The sober Daily Telegraph of old would have blushed to print Monday’s half-page of purple prose, describing a three-year loan of gold artefacts from the V&A and British Museum to the ceremonial King of Asante in Ghana.
In an earlier, more traditional report online on Sunday the same reporter wrote that rather than handing back in 2027 the relics now on loan to his private museum, Otumfuo Osei Tutu II’s spokesmen say he’d prefer to keep them, thanks. Scarcely a surprise to most observers, of course, though a brief delay might have been more tactful?
The only surprise is that the Telegraph employs this particular reporter to burn up air miles soliciting quotes from museum directors or passed-over potentates (in among others Benin, Jamaica and Ghana) demanding artefacts which have been safely housed and displayed to the world in the British Museum for over a century. Surely, his editor knows the vast majority of readers disdain this activist propagandising, which belongs in the Guardian if anywhere?
Time for some facts. Responding on January 26th to a report by the Museums Association on the Ghana loan, J. Michael Phillips wrote:
This article shows a staggering ignorance of the facts. In 1873 the Ashanti army, about 12,000 strong, crossed the River Pra (the boundary agreed with the Ashantis in the 1831 Treaty) into the British Colony of the Gold Coast and set about laying it waste. This formed no part of the Ashanti kingdom and was inhabited by the Fanti people.
A military expedition to prevent further Ashanti incursions was mounted under General Wolseley. Attempts to repel the Ashantis with local levies failed, so troops had to be sent out from England. Wolseley had 4,000 troops, so was outnumbered by three to one. Battles ensued at Amoaful (January 31st 1874) and Ordahsu (February 4th 1874). On arrival at Coomassie (Kumasi) it found the King and the Ashanti army had abandoned it. The soldiers found clear evidence of human sacrifice, with thousands of skulls piled up in a sacred grove.
There was significant plundering on the first night by the released Fanti prisoners and camp followers, to halt which the captain commanding the military police had one looter hanged and others flogged, but much disappeared that night. The valuables discovered on the following day were collected up by the Prize Agents and auctioned off at Cape Coast, realising about £5,000. The Ashanti signed the Treaty of Fomena in July 1874 to end the war. Among articles of the Treaty was an undertaking by the Ashantis to end human sacrifice.
This was not a colonial war: Ashanti territory was not annexed until 1901, and in January 1902 Britain designated the Ashanti Kingdom as a protectorate. By then 25 years had passed since the items now to be ‘returned on loan’ had been removed from a former enemy. Although Ghana is now a Member of the Commonwealth and a former Colony, Ashantiland was at the time of the Ashanti Campaign of 1873-74 a hostile state.
And then there’s the disgusting story of the Governor’s skull, a golden relic which was tactfully not mentioned at last weekend’s ceremony. In an earlier conflict with invading Asante, on January 21st 1824, Brig-Gen Sir Charles McCarthy’s small column had run out of ammunition in the face of 10,000 Asante warriors.
Wiki tells the tale:
Almost all the British force [of 500] were killed immediately while 20 managed to escape. MacCarthy, Ensign Wetherell, and his secretary Williams attempted to fall back. MacCarthy was wounded by gunfire however, and killed by a second shot shortly thereafter. Ensign Wetherell was killed while defending MacCarthy’s body. Williams was…. held prisoner for several months in a hut which also held the severed heads of MacCarthy and Wetherell. MacCarthy’s skull was rimmed with gold and… was used as a drinking cup by Ashanti rulers.
Another account says MacCarthy’s skull was cast in solid gold and continued to be used as a ceremonial drinking vessel. Thankfully the original was recovered in 1829 and given decent burial in St. Saviour’s Church, Dartmouth. The 1874 expedition recovered, in addition to golden artefacts now loaned by the crumple-suited British Museum Director Tristram Hunt, some silver forks looted from MacCarthy’s baggage in the Asante’s 1824 colonising war against their peaceful Fanti neighbours on the Gold Coast.
The BBC’s report of the Asante loan ends with customary BBC disinformation, saying “In 2022 Germany gave back over 1,000 Benin Bronzes to Nigeria”. Not true: Green politicians, as part of a massive art-for-oil deal, announced their intent to send 1,130 pieces from German museums to Nigeria. But it’s the German Länder (states) that control their own museums, not central Government. No sooner had a couple of dozen pieces been returned, than the Nigerian President decreed that all such restitutions will be handed to a private citizen, the Oba of Benin – as I reported in earlier Daily Sceptic articles,
New research by German author Andreas Roth has confirmed that the Länder of Saxony (283 pieces in Dresden’s two museums) and Bavaria (116 pieces in two museums in Munich) have not signed, concerned to learn that the Nigerian people will neither see nor benefit from the returned artworks. So if they do hold out, over a third of Germany’s national collection of these unique artworks will be saved for future generations to study and admire. Meantime, London’s Horniman Museum has a three-year extension on all but six of the 72 bronze and ivory pieces it gave away in 2022 and we wait to see just what Germany’s other museums will do with the 700-plus pieces they still retain. With the Nigerian people sidelined, there’s a strong case for rescinding agreements already signed by well-meaning museums.
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