DOUBLE STANDARD

In Michael Prodger’s succinct account of what should be done with the Benin bronzes (The Critic, June 2021), the use of the word “looted” and the fact that the British Navy no longer engages in punitive raids both imply the illegitimacy of current ownership. But if we are to sit in judgement on the past, why stop with the events of 1897? Why not ask how the Benin palaces came to be stuffed full of treasure in the first place?

It is unlikely that the rulers of West African kingdoms were entirely exempt from the usual ways in which kings across cultures have acquired wealth throughout history: by tribute, plunder and conquest.

In our own country, after the fall of Rome, the leaders of the Britons called themselves kings but were actually tyrants. According to Gildas, a 6th-century British monk, they plundered, terrorized, and rewarded the robbers who sat with them at table. In his history of the Anglo-Saxons, Marc Morris also describes the dominance of the Scyldings as far from benign. Their founding father, Scyld, “rose to greatness by robbing the halls of others and laying fear upon them, forcing them to pay tribute.”

Perhaps the rulers of Benin were utterly benign, and oppressed no one on their route to power, wealth and privilege. Perhaps they deserved every last precious object in their possession. But we should at least ask the questions, and be consistent, if we are in the business of exposing the wrongs of our ancestors. Jon Wainwright

Cliburn, Cumbria