A bronze cockerel stolen by British colonial forces in 1897 is to be returned to Nigeria. The bronze statue was donated to Jesus College, Cambridge by the father of a student in 1905.
It would be recalled that during the punitive expedition in 1897 thousands of bronzes were seized from Benin City by British forces.
The return was recommended by Jesus College’s Legacy of Slavery Working Party (LSWP), a group dedicated to looking at the institution’s connections to slavery.
This step will surely add momentum to the growing repatriations movement.
The cockerel was removed from its public display following calls from students for it to be sent back in 2016.
Hear Professor Dan Hicks of the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford and a representative of the Benin Dialogue Group: “We have reached a tipping point in our national dialogues about the cultural restitution of objects looted under British colonialism. In the past, our attention on this matter was focused on national collections like the British Museum and the V&A – but in reality such loot is held in dozens of institutions across the regions: city museums, art galleries and the collections of universities.”
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