 thank you so much for joining us. Hello to everyone in the room and to everyone at home today watching. Our chair today is Jason Okendae. Jason is a writer of essays, features and profiles on politics and culture for publications such as The Guardian, the London Review of Books, British Vogue, GQ, Vice-Dazed and ID. He also co-curates the digital archive Black and Gay back in the Day, which documents black LGBT life in Britain since the 1970s. He holds a first-class degree in human social and political science from Pembroke College University of Cambridge, and his first book, Revolutionary Acts, a social history of black gay men in Britain, will be published by Faber in spring 2024. Paddy Docti. Paddy is a historian of empire with a particular interest in the British empire, anti-colonial resistance and the cultural impact of imperialism. He went to Oxford University and is the author of The Khyber Pass, a history of empire and invasion, which came out in 2007. His second book is Blood and Bronze, the British Empire and the Sack of Benin. Published by Hearst Publishers in December 2021, this book reveals the true story and the shocking British wrongdoing behind the plunder of the famous Benin bronzes. Finally is Luke Pepperer. Luke is a writer, broadcaster, historian and anthropologist with an expertise on the deep past and traditional cultures of Africa. He was born in Ghana and read Archaeology and Anthropology at Oxford, where he studied ancient and medieval African history. Recently he's written and presented Africa written out of history, which is a documentary for Dan Snow's history here. He's appeared on a panelist on real fake history and on numerous podcasts. His debut non-fiction history book Motherland, 500,000 years of African history, cultures and identity comes out late in 2023. Thank you so much. Over to Jason. Great. Thank you so much and I hope everyone enjoys the talk. I want to start with a question for both of you. What really sparked your interest in the Kingdom of Benin in this area of reach out? Both of your words take on different parts of the timeline for the history of Benin, but what really sparked your interest? For me it was more trying to interrogate. It's obviously here especially in the UK we know I think as a nation quite a bit about Benin or at least we've heard of Benin because of the bronzers that are in the British Museum and they are one of the best known artefacts I think for a large mostly because of the controversy that surrounds them partly about how they came to the British Museum. I noticed for me is when I'm actually a huge fan of the British Museum generally but when I went there and I would look at the artefacts and I'd read some of the cards and I'd read the cards about the Benin bronzers. A lot of the information was about the punitive expedition and about the sacking and about how they came here which is great but I think that is the last 150 years of a history that is at least 600 years old so it informs my whole perspective about Africa, the way which I think about the African Pass is that it is important that we talk about things like colonialism and the slavery because that's had an impact or it continues to have an impact and its influences have felt on the world today but putting that in a perspective and looking actually about other aspects of the past and when it comes to the Benin bronzers and particularly how were they made, who made them, what do they mean, what purpose do they serve, what do they act as symbols of, all that kind of information was something that I thought was a tiny bit left out of the narrative and for me should have formed the bulk of the narrative especially when you're presenting it in a museum in an educational space so I wanted to find out a bit more about that and hopefully to tell stories about that aspect of the artefacts. Paddy, what about you? That's interesting actually because my reason is almost the same as yours in a way in that when I first visited the Benin bronzers in the British Museum I was dissatisfied with the way they were presented and described. The labelling in the British Museum it's not wrong, I mean factually it's accurate and it even admits to the fact that they were plundered and that there was a violence behind their presence in London but it excuses everything somewhat through omission, you know, through brevity so that raised a lot of questions for me and then I went away and tried to find out more about the Benin punitive expedition and it wasn't very easy to do. I mean in terms of finding an authoritative history of the invasion of Benin there really wasn't, this is 15 years ago when I first saw the Benin bronzers so I thought that well I'll write it, I mean it doesn't exist so I'll write that. Brilliant and that's why I wrote this book. So Luke I want to ask when we refer to the Kingdom of Benin what do we really mean by that and what is the early composition of the Kingdom in pre-colonial times? So the Kingdom of Benin itself is probably something that comes about between the 11th to 13th centuries so the area in which the Kingdom of Benin is now located was originally a coalition of towns, I'll say they were slightly bigger than villages, a coalition of towns and each town had its own leader, had its own chief and the most powerful among them, the one with the access to the resources became that sort of de facto leader so he was known as the Ogiso. Now the Ogiso are kind of, they're sometimes described as a dynasty, they're sometimes heralded as a kind of semi-mythical dynasty of kings, there's an indication that their own history and the history of this dynasty basically extends so far back into a deep pass that it's hard to get out what are their true origins but we have a fairly concrete, you know we sort of can get a bit of a grasp on them for at least from a thousand, you know a thousand eighty from the 10th century and the last of these of these Ogiso is an individual called a wardo who's deposed for ruling badly and now this land at the time is basically ruled by two peoples you know largely so they're largely two ethnic groups who control you know this land or this country formed of these formed of these towns so they are the effa who are the those who perhaps have the longest claim they're known as the original settlers but that probably means they just came before the Edo so the Edo people are the ones who you know the other people are the ones who now mainly populate Benin and and also you know the the dynasty of Uba are also Edo peoples and so the Edo have oh they have you know their own representatives are the Edo and Edo and Embo who are the kingmaker's council and the effa people you know have their own representatives an area after a wardo is deposed then a high-ranking effa nobleman called Evian basically tries to or he institutes a republic and then afterwards he tries to form found his own dynasty by naming his son Ogiamwen the successor and the Edeon Embo you know don't like that there there is jostling of power between the effa and the Edo people the Edeon Embo and they don't like that so what they do is they ask the king or dudua of the powerful kingdom of effa to the northwest to send one of his sons or a Minyan to you know to to well to send a son and he decides to send or a Minyan he says you know if you if you protect him on the journey then you know I will send him and you know he can you know he can be your ruler but the Edeon Embo basically looking for someone neutral whom they can sort of control so or dudua sends um or a Minyan or a Minyan defeats Ogiamwen and his supporters and um is well sort of he takes over I guess um you know that that you know that country but um he doesn't actually I wouldn't say he does found but it's mainly in his son so he marries um an Edo woman called Erinwide and they have a son Eweca and it's actually Eweca who becomes the first oba so he founds the you know the you know the oba dynasty and it's that dynasty which becomes the first of the kingdom of Benin so that's the real founding of the kingdom and or a Minyan actually returns to effa to become king thereafter or dudua's death because that's seen as being the the the more important the more important kingdom you know the home land the home of all things um so that's how Benin itself kind of kind of comes about so and um you know or a Minyans coming to um you know to the country of of the effa in the Edo is probably I mean it's difficult to say but it's some I think it's it's sort of sometime between the 11th and 13th centuries well that's actually sure depending on um which you know who are storing you talk to it's either slightly early or slightly later um but that is generally agreed to be the genesis and it's and I think you know when you're thinking about the story it's the most important thing to remember is that you know for a lot of the um uh you know kings of kingdoms which are in contemporary or in modern day Nigeria effa is seen as being um you know a really important place um um and you know even up until I say even for example in the 18th century had the kings of oil and oil was in the 18th and 19th century was the most powerful kingdom probably in West Africa and even then you know they're paying homage to effa um so it has so it's traditionally seen as um you know the uh you know the progenitor of all these kings and all these kingdoms so I guess we could say that the kingdom of Benin kind of formed and evolved through various power struggles yes yeah um which those continue on into the kind of like 18 19th century yes um yeah I mean they're always um yeah they're always power struggles I mean sometimes when it comes to uh I mean perhaps not so much for Benin just because uh you have a primo genitor being introduced um so in the in the sort of mid to late 15th century with Elwari the great but you do have actually with um there's a with a lot of traditional African kingdoms you always have a you almost have a survival of the of the fittest dynamic where because it's it's um you know the the choosing of the successor is usually um elective um and also you know women queen mothers so the um the matriarchs play a huge an important role in that but sometimes when a old king dies you would have a succession struggle and the person who or not always but if if there are two candidates who look likely then that can sometimes turn into a struggle sometimes quite a quite a brute struggle and you know it's the best that sort of comes out on top and I suppose you know what that allows for are um dynisties that continue so it's that you don't have you don't necessarily have um you know for lack of a better word Doug's inheriting the throne and then ending the dynasty as you saw I mean a sort of a example that springs to mind is somewhere like um you know 19th century Russia with like Nicholas the second so he inherits the throne but because he's not a very good good it leads to the end of you know the roman of dynasty as opposed to someone who might have been better so maybe not so much in in in Benin but that definitely that founding between the um you know the struggle between the edio and ember and you know the effort representatives is definitely how you know an important event which leads to the founding of the of the kingdom and so what was the kind of relationship between Benin and European countries I'm thinking particularly in terms of trade relations the trade relations um well actually really balanced and this goes for a lot of um you know you know before sort of the expansion the huge expansion of you know the trade and slave people was probably from maybe the 16th century onwards and I think even afterwards actually so as far as Benin is concerned it seems to actually be Iwari the great who comes to the throne in 1414 he's reckoned to he's he's really the the great reformer of Benin um you know he you know he changes a lot about the kingdom and he makes a lot more powerful with the conquest etc but it's him who has a um who really builds up you know trade relationships with the Portuguese in particular um and their trading carry shells glass beads and in particular copper which is important for for for the bronzes themselves in exchange for gold ivory and slaves but it's him who builds up that builds up that relationships because it's about the late 15th century that the Portuguese are making inroads into the region you know into into modern day Nigeria and Iwari the great capitalizes on that relationship and you can see it actually in some of the some of the carvings and some of the artworks you see representations of you know of Portuguese on things like salt shakers and you know and bracelets and all that type of stuff so going on from that let's get on to the actual formation of bronzes um what was how was the casting technique for creating bronzes introduced to Benin introduced to Benin so this was um I think he's reckoned to be the fifth uber Oguola who uh who again sends to Ife so Ife is um has a very very um yeah you know a very very impressive artistic tradition like a collection of of artists I mean you're probably going all the way back to a thousand uh you know a thousand BC with you know the not culture the not civilization around that you know they're around that sort of area um and um so Oguola is inspired by the artworks there um and Ife is most famous for these incredibly realistic naturalistic heads um and um but he he asks for artists to be sent from Ife and they introduce a lot of the uh a lot of sort of the you know the original brass casting techniques which soon develop into those in which the bronzes or you know which are used for the foundation um the artistic foundation which leads to the creation of the Benin bronzes such as those in the um in the uh in the British Museum but those and that's sort of in the pre 16th century and sort of post 16th century and the bronzes the way in which the bronzes in the British Museum are made are made using the lost wax casting technique which again is how some of the artworks in Ife are made and this is a really yeah really really technological sophisticated techniques all you do is you you carve a or what they they and in fact actually I think they still they still do because the you know the the method still exists and it's something that you know artists in Nigeria still use is that you carve a you carve out of wax like a model you know a realistic model and then you put um a thin layer of clay of clay on it of soft clay and then you put um a layer of hard clay to protect it and then you heat that up so you know the the wax melts and all you're left with is the imprint of what you carved on the inside and then you pour the you know the boiling copper ally into it and wait for it to cool and then they knock off the clay and that leaves the um you know the bronze sculpture but that means every like each sculpture is unique it can't be replicated because you've destroyed the mould as part of the process um and um you know the fact that they're able to do this you know to go through those process and you know some of the the works that come out are you know like our pristine like they're you know they're absolutely beautiful but then if you think about how you have to how to conceptualise how it's going to turn out in the final product when you're making the wax model and also when you're impressing the clay because there's some parts which you have to do harder and softer than others um so it's uh it's it's it's you know something that's um uh yeah I mean that's why I think that's you know even you know the the bronze workers in Benin in medieval Benin and I think you've today were a guild you know they were that was you know pretty much all they did they were patronised to make bronze artworks in honour of you know the royal family and for the royal family so they made you know the plaques I'm wondering if I can get this works yeah so they make things like these the plaques which um but they also make um things like big heads um you know to commemorate um dead obas and you know some which have scarification marks to represent people from different tribes and you know there's a huge amount of sort of um virtuosity and you know um you know technical application which goes into into making these I'm glad you've spoken about the workers as well on the kind of guild which were you know creating the bronzes um I also wondered you know how was the kind of like material for the bronzes sourced and what kind of labour effort did that require as well sourced yeah I think um I mean a lot of it actually seems to come about through trade with the with the Portuguese that's at least when it seems to boom so under a warrior the great in the late 15th century and you know he's trading his own commodities for copper and it's actually that influx of copper which needs to I think there were some local deposit but it's really when that trade that um that uh yeah it leads to a huge um expansion in the amount of works being produced and the amount of different types of works being produced sure and when we think about you know the kind of people who are kind of buying the workforce for the Ben and bronzes compared to where the Ben and bronzes were you know in palaces um pile of the royal family what was the relationship that kind of everyday citizens of the Ben and kingdom had with the Ben and bronzes what was the purpose of them what was the kind of like symbolic meaning of them to everyday citizens and not just royalty so that's a that's a very good question because um it's it's hard to know actually how many you know ordinary people would have had the opportunity to see things like the bronzes I mean it's almost a bit like when we're thinking about you know artworks in ancient Egypt I remember um learning about um you know this the palette the the nama palette which was made in 3000 BC which was something the first pharaoh of a unified Egypt made to commemorate his unification of Egypt but it was you know very small but it was literally only meant to be shown in a very specific like spiritual context I don't actually think that you know ordinary benedys would have had or other people would have had access to viewing these I think it was actually more for the king and the princes in fact you can see I think even the two heirs there on the other side and his attendants and his warriors so it was basically for the elite to be reminded of their role and their responsibility in ruling the kingdom and then to remind them of you know the relationship that they have with their people and how a king and you know in their own history because these are almost like I don't know if it sounds a bit you know flippant but these are almost like you know almost for the for the king himself they're almost like you know family albums like they're going you know these are if they're made by his ancestors you know they're representing you know their families um and their you know attendants people who are important to them so you know a king is is when he's looking at bronjes that were made by his own ancestors he's basically looking at you know the representations of his own ancestors and he's reminded of you know how they behaved and how they acted because I think also I mean we look at the the artifacts you know by themselves but don't forget that these were basically just a complement to a corpus like a you know a huge amount of oral history as well so these are you know they're almost like they're almost like primers so when you see the artifact then the king would be remembered of you know a story or a history or of you know you know or of a particular event so they acted yeah as almost like prompts reminding him and you know and his children and his wives and you know and his attendants and you know the politicians etc about how a king is supposed to behave and how they are supposed to behave and the responsibilities of the king and the lives of the king and you know all that kind of thing and of course I mean here we kind of have depictions of like royalty and warriors and family heritage but also so when I was an undergraduate student there was a big kind of controversy over Jesus College's possession of a bennie bronze which was in the shape of a cockerel it's been returned now thankfully but I wonder about those kind of more like miscellaneous items that it didn't necessarily point to like a kind of antistory what was the purpose of them were they purely decorative no I mean some of them are actually symbols of things like magic and kingship so for example actually the cockerel like the spur of a cockerel is recognition a lot of West African context to be like a magical object so you know some people would tip like you know the ends of of or you know you have some stories where basically you know one king would if like the cockerel was like the totem of one king and the way to defeat him would to get like would be to get the spur of a cockerel and put it on the end of an arrow and shoot them with it and that would be you know disabling his magic basically so and then I think you even have in so it's the same thing with like lepid so the lepid for example was a symbol of kingship so if there was you know if you saw an artwork where a lepid be represented sometimes would be you know the king himself transformed into a lepid so they're usually they usually actors as totems or symbols of something for sure whether that's royalty or kingship or you know for femininity or whatever it is brilliant paddy I want to get on to your research so the kind of famous aggression up against the benning kingdom was the 1897 benning predictive exhibition but of course that you know comes off the back of you know a wealth of imperial and colonial activity in the region of west africa before then so could you talk kind of talk about the backdrop to the benning exhibition itself and also the kind of killing of james for that as well sure absolutely absolutely the crucial thing to remember about the british presence in west africa of course is that the the original sin of the british empire in in west africa of course was slavery the slave trade the transatlantic slave trade and the the entity of the british empire that invaded benning city or benning the kingdom of benning in 1897 was the the night of coast protectorate which was gradually built from what were originally slave trading cities and and so on along the coast and the britain gradually incorporated those what had been slave trading city states into what eventually became the the night of coast protectorate and it was the night of coast protectorate that that that attacked benning city in 1897 and quite frankly it was simply because the the kingdom of benning was one of the last remaining rival powers in in the region and and as britain was gradually penetrating the interior of the the night of delta you know you can see that if you're an imperially minded british official in the the mid 1890s the kingdom of benning would be you know a natural next target for you if your goal is to dominate the the the interior markets of the region where the majority of the palm oil was it was produced so benning in this kind of period had retained its independence and we have the oba ovan ramwen who has a kind of trade so things like rubber palm oil ivory which the british are like of course and what was the british response to this kind of like last message of power in west africa what did they first attempt against the benning kingdom sure it's a very gradual process so over the course of several decades from actually from the 1820s 1830s when britain decided that it would abolish the the trade enslave the all of the the Liverpool traders and and other european traders essentially switched over to palm oil and palm oil would be brought down from the interior to the coast by middlemen traders by by local people and bought by british traders on the coast and then taken off to europe changes in the the palm oil trade structural changes in the palm oil trade and and pressures on on the price of palm oil gradually pushed british traders in land they needed to make more money they wanted to make more money so they were trying to cut out the middlemen traders and that was part of the big impetus for for pushing into the interior which of course brought them up against the kingdom of benning and in fact if i may show you i want to show you first of all the tap on the left this is major sir claude mcdonald who was the i yeah i'm sure we can say safely that he was the the most important figure in the creation of the niger coast protectorate in the early 1890s and that makes him easily one of the most important figures in the creation of what is now nigeria i mean this is of course was entirely a british invention in the the late 19th century you know that hadn't been conceived a nigeria before the british came along so he's an extremely important figure and he left uh he his post as consul general of the niger coast protectorate ended just in january 1896 so he was there until you know until the eve of the invasion so i wanted to show you this guy because i mean he's super important for nigeria but i admit i also wanted to show you because of his frankly insane moustache i mean i i don't know how he manages to keep it like that and what was your view of major claude mcdonald compared to other colonial officials of this era yeah that's a very important question because i mean one has to try hard to be nuanced you know when looking at colonial officials i mean especially a committed anti-colonial like myself you know i mustn't be guilty of assuming all imperial officials to be awful people um so i i do see mcdonald as a cut above the average imperial official for sure i mean he's demonstrably intelligent he writes very well um and he writes amusingly in fact and i've been through thousands i mean literally thousands of pages of his death purchase um and he also was he was very clearly attempting to administer justice uh fairly i mean i've seen cases where rather than simply siding with the british trader you know he's actually delivered judgments in favour of you know a local african middleman for example um so he certainly wasn't um you know like many british officials uh in the british empire simply on the side of you know always on the side of the white man i mean he seemed to have some um it seemed to be making some effort to administer justice fairly however that doesn't i'm not suggesting that makes him a good guy i mean he's guilty of some horrible things and in my book i i chanced upon a truly horrendous episode that mcdonald was directly responsible for which was the blockade of apobo apobo um you can see apobos here this is the one of the trading cities of the delta and um the brits had deposed their king king jaja in 1887 but they were still having trouble fully absorbing um apobo into the the british system uh in 1889 so when mcdonald arrived in in 1889 he arrived in the delta region to basically take charge of the future shape of the protectorate that they had just declared mcdonald decided to blockade apobo and apobo is on a reverine island so it's easy enough to blockade the city if you have you know the naval force which of course the brits had so they blockaded the city and forced it to give up its firearms and and essentially incorporated it more fully into the british structure and in the british documents from 1889 that's presented as a bloodless clean very neat operation to disarm a rival power however mcdonald then accidentally gave the game away in a a memorandum that he wrote in 1895 if i remember correctly where he in a totally separate discussion about the practicalities of disarming local people referring to a blockade he said ah yeah blockades are really difficult i mean we tried it in apobo back in 1889 and it just meant dozens of women and children being starved to death you know i mean he didn't mention that at all in the 1889 documents but because he happened to mention that quite by accident in a in a totally different memo years later we now know that we'd i mean an unknown number but certainly not you know a significant number of women and children were starved to death and obviously we can assume a number of men as well so yes even even a relatively decent colonial official like mcdonald can be guilty of some horrible things just a reminder to those watching online that if you want to ask any questions then please do send those through so i want to get on to this figure so acting council general james phillips now he's a particular figure of interest and controversy in your book because of the conspiracy to depose the oboe of benin so do you want to speak through that sure thank you and yes you're absolutely right um so this this idiot here on the right is is uh james phillips and um he was responsible for the the whole fiasco that led directly to the uh the benin penis of expedition i mean the very basic sequence of events is that uh so mcdonald was actually promoted to become minister for china at the beginning of 1896 so he he went off to you know much more glamorous career in uh in east asia a chap called ralph more took over as consul general from mcdonald and then ralph went on leave back to the uk in the summer of 1896 and this guy james phillips arrived uh to to fill in for um for more uh while he was on leave so james phillips arrives in the the the niger coast protectorate on october the 21st 1896 and i mentioned the date because the the date is important and then he decides that he uh wants to take a mission to benin city so phillips takes a a mission it's not altogether nine british uh members there were you know a couple of consuls there were a couple of traders a you know a couple of officers you know the the normal kind of a little mission that you would take and about 240 or so carriers meant you know manservants um and so on he sets off to go to to visit benin city set off in december of 1896 and all along the way the the journey to benin uh everybody is telling him not to go his own officials are advising him not to go the local chiefs and you know friendly local advisors are telling him you know you mustn't visit the king uh the oba hasn't given permission and in fact the oba said specifically not to visit um and phillips ignores all of that uh continues on and in the march from guato so they go so he of course went from old calabar king round by boat and up the benin river and then up the guato creek and then from guato you march over land to benin city that's about two days from guato to benin city on the the fourth of january 1897 phillips and party set out from guato against all of the vice and were ambushed by benin soldiers and the entire party essentially the entire party was killed um the two brits escaped uh lock and um his name is escaped me um a unknown number of um carriers and so on escaped um but because of the death of phillips and party you know the the the natural thing for the british empire in those days was obviously to mount a a punitive expedition so then that was swiftly followed by a punitive expedition um which marched again you got the benin river the um establish a base camp here alobo march north um camps of benin city um where of course as everybody knows the literally every single uh item that they could find was packed up and taken to london and then the city was burned out and that all happened um within a few weeks within five weeks of phillips being killed the uh the city was in marun so before we go specifically into some of the atrocities of that i just want to ask quickly um so some of the new evidence that you introduce in the book is from phillips's school days um obtained from the archiver up in school and so you call him an idiot is it based on the material there what you learn from it yes i'm glad you asked that i'm glad you asked that because i mean i i used the word idiot advisedly i mean it wouldn't and it's not just on the way he looks i mean that wouldn't that wouldn't be you know that wouldn't be historical i mean i i call them an idiot because i have documentary proof that that he you know that he is he was a duffer and and that's it don't don't worry about reading this because i'll read out a key bird but i just wanted you to see this because as jason says i i found in the upingham school archive um some absolutely hilarious material about phillips uh when of course when when after he died now obviously this is his his own school magazine they're writing an obituary of an old boy of the school who has in their view died gloriously on the and you know the frontiers of the empire so of course they're trying to say something as nice as they can about him obviously you know they want to present him in a positive light but i found that quite striking um how faint the praise that they could find about him was um this is the key but this is a verbatim quotation from this article talking about phillips this article says quote he was not head and shoulders above the rest of us in anything except perhaps that priceless thing which we call keenness he was not a first rank scholar he was not a first rank athlete he never wrote anything brilliant for this magazine uh and apparently he read his bible regularly and hunted out evil with genial indignation whatever that means and the highest praise that they could find to say about him was that he was a sportsman even despite being bad at athletics and then in a another article in the same magazine in the the upping school magazine in november so this of course is long after the you know the the punitive expeditions has happened the bronzes are in london and they're being all kinds of celebrations around the country they say quote there was nothing so remarkable about him as a young man at school or college to make him eminently noticeable except that he was a high spirit of young man full of life and energy he probably did not impress his contemporaries and this is them trying to be nice now this is i mean i find it very funny but it is also important because the fact is that phillips completely messed up you know he arrived i mentioned the date because he arrived in october he arrived on october 21st 1896 in the protectorate he knew nothing whatsoever about the protectorate before he never even been there he was in fact he was actually posted in garner in the gold coast um for a couple of years before that so he knew nothing about the area but having arrived on the 21st of october on the 16th of november he wrote a despatch to again don't worry about reading it i'll read out a key bit but i just wanted you to see that that's a copy of the actual despatch dated november 16th 1896 where phillips having been in the protectorate only three weeks in two days has already decided that that he has to depose the king of benin three weeks in two days um in fact this is the key you might have to read that but i'll read it out he's so he's writing to the foreign office in london in his capacity as consul general of the migiocoats protectorate i am certain that there is only one remedy that is to depose the king of benin from his school from his school i therefore ask his lordship's permission to visit benin city in february next to depose and remove the king of benin now this is crucial evidence that the phillips mission was emphatically not peaceful because the way it's presented in a lot of museum signage even you know is um that the eddow soldiery destroyed a peaceful british mission or a you know a trade mission or something like that you know and he and this is universal even in the guardian that i'm not i'm not saying the guardian as a moral arbiter i'd say i'm just saying that you would expect the guardian to at least make the effort you know to verify the facts you know they would have at least that kind of progressive sensibility to you know get the facts right i remember an article about the benin bronzers in the guardian a few years ago called the phillips mission peaceful and it's like well it was unarmed that's true it wasn't a military expedition and the the side arms of the officers being of no importance so it was certainly not a military expedition but it was emphatically not peaceful because his entire aim was ultimately to to depose and remove the king of benin so this for me this is a smoking gun document that proves beyond all doubt that phillips intention was not peaceful and of course with the um 1897 response by the british um often there's a lot of focus on the specific looting of the bronzers um but your book and your research uncovers new evidence of colonial wrongdoing including sexual violence um proof that the prime minister lord salisbury oversawd the cover-up of crimes of consul george annisley um how did you uncover this evidence and in your words what do you think is the full story of this exhibition sure so um yeah that's a really critical area because i think we we also have to look when considering the benin punitive expeditional the invasion of benin we have to look at it in the context of the claims that britain was making for its presence as a whole in the region because obviously i mean i think everybody will have some rough idea that you know empire types at the time like to promote this notion of them spreading civilisation and spreading you know rule of law and all this sort of thing um you know they're making a moral claim for the british presence and so if there is any truth in that then we are required i think to look at the to to look at those claims look at the moral basis of the british presence in in the region in the major coast protector that i indicated earlier and that was why this kind of evidence that i found about this shocking wrongdoing of consul annisley um is important to answering that question so in brief uh in 18 the late 1889 when mcdonald was in the region visiting the entire region to decide what kind of british official structures needed to be built while whilst mcdonald was carrying out that process a chat called george annisley was appointed as consul in old calabas he was consul for you know what became the the 90 coast protectorate and this i mean that this year and a half or so that he is in old calabas was horrendous i mean he ran a rule you know reign of terror i mean he he would i think i mean obviously i'm not a psychiatrist but i i would feel reasonably confident of saying that he was actually psychopathic i mean he was incredibly violent um responsible for uncounted number of deaths of local people i mean he had a habit of literally attacking villages i mean he would you know burn down villagers he'd march his soldiers his small units of soldiers into villages and you know i mean it was responsible for the death of many people but possibly the most unpleasant of annisley's crimes that i uncovered was this horrendous sexual crime that you mentioned i went into great detail because it's it's really appalling but essentially he he seized a local woman in old calabas in fact this is important for me i i in fact decided to dedicate my book to this woman because we know her name and we have her testimony of of what happened but of course apart from that she is you know a essentially uncounted victim of the british empire about whom we know very little um but so annisley had this woman seized and brought to his quarters in the british consul in old calabas then he ordered his soldiers uh to come upstairs to his quarters where he held her down and ordered them to rape her and this is just so shocking it was horrendous but we know about this because it just so happened that a a chat called um alfred turner was chained up literally chained up by annisley chained to a post outside annisley's quarters so he he could hear and see well he could see the comings and goings and he could hear everything and then turner took it upon himself to write a letter literally to the prime minister making this allegation against uh annisley and because that letter arrived at the foreign office so the time lord solsby was both prime minister and foreign secretary um because of that letter uh the foreign office oh okay i guess we better look into this so they they instituted a in fact mcdonald ordered an investigation and for that reason uh a consul interviewed everybody took sworn statements so i found the documents hidden away in the foreign office archives of these sworn statements of ekang herself of the soldiers involved of turner the witness and and others you know sworn statements very carefully compiled by a diligent vice consul so this document this um dossier was compiled and sent to the foreign office so the foreign office knew all the details about annisley's wrong doing horrendous wrong doing um and decided to quietly pension him off that's the most boring thing is that you know everybody knew about all all his crimes in some detail but there was no question of holding a you know a court case or punishing him in any way they they retired him off with a pension by the way and so the evidence that that you asked about is this so this this is the marquis of solsbury who as i say was both prime minister and foreign secretary at the time uh this is 1891 this is happening by the way and now the evidence that the prime minister himself knew of the appalling crimes of george annisley is this document on the right here so don't worry about reading i'll read it out but i just wanted you to see it again because this is the smoking gun document that proves beyond all doubt that the prime minister knew of this wrong doing so this is from his private secret foreign office private secretary a tap called sir eric barrington lord solsbury it will be a good thing if annisley retires there are some very nasty stories about his proceedings in the oil rivers that's the knight of delta proceedings in the oil rivers which are getting about outside eb that's eric barrington november the 25th and this this is 1891 the smoking gun is the s for solsbury which of course tells us that um solsbury had read the documents of which this is the file note and he's written very bad indeed you know so we know we know beyond all doubt that the prime minister knew of these appalling crimes of consul annisley and yet uh conspired in in um pensioning him off uh with no question of punishment and so with this evidence that you've uncovered how do you think this fact is into contemporary debates around reparations and about repatriation of um ben and bronzers sure to me it's extremely obvious everything has to go back i mean it's it's very very simple um and all arguments against repatriation i think are various degrees of insulting nonsense about oh well you know they won't be able to look after them properly i mean that's just deeply racist deeply insulting um and i mean nigeria for sure has problems with corruption and so on as we do here by the way um but it seems a very bizarre argument attempt to say that well yeah we stole these but we're not going to give them back in case somebody steals them you know that's it that's it utterly illogic so they have to give up and i have a question which kind of brings in um lux research just sorry yeah lux research as well um when we think about the bronzers going out so i'm actually from this region of nigeria when my father's family was um and who should these bronzers go back to if we consider the relationship between the monarchy and the people and the relationship as it stands today and the kind of strength of feeling that you know nigerians and um the people where adult people have been in have where should these bronzers be going should they be going directly to the monarchy because these are the possessions or should they be you know publicly accessible for nigerians what do you guys think yeah see i think that's yeah no that's a very really interesting question i think partly because of the way in which you know sort of you know artifacts and material culture the way in which you know traditionally especially you know many african societies have kind of you know behaved with regards to their material culture is that it's still you know it's still something that you know they engaged with us though it was made yesterday i think uh you know the idea you know my background sort of in archaeology anthropology and you know when we're looking at i remember you know even doing i've done better research as well on museums themselves and you know the museum is an institution and as a space and you know you realise this actually grows out of a fairly distinctly european practice at least contemporary museums beginning with the cabinet of curiosities and you know the sort of the uh you know the 15 16th century but you know the idea of having um artifacts even you know precious artifacts like the ife heads or the benning bronzers behind glass cases for you know ordinary people to you know to look at and appreciate as part of their heritage is is is the least i mean i it's not i don't know um it's not something that i've seen grow out of uh of you know in sort of um or you know sort of grow organically in in african cultures i remember it's like in agana we have you know the aquasia day festival and you literally have you know uh the the you know the acan chief's attendants firing guns that are 200 years old as if they were made yesterday and like any museum curator would be like you know what are you doing and you know they're wearing you know they're wearing regalia and they're wearing you know headdresses you know things that are probably centuries you know centuries old um because you know histories uh you know histories alive you know it's it's all you know the the material culture is alive and it's something that you know people engage with so i think it is a good question you know i think it would be important actually if you know ordinary nigerians could you know would be able to say and i know there is the the benning museum of the museum being made i mean that that's true but i mean the fact is it's not up to us no i mean there's none of our business i mean they they could melt them all down as they wanted that's none of our they're not up to us that's true you know none of these factors about the terms of repatriation should be an obstacle you know i mean there's you know you know the state of nigeria exists so you know we we we took return them into nigeria and then how they decide to distribute them within nigeria or if they decide to sell them or give them back to us or i mean that's totally up to them it might be yeah yeah um so i think now we have time for some audience questions if anyone has any burning questions at all um don't be shy it's all very clear or do i mean i've got some questions through online as well um so a question for luke um can you speak on court life during early modern benning uh particularly the role of matriarchs oh the matriarch has been okay um so uh you know i mean this is something that you know seems to be actually a characteristic feature of a lot of um well sort of west west and south afgan kingdoms in particular is that you know the the mother of the king and the mother figure is is paramount and i measure that would have been you know the uh a similar thing for uh uh you know it was a similar thing for benning um is that uh you know when it comes to making important decisions um not necessarily for you know the descendants of the king but also to do with politics society culture um it is the mother of the king who has a say and then you know that also extends to um uh as well to the kings uh you know to the king's wife to the king's wives um so would be a um you know so the the you know the organisation would be uh polygamus but there would be um you know a hierarchy um with regards to uh you know with regards to the king's wives and again those who were i would say i mean the the mother of the heir because obviously they were all you know technically mothers of the again you know because there was i mean at least not until aware come you know before um aware comes in it was probably elective but then you i guess you have primogenitur with awares or probably be the first child of his first wife um but you know yeah mother figures basically and well female figures and especially elite female figures of royal women um would have played uh apart in most of bennington's courtly life um from politics to yeah religion to even you know warfare uh whether most likely uh being put in charge of uh the political administration of the kingdom and say what's the king was um you know leading the army things like that do we have any audience questions yet uh yeah come on oh wait um don't anyone else have their hand up um sorry i'm really taking advantage of the fact that i'm sat at the front um paddy i didn't expect to have tears in my eyes listening to a talk at his first but that account of the woman that was attacked is just horrific and i guess my question to you without going into too many details about the specifics because it is you know trigger warning and all the rest of it um what's it like going through these documents do you like as a historian the process of reading these terrible accounts how do you do that yeah yeah that's a good question i mean working in the field that i'm working in and i'm still working in the area of colonial violence in southern Nigeria at the moment it's it's depressing i mean it's it's one horrendous wrong doing after another um yeah it's it that's pretty awful but i suppose one thing that makes it feel worthwhile is that well i i guess i'm i'm trying to do my bit by publicising this kind of thing because you know i'm i'm not well qualified to talk about certain things to do with um you know night area and and and so on um but i am well qualified to expose British wrongdoing you know um i mean that's what i'm trained in essentially um so knowing that yeah knowing that i i can try and make um you know some tiny kind of amends by at least airing these appalling episodes of wrongdoing is um something that yeah keeps one going through the the ribbon process of reading this stuff but yes it was a shock and it was a it was a real shock to discover that transfer documents in the archives because Ainsley ought to be famous you know for being a bad guy you know he ought to be well known oh my god this horrendous um official who abused his powers and everything but you know because of the power of the British government at the time it was easy uh you know easy task for them to hide him in the archives i think we have time for one more question i think um anyone in the audience has one um i think we're going until six until quarter past or oh okay we've got time no worries i have some reason that we're going until four hi paddy so good to see you again um and we've we've spoken before um and i'm just curious as to how do you see modern British politics playing out in light of your discoveries and do you see any type of i mean i i hear this all the time from British politicians about to get your your take do you think that there's any appetite to in some way proffering some sort of apology to the people of the region uh and and and we talk about reparations and that's a small step even just to say sorry uh do you think there's any appetite in this country because you know until today people still think that you know slavery was a long time ago yeah do you think there's any appetite sure uh basically no i mean in the in the in the case of you know individuals well-meaning individuals for sure but in terms of the establishment the existing power structures and so on emphatically not because if we were to begin to have the right kind of conversations about the impact of colonialism the implications of that conversation are so terrifying for capital interests or people in the position of power now that it would it would be the end of everything for them what i mean is that if you're thinking about reparations for colonialism it is possible to put figures on that for example the indian economist utzepatnaik has calculated a rough figure for the amount of wealth extracted from the subcontinent of india uh through the entire by britain through the entire period of colonialism she puts that figure at 45 trillion dollars now i mean obviously there's a big conversation to be had about her methodology and i'm sure you know lots of problems to identify and so on but that whatever you know even if she's out by you know 20 trillion dollars it's still a staggeringly large sum of money now obviously if we were to begin to think about practical ways of repaying that money i know i'm not saying this is ever likely in any way but you know if we were to begin to start thinking about repaying that to do so would require the upending of our entire socioeconomic system and that's just that's just india i'm you know india and pakistan and we can put similar figures on you know the transatlantic slave trade and and so on and so forth and if one was to do that you know that so uh the the implications for the existing power structures and and capital interests would be catastrophic and i think that's why they you know the the establishment generally does not want to begin to have a proper conversation about even something like which might appear to be fairly harmless like the repatriation of the benin bronzers because once you start that process you know the the it leads to you know the implication is that it would then need to well how do we deal with the other impacts of colonialism and then and then the the ultimate end would be you know revolution so it's too dangerous for them and that and that's why the telegraph didn't review my book i'm sure um do we have any more audience questions i've actually got a question myself um for luke um so your um upcoming book mother country motherland motherland that's it sorry uh so that doesn't deal as much with the kind of kingdom of benin but i just kind of wonder so you are looking at 500 000 years of history um i wonder what your kind of like research process you know for this book is and how your kind of like research into benin is kind of like perhaps aided um your researcher yeah um so um because of the way in which i've decided i've decided to tackle the um the book uh thematically so it's basically um you know uh 10 you know 10 11 chapters and each chapter focuses on a different uh theme of or cultural or historical theme that um i've seen as being um important or at least has come up in in my research um as uh as as you know applicable to traditional african um you know cultures and and societies and also the deeper african past i i i need to find actually a better word but for lack of a better term pre-colonial history um so been looking because you know it's sort of i think you know i'm just trying to think of it as um as african history you know and so um so depending on which theme i'm tackling so you know they range from um you know oral history and and storytelling and the importance of storytelling in the formation of historical narratives um to matriarchy and queen mothers in ancient medieval africa um to trade migration and movement um in east africa i look at a different time period and i look at look at a different place um so for example um you know looking at um matriarchy and queen mothers i look at ancient sudan so from about 1000 bc to uh maybe 280 250 80 and i also look at early modern angola looking at queen dishinga and her um resistance against sort of uh portuguese colonialism um which was actually you know one of the most um successful resistances when it comes to stopping the uh the the portuguese advance i try and concentrate on a history from the african perspective i think there is um you know a lot of you know important work actually is being done you know as you know paddy's is so artfully demonstrates today um and you know and actually you know with what you're doing with your work there's a lot of importance to being done about um you know the relationship especially when you know uh people are based here the relationship between african europe um and uh you know the the lives of europeans in africa and the lives of africans in europe but we don't really talk a lot about the lives of africans in africa before europe was you know on the world stage you know before and you know that is most of human history is is is you know is that is that so i i'd go back actually to um to you know the origins of our species and i talk about you know homo sapiens in east africa and their emergence there and i sort of try and take people through you know different regions and different time periods to demonstrate that you know in different places at different times um you know this is what african communities were doing what african peoples were doing and that you know there is you know we do it's a very very very very important to remember um you know the aspect of our existence when we were you know you know exploited in you know as you know in slave peoples and as um you know colonial subjects but you know as we are and you know continue to be and as we were there were also rulers and traders and travelers and scholars and artisans i mean you know something like the um you know the uh the manuscripts in in timbuk too i mean this is you know astrological knowledge or an astronomical knowledge there that you know that demonstrates that some of the scholars and medieval marley in the 13th and 14th centuries you know were uh uh were were you know uh originating and sharing you know theories that were you know more advanced than you know Galileas and so but it's just stuff that we don't really know about um so trying to tackle that kind of history and to try and bring that a bit more into the fore and make it a sort of counter balance to some of the history which we we focus on um is uh you know is is is the sort of the point of the book and and the points of the stories that I try and tell in the different chapters focusing on on different aspects so if I jump in now of course I I do want to show you everybody this which sort of follows on from what Luke is saying because this is a a sketch map of benin city drawn by one of the British officers on the 1897 expedition so this is benin city that they found when they arrived in the city um on the 21st of February 1897 and I wanted to show everybody this because this is quite a variance from the idea the popular idea of Africa and you know African history that that was current you know at the time of the of the expedition and through much of the 20th century in fact you know what this shows quite clearly is what is recognizably a city you know it's a city with streets and avenues and public buildings and you know it's unquestionably recognizably a city two days after this was drawn they burnt it down and then part of it partly was by accident but you know much of it was deliberate and then after that in in terms of the popular media um you know surrounding the British invasion of benin the idea of Africa or the idea of benin that was transmitted to the general public was you know the sort of the mud hut trope of Africa you know not not the highly developed urban environment Africa you know that we can clearly see they found when they arrived I mean it wasn't there when they left because they had burnt it down but it was there uh you know when they got them you can see obviously that's just the king's compound there and then you have the queen's you know her own separate he says queen's compound that's actually the queen mother the queen mother's the example but that you know the you know the fact that this was uh you know in terms of there's like there's a huge amount of planning that's gone which is not only on an urban level but also would take into account and it's ancient well not not ancient but I know it's taken several hundred years old you know yeah you can take into account society culture et cetera it all kind of yeah connects together so I mean that was there yeah and then the British expedition came along and destroyed it so you know our intervention our violent intervention in uh in in african cultists like when then you know had had a ruinous impact and benin was especially known for its very high walls as well are there any photos really survive well but yeah although on the wall thing though I mean in some places it's slightly mis misrepresented as saying that benin city walls were longer than the wall the great wall of china that that's actually not true what what they mean is um within the kingdom of benin if if you add up all of the separate earthworks and and so on you know in separate in separate villages so it's not one big wall yeah of course yeah but um but but the yes you're right the benin walls on the and the palace were very highly developed even as far back as the 17th century if you see you've seen daffords um sorry the daffa um the the etching yes yeah yeah with you know the the dutch um illustrations from the 17th century showing a very highly developed beautiful palace you know with tall conical roofs and and very evidently the um bronze castings you know eagle castings on on the top of the the towers um yeah so very some very highly developed um and it's because you see these you know and you can see sort of similar you know similar you know structures and in artworks and and you know examples of architecture all around you know with great zimbabwe or you know the the sancori mosque in in mali or even the um the smaller uh uh sort of the tombs and the pyramids in in sudan uh which were you know built by the ancient cushites and so you know to all kind of uh space as well perhaps to um almost like also on a on a deep cultural level this you know uh you know this this this is strong urban element which is part of you know gorgeous for millennia um but you know doesn't really shine through with some of the uh oh you know something that perhaps can be bought a bit more into the fall we have time for one last quick question you've got a question thank you uh so connect to what you were just saying about um you know the sophistication of the city uh so obviously there's a real paradox in finding these beautiful objects of the bronzes which are evidence of you know super sophisticated society which has an interest in art and culture and then the idea that um they're actually sort of you know native savages that we have to destroy when the bronzes were taken back to britain was there any awareness of like um that sort of i guess disjunct or disconnect that um we'll kind of destroy the culture or that kind of the people who've created the culture but then we kind of gratify ourselves by looking at it it reminded me a bit of you know how the london illustrated news has this very racialized depiction of the assyrian wonders that kind of come out um in the british museum like is anybody kind of saying that at the time in contemporary sources sure sure no that that's a a crucial issue because it um that that this apparent disconnect between you know what they were insistent on thinking of as savages and this extraordinarily skilled artwork that that produced this bizarre uh misunderstanding when they when the bronzes arrived back in london which was even a staff at the british museum is an ormond reedon and uh dorthan uh who the creators of of the i can't remember what the which department of british museum was but um they when faced with this corpus of been in work were so staggered by its high quality that their bizarre conclusion was that it could not have been made in benin you know it's so valuable i mean this obviously can't have been made by them it must be egyptian you know or portuguese or you know so they were casting around for wild solutions of precisely that conundrum and then eventually that was in the article and eventually they accepted that in fact it was of um local manufacture but but yes it was it would involve immediately initially it was impossible for them to deal with that contradiction yeah happens of sorry to jump in it just happens a bit later on as well with the um you know with the heads of ephere i remember because again that's sort of bound up with uh you know the the the beginnings of in fact uh you know anthropology and archaeology as a as a discipline so i think you have with the heads of ephere i mean um actually one one one person puts forward the idea they were made by um atlantians before he said that they were made by africans so he they were really when you get greeks arabs finitions and the ancient habitants of atlantas i think for the heads of ephere this is leofer bedius he's a german philologist and anthropologist um and you know he is good but uh yeah there was yeah and great zimbabwe as well uh but it's interesting you mentioned the iln the illustrated london news because would you believe the the illustrated london news had a correspondent in benin city in the wake of the expedition i mean quite remarkable i don't know if everybody knows but the the illustrated london news was a you know a high circulation illustrated daily of uh you know late before an early um early 20th century period and as such was an important publication i mean it was you know like the the the times but for you know perhaps slightly less literate people and it was so important as i say that it had a um a correspondent in benin and what's really interesting is to track the way that the illustrations done by the illustrated london news uh correspondent are changed as they are copied and replicated in other um other publications and if anyone wants to follow this up it's in the work of annie coombs who's a specialist in representations of the benin bronzers and you can see from the original illustrated london news original sketches as they are replicated or copied in other publications the depiction of local people declines from the original one where a cup of african guys are talking to a british guy looking over a map and stuff and the african guys are in suits in the next version you know they're shirtless you know then in the third version they're without shoes and then the fourth version they're outside of mud hut i mean it's as as obvious as that you know there there seems to be a deliberate um you know a determination to misrepresent african cultures um and thereby reflect better on our violence towards or justify our violence right um i believe that's all we have time for isn't that