Benin City

African scholars, African cities, African libraries.

And Benin, the kingdom of Benin

in what's now Nigeria, had a royal court and guilds of metal workers whose work is in the British Museum right now.

In 1897, British troops marched on Benin City, burned it, and took thousands of brass plaques, ivories, and sculptures out of the palace.

And here's the part that belongs in this episode.

The Admiralty auctioned them off to help pay for the expedition that stole them.

and i think for the last six years i think we've all gone through a bit of a reckoning and awakening especially after george floyd we really start to look within and say well what is it that makes me great in potentially a part of the world that doesn't see you as such and In understanding and getting a better understanding of my roots, my West African roots, because my parents are Jamaican.

But if you look further, and I did take DNA tests and all my DNA traces into West Africa, like predominantly Nigeria, Mali, Benin, Togo, and I'm almost certain Ghana as well too, because Jamaicans... have a lot of lineage that ties back to Ghana based on where the slave ships debarked, right? So what I also noticed too is that, you know, being a child of immigrants of which my parents they actually immigrated, they're what's known as the Windrush generation.

So between the end of the Second World War in 1970, the United Kingdom called on its Commonwealth citizens, particularly in the Caribbean, to come to the United Kingdom to go to school and to work because after the war, a lot of people left the United Kingdom.

So growing up in Canada, Mississauga, it wasn't odd for, to have your white friends' parents come and talk to you with a thick Scottish or British accent or Irish accent because they are immigrants from the UK.

And you have Roz as a sort of failing artist in Sydney.

And there's a piece where we see Yusuf in the 70s in Benin City in Nigeria, learning about the palm oil industry and everything.

And then you have a moment, a long chapter, which is a whole section of the book, about this marina that Salaam was wearing when he got stomped and Yusuf stole it off of him.

A marina is sort of like pressed slices of glass, basically.

I mean, one of the reasons why we don't have these kingdoms anymore is that the British burned them down.

You know, Benin City had streetlights.

Almost all those cities had a very functioning grid.

They were trading with the Indians and South Asians for centuries.

Museums in Europe and the United States are chock full of art and artifacts that were taken by force from their country or culture of origin.

For example, in the 19th century, the British Empire occupied much of the Nigerian coast and in 1897 forcibly captured Benin City.

The British military destroyed much of the city, including its palace, where hundreds of plaques and other important objects depicting the history of the Kingdom of Benin were stored.

Later that year, about 300 objects from Benin City were displayed at the British Museum, and many have been part of its collection ever since.

The government of Nigeria has for decades been calling for the return of these stolen works, but it took more than 100 years to even begin to gain traction.

As recently as 2022, Germany and the Smithsonian in the U.S. agreed to return Benin artifacts from their collections, in a process we call repatriation.