Benin Expedition of 1897 - Background

Background

At the end of the 19th century, the Kingdom of Benin had managed to retain its independence and the Oba exercised a monopoly over trade which the British found irksome. The territory was coveted by an influential group of investors for its rich natural resources such as palm-oil, rubber and ivory. The kingdom was largely independent of British control, and pressure continued from figures such as Vice-Consul James Robert Phillips and Captain Gallwey (the British vice-Consul of Oil Rivers Protectorate) who were pushing for British annexation of the Benin Empire and the removal of the Oba.

In March 1892, Henry Gallwey, the British Vice-Consul of Oil Rivers Protectorate (later Niger Coast Protectorate), visited Benin City hoping to annex Benin Kingdom and make it a British protectorate. Although the King of Benin, Omo n’Oba (Ovonramwen), was sceptical of the British motives he was willing to endorse what he believed was a friendship and trade agreement. The treaty signed by the king agreed to the abolition of the Benin slave trade and human sacrifice. The King refrained from endorsing Gallwey’s treaty when it became apparent that the document was a deceptive ploy intended to make Benin Kingdom a British colony. Consequently the King issued an edict barring all British officials and traders from entering Benin territories. Since Major (later Sir) Claude Maxwell Macdonald, the Consul General of the Oil River Protectorate authorities considered the ‘Treaty’ legal and binding, he deemed the King’s reaction a violation of the accord and thus a hostile act.

In 1894 after the invasion and destruction of Brohomi, the trading town of the chief Nana Olomu, the leading Itsekiri trader in the Benin River District by a combined British Royal Navy and Niger Coast Protectorate forces, Benin Kingdom increased her military presence on her southern borders. This vigilance and the Colonial Office's refusal to grant approval for an invasion of Benin City scuttled the expedition the Protectorate had planned for early 1895. Even so between September 1895 and mid 1896 three attempts were made by the Protectorate to enforce the Gallwey ‘Treaty’. Major P. Copland-Crawford, Vice-Consul of the Benin District, made the first attempt, Mr. Locke, the Vice-Consul Assistant, made a second one and the third one was made by Captain Arthur Maling, the Commandant of the Niger Coast Protectorate Force detachment based in Sapele.

In March 1896, following price fixing and refusal by Itsekiri middle men to pay the required tributes, the King of Benin ordered a cessation of the supply of oil palm produce to them. The trade embargo brought trade in the Benin River region to a standstill, and the British traders and agents of the British trading firms quickly appealed to the Protectorate’s Consul-General to ‘open up’ Benin territories, and send the King (whom they claimed was an ‘obstruction’) into exile. In October 1896 Lieutenant James Robert Phillips (RN) the Acting Consul-General visited the Benin River District and had meetings with the agents and traders. In the end the agents and traders were able to convince him that ‘there is a future on the Benin River if Benin territories were opened’.

Benin had developed a reputation for lurid horror which affected British attitudes. The trader James Pinnock wrote that he saw 'a large number of men all handcuffed and chained' there, with 'their ears cut off with a razor'. T.B Auchterlonie described the approach to the capital through an avenue of trees hung with decomposing human remains. After the 'lane of horrors' came a grass common 'thickly stewn with the skulls and bones of sacrificed human beings.'