Accounting for the Emwin arre before and after 1897: mapping locations and understanding the extent of the looting in Benin

follows that the historiography dedicated

o 1897 is overwhelming and has in the past been marked by some very different interpretations and points of view on the justifications for and the exact nature of the military activities led by British naval and Protectorate forces .

The looting itself has more often than not been described as a fairly monolithic event, principally associated with the space of the Oba's palace in the centre of Benin and the presence of

British naval forces who left the city in the following weeks (Igbafe, 1970; Hicks, 2020; Phillips, 2021; Docherty, 2022). Equally it remains associated with only a handful of colonial actors and well known transactions concerning specific groups of artefacts such as the brass ama 1 (plaques) over a short time span.

Trends, timelines and the development of a market for Benin pieces

Although there was a close relationship between Colonial authorities and the staff who worked at museums during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, no photolink participated directly in the British Military Campaign on Benin, unlike in other colonial military expansions such as the Abyssinian Campaign between 1867-8 (cf. Cormack 2025). Despite not being physically present in West Africa nor Benin City specifically, workers in museums in the UK and Germany undoubtedly played a clear and undeniable role in encouraging looting by others on the ground in order to fill the collections of the museums where they worked. They also played a crucial role in the further dispersals and (re)selling of ‘official’ spoils, such as the Foreign Office Ama-Ẹrọnmwọn, on the market and to others in their professional networks, as described in brief earlier (Coulson & Hudson, in preparation; Philips 2021, pp.89, 121-127).