Benin Expedition of 1897: The Sack of Benin City and Its Bronzes

The Benin Expedition of 1897 was a British punitive military campaign against the Kingdom of Benin, in what is now southern Nigeria. In February 1897 British forces captured and burned Benin City, sent its ruler, Oba Ovonramwen, into exile and carried away thousands of royal artworks now known as the Benin Bronzes. The expedition ended one of West Africa’s oldest kingdoms as an independent state and remains at the centre of debates about colonial looting and restitution.

Background

The Kingdom of Benin had been a powerful state since at least the 15th century, when rulers such as Oba Ewuare the Great expanded it and rebuilt its capital, ringed by the vast earthworks described in Walls of Benin City. Its court guilds produced cast brass heads and plaques, carved ivory and other works of very high quality.

By the 1890s Britain controlled the coast around Benin as the Niger Coast Protectorate. British traders wanted access to palm oil and rubber, and officials resented the Oba’s control over trade and his restrictions on outsiders. In 1892 the vice-consul Henry Gallwey obtained a treaty placing Benin under British “protection”. How far Oba Ovonramwen, who had reigned since 1888, understood or accepted its terms is disputed.

Ovonramwen had succeeded his father, Oba Adolo, after a contested succession and had dealt harshly with rival chiefs. He faced pressure from British officials on the coast, from traders and from neighbouring peoples, while trying to preserve the kingdom’s control over its own commerce and rituals.

The Phillips mission

In late 1896 James Robert Phillips, acting consul-general of the protectorate, wrote to the Foreign Office proposing an armed expedition to depose the Oba. Without waiting for approval, he set out for Benin City at the end of December with about nine British officers and traders and some two hundred African carriers, officially on a peaceful visit. The Oba’s messengers warned that the king was celebrating the Igue festival, a sacred period when outsiders could not be received, and asked him to delay.

Phillips continued. On 4 January 1897 the party was ambushed near the village of Ugbine by Benin warriors. Phillips and six other British men were killed, along with most of the carriers. Only two Britons, Alan Boisragon and Ralph Locke, survived. Whether Ovonramwen ordered the attack, or whether it was the decision of war chiefs acting on their own, has never been settled.

The expedition

News of the “Benin massacre”, as British newspapers called it, reached London within days, and a much larger force was organised. Admiral Sir Harry Rawson, who had commanded the bombardment in the Anglo-Zanzibar War a few months earlier, led around 1,200 sailors and marines, joined by protectorate troops and many hundreds of African carriers.

Three columns advanced through dense forest in early February 1897, facing determined resistance from Benin forces using muskets and ambushes. Machine guns and rockets gave the British a decisive advantage. On 18 February they entered Benin City, which the Oba and much of the population had abandoned.

Three days later a fire broke out and destroyed much of the city, including large parts of the royal palace. British losses in the campaign were limited, mostly from fighting and disease; Benin losses were never counted but are thought to have been much higher.

The Benin Bronzes

Before and after the fire, members of the expedition systematically removed objects from the palace and shrines: brass plaques that had once decorated the palace pillars, commemorative heads of former Obas, ivory tusks, carved figures and regalia. Estimates of the total range from about 3,000 to 10,000 items.

Many were sold at auction in London to help pay for the expedition, and others were kept by officers. Several hundred went to the British Museum, and large collections reached museums in Berlin, Vienna and elsewhere. European audiences, who had imagined Africa without such art, were astonished by their technical skill. The Berlin museum curator Felix von Luschan, who studied the castings closely, judged them equal to the finest bronze work of Renaissance Europe. That admiration, however, did little to change the colonial assumptions of the time, and the objects were often displayed as trophies of conquest.

The removal also broke the link between the objects and their purpose. Many had stood on ancestral altars or recorded court history and ritual, and their loss left gaps in the kingdom’s own record of its past that Benin’s royal guilds later worked to fill. The plaques themselves are described in more detail in Benin Bronze Plaques.

Aftermath

Ovonramwen hid in the countryside for several months before surrendering in August 1897. After a trial before Consul-General Ralph Moor he was deposed and exiled to Calabar, where he died in January 1914. Several chiefs were executed for their part in the January attack. Benin was absorbed into the protectorate and later into the colony of Southern Nigeria. In 1914 the British allowed Ovonramwen’s son to be crowned as Oba Eweka II, restoring the monarchy as part of colonial rule.

Key people

• Oba Ovonramwen Nogbaisi (c. 1857–1914): ruler of Benin from 1888 until his deposition in 1897.
• Admiral Sir Harry Rawson (1843–1910): commander of the British expedition.
• James Robert Phillips (died 1897): acting consul-general whose mission was ambushed in January 1897.
• Ralph Moor (1860–1909): consul-general of the Niger Coast Protectorate, who conducted the Oba’s trial.

Myths and facts

• Myth: the Benin Bronzes are all made of bronze. Most of the cast pieces are in fact brass, and the collections also include ivory, wood, coral and iron objects.
• Myth: the expedition was simply a response to the January ambush. The ambush gave the immediate reason, but Phillips had proposed deposing the Oba before he set out, and British officials had long wanted to open the kingdom.
• Fact: British reports of human sacrifice in Benin City were used to justify the conquest. Historians accept that ritual sacrifice was practised at times, but many accounts were sensationalised for readers at home.

Restitution

Calls for the return of the Benin Bronzes date back decades and grew stronger after Nigerian independence in 1960. Since 2021 a wave of returns has taken place. The University of Aberdeen and Jesus College, Cambridge, returned objects in 2021. In 2022 Germany agreed to transfer ownership of more than 1,100 Benin objects to Nigeria, and the Smithsonian Institution and the Horniman Museum in London also returned items.

The British Museum, the largest single holder, is restricted by law from permanently giving up objects in its collection, and the debate over its holdings continues.

Timeline

• 1888: Ovonramwen becomes Oba of Benin.
• 1892, March: Henry Gallwey signs a treaty with Benin.
• 1897, 4 January: The Phillips party is ambushed near Ugbine.
• 1897, February: Rawson’s force advances on Benin City.
• 1897, 18 February: British troops capture Benin City.
• 1897, 21 February: Fire destroys much of the city and palace.
• 1897, August: Ovonramwen surrenders and is exiled to Calabar.
• 1914: Ovonramwen dies in exile; Eweka II is crowned Oba.
• 2022: Germany agrees to transfer ownership of its Benin collections to Nigeria.

Why it matters

The Benin Expedition of 1897 shows how the violence of colonial conquest shaped the collections of Western museums. It ended Benin’s independence, scattered the archive of a royal culture across the world and continues to drive one of the most important debates about restitution today.