British Colonial Military Campaign on Benin, February 1897
Description
The term "British Colonial Military Campaign on Benin, February 1897" was chosen to link the mentions in the museum data that explicitly indicate a relationship between a particular object and the events of February 1897. How to name the capture of Benin City by British Navy Forces and members of the Nigerian Coast Protectorate Forces on the 18th of February, 1897, is of course an eminently... Read more
The term "British Colonial Military Campaign on Benin, February 1897" was chosen to link the mentions in the museum data that explicitly indicate a relationship between a particular object and the events of February 1897.
How to name the capture of Benin City by British Navy Forces and members of the Nigerian Coast Protectorate Forces on the 18th of February, 1897, is of course an eminently complex and indeed political question and this expression was retained here for the sake of clarity but also to avoid other expressions. Indeed, in the data and in other publications one can still find the expression "Punitive Expedition" which was not retained for the obvious reason that it is a colonial term that refers to the manner in which the military invasion of Benin City was justified.
However you will sometimes find the expression "British Expedition on Benin" which is perhaps too euphemistic to be used as a general category but which sometimes was used for the sake of simplicity. One might also argue that the best way to describe the events of 1897 is simply to use the terms "war" or "invasion", as is often the case in Benin or Nigerian historiography. Several recent publications have gone back to these events and to the history of how they have been justified, discussed and presented (Hicks, 2020; Phillips, 2021; Docherty, 2022).
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1376 objects
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