It enacted high tariffs on indigenous palm oil trade and confiscated the goods of anyone not paying its fees. African merchants found themselves unable to grow their own economies.
Farms and entire villages were burned to the ground and villagers beaten to crack down on growing opposition. The tariffs RNC imposed made it extremely lucrative.
According to parliamentary papers, it earned shareholders a six percent profit annually. After the Berlin Conference of endorsed European claims to African territories, Goldie led punitive expeditions against the Nigerian kingdoms of Nupe and Ilorin in , removing their rulers for opposition towards its military outposts in the region.
RNC subsequently controlled swaths of territory covering a population of more than 30 million people. Of course, he has an interpreter with him. He asks the black man if he is proprietor of certain land, and if he will sign a paper he shall have a bottle of gin. The black man at once accepts; a paper is put before him, and he is told to make his mark on it, which he does.
And then we say that we have made a treaty by which all the rights in that country of the emperor, king, or chief, or whatever you call him, have been given over to us.
That is the origin of all these treaties. But nothing was paid, and Sokoto was later violently conquered. Military expeditions to defeat the Ekumeku continued until the mids with officers during those wars acquiring Igbo artefacts that ended up in London.
Unilever holds a number of African artefacts but says these were gifts given to its employees. This involved using local chiefs to implement colonial policies. Britain would be in charge but traditional authorities would have the appearance of power.
In , British soldiers attacked the Yoruba kingdom of Ijebu using early machine guns known as maxims. Captain George Denton, acting governor of Lagos, had visited the capital Ijebu-Ode in to gain access to trade for British companies.
But the Ijebu king refused and British officers threatened the use of force if they did not sign a treaty. When the Ijebu king and his chiefs objected that they could not read English, British officials had it signed for them by Ijebu people living elsewhere. This fuelled further hostility and when the Ijebu would not allow a British officer passage through their territory, a punitive expedition was mounted for allegedly breaching the terms of the signed treaty, according to parliamentary records.
Historical accounts estimate more than a thousand Ijebu soldiers were killed. Having captured most of the Yoruba kingdoms by including Ibadan, Oyo and Abeokuta, British forces moved inwards toward the ancient kingdom of the Bini people — the Benin Empire.
The massacre lasted 10 days and Benin was burned to the ground. At the time, Benin kingdom, modern-day Edo state in southern Nigeria, had been a self-sustaining nation surrounded by former civilisations crumbling under a siege of European invasion. It was a prosperous trader in enslaved people — largely its war captives. But Nigerian narratives say some of those dead had been hurriedly buried by villagers before fleeing the besieged city.
While eight British deaths were reported to the House of Parliament, Benin deaths were not counted. At least 3, artefacts were looted from the royal palace and surrounding homes — the true number is unknown.
Burn marks from the blaze are still clearly visible on some looted artefacts. The bounty was auctioned off in London to private collectors and galleries across the West in what historians believe was a pre-planned loot. British soldiers kept some of the loot for themselves. They dressed up in fake native wear and wore blackface to reconstruct their lucrative exploit.
The Benin Bronzes, a collection made up of carved ivory, bronze and brass crafted sculptures and plaques, are not mere artworks but catalogue the story of Benin — its achievements, explorations and belief systems.
They ended up in more than museums globally. The largest collection — — is at the British Museum where an exhibition took place within months of the kingdom being razed.
Such decisions are made by the government. Weltmuseum Wien has committed to loans via the Benin Dialogue Group and the sharing of digitised archives in the Digital Benin project, which will create an online database of more than 5, objects held globally in public institutions by The Benin Kingdom theft is well-documented.
German archaeologist Leo Frobenius, who was accused of having stolen a sacred Yoruba Ife head in , argued they were of Greek origin and not African. Charles Read, a British Museum curator between and , had a similar reaction to the Benin Bronzes. Ghanaian authorities have also tried to reclaim gold treasures looted by British soldiers from the Asante kingdom, which is also known as Ashanti.
It had become less profitable to the Dutch after the abolition of the slave trade. The Kumasi royal palace was destroyed with explosives and the city was ransacked and burned. The treaty also made allocation for British commercial interests. When Asante leaders could not pay all the gold demanded, its new king Prempeh I petitioned the British to allow more time to pay the sum. Ghanaian officials have been keeping an eye on the paced developments in Nigeria over the Benin Bronzes.
In May, the person committee launched a report on next steps that will include compiling inventory of items held by museums globally. Over the next five nights, roughly 15, people took to the streets in towns and cities across England. On the evening of 8 August, the riots claimed two lives: Trevor Ellis, 26, was found with bullet wounds in a car in Croydon and Richard Bowes, 68, was critically injured trying to put out a fire.
He later died from his injuries. According to witnesses, they had been protecting their community and local businesses from looting and destruction. An extra 1, police officers were deployed in London and more than people were arrested. It is thought that social media networks including Twitter and BlackBerry Messenger played a key role in fuelling the unrest.
By 11 August, the total number of arrests in London had reached 1, and of those, people had been charged. One hundred families had been made homeless as a result of the unrest, five people had died and 26 police officers were injured.
The situation was reaching a tipping point and, by the fourth night of the riots, London increased its number of police to 16, by pulling in officers from other forces across the country. This greater police presence on the streets was the major factor in persuading people to stay at home, according to the Reading the Riots study, which interviewed people involved in the events.
Other explanations for the riots ending included a lack of excitement and there being nothing left to loot. To this day, questions remain surrounding the events which led to the shooting. However, Forensic Architecture, a human rights research organisation based at Goldsmiths, University of London, has said this conclusion is wrong, according to a detailed report in The Guardian published in What can you do with it?
DATA: download the full spreadsheet. Data journalism and data visualisations from the Guardian. Search the world's government data with our gateway.
Search the world's global development data with our gateway. Flickr Please post your visualisations and mash-ups on our Flickr group Contact us at data guardian. England riots: which shops were looted?
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