Oxbridge agrees to return looted Benin Bronzes to Africa

Oxbridge dons have agreed to return hundreds of Benin Bronzes, paving the way for the largest ever repatriation of cultural treasures from Britain.

Nigerian officials this year requested that Oxford’s Pitt Rivers and Ashmolean museums, and Cambridge’s Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (MAA), return sculptures that ended up in their collections after being seized by British troops in an 1897 raid.

Leadership councils of both universities have agreed to return 213 Benin bronzes, it has emerged, in a decision likely to trigger the UK’s largest restitution of imperial plunder.

The fate of the artworks will ultimately be decided by the Charity Commission, which will rule on whether Oxford – a charitable institution – can hand over its cultural assets to Nigeria, and the “moral” case for this repatriation.

The University of Oxford told the Telegraph: “The Council of the University of Oxford considered and supported a claim for the return to Nigeria of 97 objects in the Pitt Rivers and Ashmolean Museum collections that were taken from Benin City by British armed forces in 1897.”

Professor Nicholas Thomas, Director of Cambridge’s MAA, said: “Across the international museum sector, there is growing recognition that illegitimately acquired artefacts should be returned to their countries of origin.”

Objects known as Benin Bronzes were a cache of thousands of ornamental sculptures looted from the royal palace of Benin City – modern-day Nigeria – which have ended up in museums around the world, with the largest collection (900) in the British Museum.

The 94 objects in the Pitt Rivers, three in the Ashmolean, and 116 identified in Cambridge’s MAA would constitute the largest restitution of cultural treasure from Britain if signed off by the Charity Commission.

It is thought that the commission will return a decision by the end of the year, and it is likely the move will be sanctioned, as the regulator signed off the reparation of an ornamental cockerel to Nigeria from the University of Cambridge in 2021.

The commission said it was bound to weigh in on matters “when a charity wishes to transfer property or assets due to a feeling of moral obligation”. 

The moral case for reparation has been made by campaigners in Nigeria and in the UK, including the Pitt Rivers’ Professor Dan Hicks, who said the move was the “beginning of movement from smaller non-national institutions”, adding that the “British Museum should be offering leadership on returning stolen goods”.

The move may put further pressure on the British museum to address its own collection of Benin Bronzes, objects once highly prized by collectors which have now become morally anathema and the subject of repatriation action in museums from the Smithsonian institution in the US to the German government.

The objects created by the Edo depict kings of “Obas”, queen mothers and warriors, in a series or forms from head sculptures to plaques. The repatriated objects are earmarked for the Edo Museum of West African Art in Benin City when the site in modern-day Benin City is completed.