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WORLD TRENDSII THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL WEEKLY TUESDAY, MARCH 10, 2020
INTERNATIONAL WEEKLY
NANCY LEE Executive editor
TOM BR ADY Editor
ALAN MATTINGLY Managing editorThe New York Times International Weekly
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[email protected]that is vulnerable to the breakout
of the next virus, or the vulnerabil-
ities of an authoritarian China, Mr.
Niblett said, “If you’re a business
you have to think twice about ex-
posing yourself.”
Globalization of disease is hard-
ly new, noted Guntram Wolff,
director of Bruegel, a research
institution in Brussels, citing the
massive deaths that followed the
European arrival in the Americas,
or the plague.
“What’s different is that with
the airplane things can spread
very fast,” he said.
Climate-conscious citizens were
already discouraging discretion-
ary air travel, as were digital
technologies that allow remote
participation and transmission of
information.
“You wonder if perhaps the
peak of the global aircraft boom
has passed,” Mr. Wolff said. “Ma-
ny people are asking if we really
need to have that kind of regular
da ily travel.”
This virus underscores the
imbalance in globalization. Pri-vate-sector supply chains have be-
come very effective. Air travel is
comprehensive and never ending.
So the private sector is constantly
moving around the world.
But any sort of coordinated gov-
ernmental response is often weak
and disorganized — whether on
climate change, health or trade.
Theresa Fallon, the director
of the Center for Russia Europe
Asia Studies, said that much of the
pushback may now be directed at
China.
She recently returned from Mi-
lan, one outbreak hot spot, where
locals were keeping their distance
from Chinese tourists, she said.
The crisis of confidence in China
extends beyond China’s ability to
handle the virus, said Simon Til-
ford, director of the Forum New
Economy, a research institution
in Berlin.
The lack of trust “will only re-
inforce an existing trend among
businesses to reduce their depen-dency and risk,” he said.
But the spread of the virus to
Europe will also have an impact
on politics, likely boosting the an-
ti-immigrant, anti-globalization
far right, Mr. Tilford said.
Politicians who insist on control
over countries’ borders and immi-
gration will be helped, even as the
virus transcends borders easily.
“Their argument will be that the
current system poses not only eco-
nomic but also health and security
threats, which are existential, and
that we can’t afford to be so open
just to please big business,” Mr.
Tilford said.
That argument may attract vot-
ers “who hate overt racism but
fear loss of control and a system
vulnerable to a distant part of the
world,” he added.
The racial impact of the spread-
ing virus is delicate, all agreed,
but there.
The virus also allows people to
express hostility to the Chinesethat they may have been reluctant
to articulate, Mr. Tilford said.
Many Chinese living or trav-
eling in the West have reported
a quick spike in abuse and avoid-
ance in public places and trans-
port.
“It’s a sign of how close to the
surface these sentiments are,” Mr.
Tilford said.
The Italian sociologist Ilvo Dia-
manti said the spread of the virus
“has called into question our cer-
tainties,” because “it makes de-
fense systems in the face of threats
to our security more complicated,
if not unnecessary.”
“The world no longer has bor-
ders that cannot be penetrated,”
he wrote in La Repubblica last
month.
To defend against the virus, Mr.
Diamanti wrote, “one would have
to defend oneself from the world,”
hiding at home. “In order not to
die contaminated by others and
become spreaders of the virus
ourselves, we would have to die
a lone.”
This, he said, is “a greater risk
than the coronavirus.”museum could become a rotating
display of the kingdom’s art.
This hugely complex initiative
— organized through the Benin
Dialogue Group, which first con-
vened in 2010 — is being celebrat-
ed as a chance for people in Nige-
ria to see part of their cultural her-
itage. “I want people to be able to
understand their past and see who
we were,” said Godwin Obaseki,
governor of Edo State, home to
B en i n C it y.
But is the Benin plan — a new
museum filled with loans —a more
practical solution than a full-scale
return, long called for by many Ni-
gerians? That probably depends
on what you think about how the
Benin Bronzes were obtained in
the first place.
On January 2, 1897, James Phil-
lips, a British official, set out from
the coast of Nigeria to visit the oba,
or ruler, of the Kingdom of Benin.
It’s assumed he went to per-
suade the oba to stop interrupting
British trade. (He had written to
colonial administrators, asking
for permission to overthrow the
oba, but was turned down.)
When Phillips was told the oba
couldn’t see him because a reli-
gious festival was taking place,
he went anyway. He didn’t come
back. Within a month, Britain sent
1,200 soldiers to take revenge for
the killing of Phillips and most of
h i s pa r t y.
On February 18, the British Ar-
my took Benin City in a violent
raid. The British forces also looted
the city of its artifacts.
One British soldier was “wan-
dering round with a chisel & ham-
mer, knocking off brass figures &
collecting all sorts of rubbish as
loot,” Captain Herbert Sutherland
Walker, a British officer, wrote in
h i s d ia r y.
Within months, much of the
bounty was in England. The arti-
facts were given to museums, sold
at auction or kept by soldiers for
their mantelpieces. Soon, many
artifacts ended up elsewhere.
Benin City has been calling for
the return of its artifacts for de-
cades. Some pieces stolen in the
raid have gone back to Nigeria
from institutions.
In the 1950s, the British Muse-
um sold several plaques to Nige-
ria for a planned museum in Lagos
and sold others on the open mar-
ket. But those were not the free
returns people call for now.
Pressure for those types of re-
turns has grown. In 2016, students
at Jesus College, part of Cam-
bridge University, campaigned
to have a statue of a cockerel re-
moved from a hall. Last Novem-
ber, the college announced it must
be returned. (It has yet to say
when or how.)
But nothing has publicly gone
back to Nigeria in decades, except,
that is, for two small items. And,
that’s thanks, at least in part, to
Mr. Awoyemi and Mr. Dunstone.
When Mr. Dunstone got back to
England from Nigeria, he couldn’t
shake that note.
“We really did steal them,” Mr.
Dunstone said. “We weren’t atwar, we turned up and hacked
them off the walls.”
In 2006, Mr. Dunstone created a
web page about the Benin Bronz-
es. He asked anyone with informa-
tion to get in touch. No one replied.
But one day, in 2013, an email
arrived from a doctor in Wales
named Mark Walker. He said he
owned two looted items: a small
bird and a bell; he wanted to give
them back. Mr. Walker’s grand-
father was Captain Walker, who
described the looting in his diary.
They were once used as doorstops,
Mr. Walker said. They’d be better
off in Nigeria, he said.
Mr. Walker didn’t want to go to
Nigeria, afraid that he might be
prosecuted. But Mr. Awoyemi andMr. Dunstone convinced him the
move could lead others to return
items. In June 2014, Mr. Walker,
Mr. Dunstone and Mr. Awoyemi
headed to Benin City to return the
artifacts to the oba.
Nigerian officials have played
down the need for items to be per-
manently returned. Mr. Obaseki,
the state governor, said Nigeria
wants them on display around the
world, not just in Benin City.
Some museums do appear open
to returning objects.
But until the museum in Benin
City is built, nothing is likely to be
returned permanently unless it is
done by individuals. No one has a
firm idea knows how many looted
items are in private hands, butthey used to regularly come up at
auction. (The record price, set in
2016, is well over $4 million.)
A few months ago, Mr. Walker,
72, was looking online at Benin
Bronzes held by the Horniman
Museum in London and came
across an intricately carved wood-
en paddle. It was almost identical
to two he had in his home. He re-
alized his grandfather must have
looted them, too.
In December, he lent the paddles
to the Pitt Rivers Museum in Ox-
ford with one condition: They had
to be returned to Benin City within
three years.
Mr. Walker wasn’t returning the
items for glory, he said: It’s just the
right thing to do.LAUREN FLEISHMAN FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
The Benin Bronzes, at the British Museum, are among hundreds of pieces taken from Africa.Global Interactions Hurt by a VirusLooted Treasures,
Far From Africa
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