustees are “legally bound by fiduciary duty to preserve the Museum’s collection and dispose of objects only in extremely specific and unusual circumstances,”38 of which repatriation is not one. Until the twentieth century, the British Museum did not even consider lending artefacts to museums in countries other than England. In the 1960s, the Museum lent thirty-five of the Benin Bronzes to the University of Pennsylvania, the British Museum’s first international loan.39

Museums around the world have been repatriating items to eliminate imperialism from their display cases, but the British Museum has not done the same. Greece, Egypt, and Nigeria have requested that antiquities and artefacts be returned to their jurisdictions. The British Museum has rejected these demands in favour of keeping its collections from diverse cultures as a “universal museum.”40 As of 2018, Nigeria has made it known that they are open to compromising with the British Museum and are willing to accept a loan of the Benin artefacts rather than full repatriation.41 Through all of these negotiations, it can be observed that the British Museum asserts a culturally internationalist perspective, saying that it is an “appropriate custodian with inalienable rights” to its disputed artefacts.42 This echoes rightsbased language that has been used for property since the Enlightenment, but does not take into account a more modern, nuanced understanding of the relationship of cultural objects to identity.

Exterior of British Museum, Sydney Dvorak, 2016, digital photo.

Rooted in the museum’s policy of possession is the colonial idea that the source countries do not have the ability to maintain their own cultural objects, and therefore must rely on the British Museum to preserve their history.43 It seems as though the British Museum is clinging to the last vestiges of an empire that no longer exists. Meanwhile, Nigeria has insisted that the Benin Bronzes were used to commemorate important moments of the Edo people, and that their removal from Benin left a vacuum that swallowed crucial aspects of their cultural and historical identity.44 This proves that possession is indeed power, and that cultural imperialism is alive and well. So long as the British Museum, and other cultural institutions, continue to display the spoils of colonial violence, they are not “devotees of human pursuits.” Rather, they are stewards of monuments to an era in which western dominance over African civilisation was asserted and celebrated.

Sydney R. Dvorak (she/her)

European Studies (history stream) major