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Blood and Bronze: The British Empire and the Sack of Benin Hardcover – March 1, 2022

by Paddy Docherty (Author)
4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 18 ratings
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The famous Benin Bronzes are among the most prized possessions of the British Museum. Celebrated for their great beauty, they embody the history, myth and artistry of the ancient Kingdom of Benin, once the most powerful in West Africa and now part of Nigeria. But despite their renown, little has been written about the brutal act of imperial violence through which the Bronzes were plundered. This incisive new history tells that neglected story: the 1897 British invasion of Benin.
Diving into the archives, Blood and Bronze sets the assault on Benin in its late Victorian context. As Britain faced new commercial and strategic pressures on its power elsewhere, it ruthlessly expanded its rule in West Africa. Revealing both the extent of African resistance and previously concealed British outrages, this is a definitive account of the conquest and destruction of Benin. By laying bare the Empire's true motives and its violent means, Paddy Docherty demolishes any moral claim for Britain retaining the Bronzes, and makes a passionate case for their immediate repatriation to Nigeria.
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Previous page
  1. Print length
    240 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Hurst
  4. Publication date
    March 1, 2022
  5. Dimensions
    8.81 x 1.16 x 5.88 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    178738456X
  7. ISBN-13
    978-1787384569
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

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"Docherty's book is well researched and written in an accessible manner.It makes a useful addition to the literature of colonialism in general and the British imperial project specifically as well as to the continued debate on the return of works of cultural importance stolen or taken under duress from their owners during the colonial period." -- JEAN M. BORGATTI, International Journal of African Historical Studies

"An audacious and brave narrative about how the Benin Bronzes were looted during the colonial era and exhibited in the British Museum. Careful and lucid, Blood and Bronze weaves an engrossing narrative explaining how the theft of cultural artifacts is the theft of culture itself."-- Rafia Zakaria, writer, political philosopher, attorney, and author of Against White Feminism


"This is, hands down, the most granular and compelling account yet of the 1897 British invasion of Benin. After reading this book, I dare you to make any reasonable argument against restitution of Benin's looted treasures."-- Chika Okeke-Agulu, Director of the Program in African Studies, Princeton University, and author of Postcolonial Modernism: Art and Decolonization in Twentieth-Century Nigeria

"A powerful and thoughtful exploration of the deep history behind the looting of some of Africa's greatest artistic treasures. If you want to understand why the Benin Bronzes must be returned to Nigeria, read this book."-- David Olusoga, historian, broadcaster, and author of Black and British

"This compelling account of the plunder of Benin provides a deeply disquieting snapshot of the workings of the British Empire in Africa and beyond. There is a manifestly powerful case for restitution and reparation."-- Priyamvada Gopal, Professor of Postcolonial Studies, University of Cambridge, and author of Insurgent Empire

"Blood and Bronze is a scholarly, forensic and wonderfully readable account of the circumstances leading to the fateful Benin Expedition of 1897 and the looting of the bronzes. Vivid, passionate and compelling, it deserves to be widely read--and surely will be."-- John Darwin, Professor of Global and Imperial History, University of Oxford, and author of Unfinished Empire: The Global Expansion of Britain

"An absorbing, original and beautifully written historical horror story. Docherty skilfully weaves a rich tale of the almost primal evil inflicted on Benin by the British Empire. Essential reading for anyone with an interest in the unvarnished truth of the "glorious" days of Empire."-- Louise Raw, historian, broadcaster, and author of Striking a Light

"Docherty gives vivid access to a place and time we don't know but should: the resource-rich Niger Delta when the British Empire still believed its own myths. An impassioned plea to understand our colonial past in all its greed and ruthlessness--and to return the spoils of Empire to where they belong."-- Llewelyn Morgan, Professor of Classical Languages and Literature, University of Oxford

Book Description

A searing account of Britain's conquest of the Kingdom of Benin and plunder of its fabled Bronzes.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Hurst (March 1, 2022)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 240 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 178738456X
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1787384569
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.06 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 8.81 x 1.16 x 5.88 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 18 ratings

About the author

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Paddy Docherty

Paddy Docherty

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Paddy Docherty is a historian of empire, with a particular interest in the British Empire, anticolonial resistance, and the cultural impact of imperialism. Born in Scotland, he grew up in Gloucestershire and was educated at Oxford University, where he was also Junior Dean of Brasenose College and won a Blue for boxing.

His first book was The Khyber Pass: a History of Empire and Invasion (Faber & Faber, 2007), which was a Financial Times Book of the Year in 2007 and was shortlisted for the Longman/History Today Book of the Year Award 2008. The US edition was published by Union Square Press in 2008, the Italian edition by Il Saggiatore in 2010, and the Pakistani edition by OUP.

His forthcoming book Blood and Bronze, about the British invasion of the Kingdom of Benin in 1897, will be published by Hurst Publishers in December 2021.

Customer reviews

4.6 out of 5 stars
4.6 out of 5
18 global ratings

Top review from the United States

Julie P.
5.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating and Important Read
Reviewed in the United States on March 15, 2022
Wonderfully well-written account of a fascinating subject I had none idea would draw me in so much-the stolen Benin bronzes and their glorious and magical origins. It prompts us to consider a much larger question of who history’s authors are, and how much tragedy has been left out in order for them to stay world powers. Docherty illuminates dark details of how empires ruthlessly got to where they are and writes of the Benin’s bronzes and their mythology with the honour they deserve in the history books. The importance of a book like this cannot be over emphasized in the worldwide reckoning and fight for social justice. Hope Docherty plans to write more books of similar nature.
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Client d'Amazon
5.0 out of 5 stars Urgently deft, deftly urgent bridge-building between perspectives on this art-looting
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 23, 2022
Verified Purchase
In my eyes one of the pressing contributions made by this book is to dovetail systematic, structural considerations regarding colonial empire - concerning looming and actual profligate violence, but also penny-pinching calculation and the makeshift drift of disavowed responsibility - with a crystalline and meticulously documented account of the 1897 destruction of Benin City and its lead-up.

The book starts out with a sharp appreciation of the quintessential aesthetics of the plundered artworks, before embarking at a measured clip from the shaping of the Kingdom of Benin towards a concluding plea for repatriation.

Docherty rebuilds the history with subtlety and precision. This doesn't dampen the ferocity of his polemic, which refrains from pulling its punches. Indeed, the book's unfussy impatience with the evasiveness often burdening discussions of artistic spoils is invigoratingly refreshing. It is, moreover, thoroughly backed up by evidence unearthed in the archives. It's the careful treatment of that evidence which furnishes supplementary nuances of interest to the decolonial stance.

The example which leapt out most vividly for me is the need to confront a conundrum concerning state authority. On the one hand, there's the fact of the motley, piecemeal exercise of British power in West Africa. This is shown to have lacked explicitly reflected-upon strategic maxims, just as de facto it lacked much in the way of legal scruples (in keeping with Gallagher and Robinson's thesis of "informal empire", helpfully elaborated on pp. 20-26). It was hence all the more motorised by the logic of capital towards the seizure of palm oil production, and to that end towards the threat and the use of, for instance, starvation (and the book shows that this fact can be inferred from the records, however sparse they may be).
On the other hand, the upshot of this diagnosis needs to be articulated with the acknowledgement that the contemporary dodging of the issue of the displacement of the works to London is correctly defined (at least in part) as a "failure of leadership" (p. xxii). One of Docherty's targets is thus a certain complacent chauvinism, promulgated with a view to the maintenance of a status quo, and supposed to usurp the compunction to uncomfortable judgment-calls.
But the specific complexity Docherty nonetheless does not shy away from is that the evasion in question remains a problem that's entangled with the levers of power in the corridors of decision-making on the level precisely of the nation-state, as such.
By bookending his history with Audre Lorde's dictum that "the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house", Docherty thereby pushes us to pinpoint those modalities and motivations of decision-making that are irreparably pathological. But he does this without letting off the hook the easy solution of a distaste for the rigours of decision-making per se.

Just one of the threads in this impassioned but sanguine intervention, which I'd recommended to readers approaching the topic from a wide array of angles.
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5.0 out of 5 stars Easy to read, concise and compelling.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 29, 2022
Verified Purchase
Very important work. Our post-colonial values need actions to support them, the return of the bronzes is vital. Why cannot The British Museum commission replicas from the craftspeople in Nigeria and tell the story of co-operation and ethical responsibility? Is the question that led me to further research from reading this book.
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Bernard
5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing story, brilliantly told
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on February 12, 2022
Verified Purchase
Shocking tale of the British aggression on Benin when the bronzes were stolen. Incredible detail and beautifully written.
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