Hari Kumar, January 2022
Note: Below is an excerpt of the full article. View/download the full document as a PDF via this link
A short version of this article will be at Berlin Left blog in January 2022
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After much bluster the Berlin Humbold Forum finally agreed to return to Nigeria its collection of the ‘Benin Bronzes’. What role do the self-dubbed, ‘great’ museums of the Western world play in colonialism? What are these Bronzes, how did many end up in Berlin? What do we know about their return and the role of anti-colonial activists?
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- World museums gloss over brutal acquisitions
Walking through museums we are often awed by the beautiful artefacts. The most famous museums dub themselves a venue of “the worlds civilisation!”[1] Some believe this and do not see any blood of former owners or makers dripping over the art. But an important image that should come to mind is the violent, physical robbery of the colonies. This was fused into a core racism around enslavement, as Marx put it:
“The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of black-skins, signaled the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production. These idyllic proceedings are the chief momenta of primitive accumulation.” [2]
This ‘primitive accumulation’, or looting or stealing, of wealth from the colonies on an astronomic scale is often recognized. But less appreciation was given to the systematic plunder of specific artistic, religious, artifacts of colonies. Ripped away from context, they were presented as ‘art objects’ or ‘ethnic’ resources. Only recently have exhibit plaques hinted at their true history. How did the Benin Bronzes come to be in Berlin? The answer lies in the colonial ‘scramble for Africa’.
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- The Niger River and Benin in the ‘Scramble for Africa’
A seaman John Lok first brought slaves from Africa to England in 1555.[3] But colonists in Africa lagged behind their peers in India or the Americas, and the ‘African Company’ of England started only in 1588.[4] In 1712 the slave trade escalated after England secured a monopoly to supply slaves to Spanish colonies. But the trans-Atlantic trade became untenable by end century. Increasingly, several revolts broke out 3-4 (San Domingue 1791 with the short-lived but critical Haiti ‘Black Jacobins’ of Toussaint L’Ouverture in 1804; Barbados 1816; Guyana 1823; Jamaica 1831). Moreover eager to increase huge fortunes, sugar plantation-owners produced surpluses. Equally important, was the dramatic agitation of English workers urging reforms, including of the slave trade. It was widely appreciated by workers that, as Marx said:
“Labour in white skin cannot emancipate itself where it is branded in black skin.”[5]
Chartist literature was replete with references to slavery, for example in his poem ‘The Prisoner to the Slave’, Ernest Jones wrote:
“From my cell… I think I am not the less free
Than the serf and the slave who in misery dwell…
What fetters have I that ye have not as well,
Though your dungeon be larger than mine?
For England’s a prison fresh modeled from hell.” [6]
English workers were in part inspired by democratic struggles of the American Revolution and the French Revolution. For several reasons then, English reform capitalists of the Whigs found it expedient to pass anti-slavery legislation in England in 1807, but with enormous “compensation” to the sugar barons. Later came the Reform Act of 1832. [7]–[8]
By 1838 the trans-Atlantic slave trade was over for England, France, Belgium, Germany and other Europeans bar colonial rivals Spain and Portugal. ‘Abolition’ now became a moral high-ground for England, Belgium and Germany – by which to condemn Spain. All colonial states built their own trans-Atlantic slave trade supplied by local African chieftan slavers. While slavery had been present before colonial trading, it was on a much smaller scale and exploitative intensity.[4] Suddenly former European colonial states professed ‘anti-slavery’ policies, in reality to increasingly penetrate Africa.
To minimize competition between the colonial countries for pieces of Africa, the Berlin Conference Treat of 1884-5 attempted to parcel out sovereign areas. But this was futile.[9]
Their professed mission was to ‘suppress African’ slavers tribe-chiefs – while destroying local culture and society. At Berlin, England, France, Germany and King Leopold of Belgium – sounded high moral notes:
“Article 6 Berlin Treaty:
All the Powers … bind themselves to watch over the preservation of the native tribes, and to care for the improvement of the conditions of their moral and material wellbeing, and to help in suppressing slavery, and especially the Slave Trade. They shall… protect and favour all religions, scientific or charitable institutions, and undertakings… aimed at instructing the natives and bringing home to them the blessings of civilization. Christian missionaries, scientists, and explorers, with their followers, property, and collections, shall likewise be the objects of special protection.” [10]
What did these “blessings of civilization” look like? The Earl of Cromer (Sir Evelyn Barer) British overlord over Egypt made the diplomatic language explicitly every day:
“We need not always inquire too closely what these people, who are all, nationally speaking, more or less in statu pupillary, themselves think is best for their own interests.” [11]
In 1870, only one-tenth of Africa was under European control, but by 1914 only “about one-tenth – Abyssinia (Ethiopia) and Liberia – was not.” [11] In fact Lenin had a very similar formulation, tied to the pre-monopolisation stage of international imperialism. It was still possible said Lenin, for ‘free grabbing’ of territory – but this would end in an intense struggle for re-division of the world:
“When the colonies of the European powers, for instance, comprised only one-tenth of the territory of Africa(as was the case in 1876), colonial policy was able to develop—by methods other than those of monopoly—by the “free grabbing” of territories, so to speak. But when nine-tenths of Africa had been seized (by 1900), when the whole world had been divided up, there was inevitably ushered in the era of monopoly possession of colonies and, consequently, of particularly intense struggle for the division and the redivision of the world.” [13]
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[1] Neil McGregor
[2] Karl Marx, ‘Capital Volume One’ Chapter Thirty-One: Genesis of the Industrial Capitalist; https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch31.htm
[3] Adam Hochshild, ‘Bury the Chains’; New York 2006; p.13
[4] A.L.Morton “A People’s History of England’; p. 205; p. 297; New York 1974
[5] Capital Vol 1; Part III Chapter VIII sec 3.
[6] ‘Ernest Jones’, ‘The Prisoner to the Slaves,’ 1851; in ‘An Anthology of Chartist literature”; Moscow 1956, p.171
[7] Luke Thoms; 7 Reasons Why Britain Abolished Slavery
https://www.historyhit.com/reasons-why-britain-abolished-slavery/
[8] Robin Blackburn interview: What really ended slavery?” IS Journal; 2 July 2007; Issue: 115; at http://isj.org.uk/robin-blackburn-interview-what-really-ended-slavery/
[9] David Levering-Lewis; ‘The Race to Fashoda’; 1987 New York; Weidenfield & Nicholas; p.10.
[10] M. E. Chamberlain, ‘The Scramble for Africa’; Ibid; Chapter 14; 3rd Edition; eBook 1 October 2013; London; Routledge p.44;53
[11] M. E. Chamberlain; Introduction; ‘The Scramble for Africa’; 3rd Edition; 2013; London; p.3-4.
[12] Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, “Imperialism, The Highest Stage Of Capitalism, A Popular Outline X. The Place Of Imperialism In History”; at https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/ch10.htm