Spotlight On: Podcast - ‘Stuff the British Stole’

A friend of the Blog shared a new podcast series Stuff the British Stole that we thought might interest our readers.

About the Podcast:

Throughout its reign, the British Empire stole a lot of stuff. Today those objects are housed in genteel institutions across the UK and the world. They usually come with polite plaques. This is a series about the not-so-polite history behind those objects.

Each episode award-winning journalist, author and genetic-potluck Marc Fennell picks one artifact and takes you on the wild, evocative, sometimes funny, often tragic adventure of how it got to where it is today.

Over a year in the making, ‘Stuff The British Stole’ will take you from the streets of London to Nigeria to Kolkata, from the bushland of Cobargo all the way to Beijing.

Each item will illuminate stories of politics, genocide, heroism, survival, and justice. Ultimately this isn't really a series about the past. It's about making sense of the world we have today. ABC website.

In one particular episode Marc Fennell explores the ‘Benin Bronzes’.

About the ‘Benin Bronzes’:

The 'Benin Bronzes' (made of brass and bronze) are a group of sculptures which include elaborately decorated cast plaques, commemorative heads, animal and human figures, items of royal regalia, and personal ornaments. They were created from at least the 16th century onwards in the West African Kingdom of Benin, by specialist guilds working for the royal court of the Oba (king) in Benin City. The Kingdom also supported guilds working in other materials such as ivory, leather, coral and wood, and the term 'Benin Bronzes' is sometimes used to refer to historic objects produced using these other materials.

Stolen by British soldiers and sailors in 1897, most of the ‘Benin Bronzes’ are in Western museums and private collections.

The British Museum, which has some 950 Benin Bronzes, has come under particular criticism for its refusal to give them back, but is only one of many museums struggling to justify the legitimacy of its collection.

We found some very interesting articles around the theft and ownership of these sculptures, you can read them here and here.

You can also listen to the podcast Stuff The British Stole here.

Image credit: Benin Bronzes - British Museum, via Wikimedia Commons.