... [a] gripping work of live history ... The storytelling is crisp, balanced and authoritative ... It is the handling of this seeping undertone of racism that makes this book so valuable, a primer for the debate on colonial guilt and echoing white supremacy ... It is this incremental change of attitudes that stands out in this telling book ... this book’s laser-sharp focus on the casenotes from one instance of colonial cruelty allows for a much more informed understanding of the wider issue.
... sobering ... The author...can barely conceal his shock at the views and comments expressed in letters, interviews, and obituaries ... As Barnaby Phillips’s well-balanced and highly readable account explains, some people have taken matters into their own hands ... That others have not done so, and still claim the fruits of empire, pillage, and suffering, shows how many more lessons still need to be learned from history.
Mr. Phillips has written a humane and thoughtful book, devoid of the sort of posturing that mars the debate over the repatriation of objects brought to the West during the colonial era ... Mr. Phillips is much more nuanced than the authors of a report commissioned by President Macron of France, who said that their country should give back 'any objects taken by force or presumed to be acquired through inequitable conditions' ... By contrast, Mr. Phillips regards the return of stolen artifacts—today preserved in world-class museums in conditions their native lands couldn’t match—as a process of gradual and civilized negotiation.
The story Phillips tells is one we’ve heard before ... But rarely have books like Loot focused so in-depth on the perspectives of Africans. As Loot makes clear, whether in the form of Nollywood films or oral histories handed down across generations, Nigerians have had a lot to say about the Benin Bronzes ... [a] stylish tome ... One of Phillips’s few missteps comes early on, when he makes the mistake of...centering Europe, opening [a] section in 1486 with the first contact between Benin and Portuguese explorers. But Phillips quickly recovers by doing something most writers have not: he paints a touching portrait of the kingdom and the people who inhabited it ... It is easy to lapse into ire while writing of these events. Phillips does not. He attempts as much as possible to remain a neutral interlocutor ... In one thrilling stretch, Phillips attempts to plumb the psychologies of Europeans who still own Benin Bronzes ... Gradually, however, Europeans are releasing their grasp on the Benin Bronzes—and it’s possible that a book like Loot could offer some readers the context needed to get behind Phillips’s cause.
... [a] valuable guide ... Throughout this tortured history, Phillips writes with journalistic detail, gathering his accounts from many sources, attempting fairness. He does not minimise the difficulties that have prevented restitution ... There is also a sense that a wrong would be righted by their return. There are now plans for a new Benin City museum, designed by David Adjaye, in the hope that the building and the Bronzes it would house can reconnect Africans to the history they have lost. The measured tones of this book make that case.
... Phillips...interviews a range of experts and interested parties. He delivers a balanced reconstruction of the Benin saga and probes the difficult choices facing European—and Nigerian—museums ... Phillips excels at tracing the roundabout ways in which objects could find their way into museums.
Perhaps its real virtue is that by interviewing a number of descendants of the Edo king of Benin about questions of restitution, and about what it is like for them to visit their heritage in a British museum, Phillips receives a surprising set of answers ... Phillips...write[s] well about the various justifications the British Museum has formulated over the past 20 years to retain its artefacts ... The truth about the museum is that it is a compendium of contradictions ... Its role is not simply to inspire wonder but to stimulate debate about its terms of justification ... [Phillips] illustrate[s] those facts with absolute clarity.
