Students at Jesus College, Cambridge, have voted to repatriate back to Nigeria a Benin kingdom bronze cockerel which was taken from Africa by an army captain in 1897 and bequeathed to the college in the 1920s.
 
Jesus College Students Union Racial Equalities Officer, Ore Ogunbiyi, wrote in the student newsletter that Okukor, the bronze cockerel, should be sent back. The Benin Bronze Association Committee made the proposal to return it to Nigeria and suggested that the handover process be completed with a repatriation ceremony, featuring representatives from either the Benin Royal Palace or the Nigerian Federal Government.
 
An 11-page document was drafted to this end as concerned students outlined the reasons for their demand. The document was titled "Proposal to Repatriate Benin Bronze" and it placed the issues surrounding colonialism and social justice at the forefront of the students' demand, while also pointing out the benefit for the school in doing what is morally just. According to the proposal, the gesture offers the institution the perfect opportunity to further its global agenda.
 
Tiffany Jenkins, author of Keeping Their Marbles: How the treasures of the past ended up in museums - And why they should stay there' wrote:
 
Benin is indeed a city of blood, each compound having its pit full of dead and dying; human sacrifices were strewn about on every hand, hardly a thing was without a red stain.
 
That is how the Illustrated London News recorded the destruction of Benin City, in what is modern-day southern Nigeria, when, in 1897, a British expedition was raised to avenge the deaths of nine officers during a trade dispute between the king of Benin and Britain, as the European powers competed to carve up the African continent.
 
The UK sent 500 men to destroy the city and depose the king. After ten days of fighting, with the soldiers using the newly manufactured Maxim machine guns, they burnt down the palace and looted the royal treasures: magnificent copper alloy sculptures, plaques, and delicate ivory carvings - now known as the Benin Bronzes.
 
They had been made between the 13th and 17th centuries, and provide an insight into a sophisticated culture, showing scenes of court life and rituals, involving royalty, warriors, and officials. Britain's Foreign and Commonwealth Office sold them off to pay for the expenses of the operation. Around 900 ended up in the world's greatest museums, including the British Museum, which has one of the largest sets.
 
But that is not the end of the story. Since gaining independence from Britain in 1960, Nigeria has sought their return, with furious demands much like those issued by Greece for the return of the Elgin Marbles, which were taken in the 19th century, and now the centerpiece of the British Museum.
 
… repatriating artefacts on the basis of what we feel about history would be a serious mistake. Not only would the world's museums - and institutions like Cambridge University - be emptied, it would be allowing modern-day sensibilities to rewrite history in terms of simplistic goodies and baddies, when it is always more complicated than that. Looking back from today is a privileged and elevated position from which to view the past, and it is one that is often distorted by current preoccupations. We should guard against the simplistic and easily acquired feelings of superiority that we can have by surveying the past through contemporary mores, centuries later.
 
Besides, which victims should have priority? The story of the acquisition of the Benin Bronzes is ugly; the rise of Britain as an imperial power caused the downfall of Benin, but the story of the artefacts' creation is not without taint. The glory of Benin and its artistic golden age was built on the slave trade: the Benin Bronzes were crafted from manillas - a traditional form of money usually made of bronze or copper - brought to Benin by European traders, traded for slaves, and then melted down. The very sculptures and plaques these students would like to see returned to Nigeria were created from the proceeds of slavery.
 
The truth is that objects of art are a misguided target for those truly concerned about social justice. The fact that there is a statue of a cockerel in a university dining room is hardly the most pressing problem facing us today. Repatriating artefacts, or pulling down statues, in order to make amends for colonisation is a poor substitute for reshaping the modern world. These student activists want to censor and rewrite history rather than actually do what young idealists should try to do - which is change the future, not fulminate about the past.
 
The problem with these campaigns is that in becoming obsessed with colonialism, campaigners lose sight of the original meanings and purposes of the artworks, viewing them only as objects of apology. They become the pawns of wider social and political tussles amidst which they are lost.
 
Instead of repatriating artifacts, we need to appreciate them in the institutions which care for them - our great museums. For it is here that their true value and meaning is realised.
The Barakat gallery writes that Benin art is primarily based around a court context, and was designed to venerate the achievements and/or memory of the Obas, the divine rulers of the Benin polities. The artists and craftsmen were typically attached to a specific court, and charged with manufacture of objects solely for their ruler. Their work in bronze and copper, ironworking and sculpting in a range of materials that particularly included ivory was extremely refined and effective; indeed, smelting, forging and cire perdue (lost wax) metalworking methods exceeded any seen in Europe until the 19th century.
 
Jonathan Jones writes:
This rich artistic history was dismissed as a mere curiosity by the 19th-century raiders. Two ivory leopards were given to Queen Victoria as royal spoils. This was an age that refused to recognise the artistic achievements of "lesser breeds".
 
The way Jesus College displays its cockerel is an archaic legacy of those unmourned times. This is a great work of art, but it is on view as a kind of heraldic mascot. What a patronising attitude. Jesus has three cockerels on its official crest, so this sculpture has been appropriated as a heraldic symbol. It is completely wrong for a work of art of this calibre to be trivialised like this, or displayed in a college hall with no sense of its context, history or aesthetic significance.
 
The cockerel belongs in a museum - but should that museum be in Nigeria or Britain? Here's where I slightly disagree with the students. The modern state of Nigeria is not identical to the old kingdom of Benin. If this work should be repatriated anywhere, it is surely to Benin City itself, in southern Nigeria, where the artistic and religious traditions of Benin's mighty art are still preserved and whose museum might provide a good home.