16th Century Portuguese Gunman in Benin Bronze

 

 Portuguese rifleman from 16th century Kingdom of Benin, made of a copper alloy despite the misleading titles of such pieces, "Benin bronzes." It shows a fascinating example of how a West African society's artists depicted Portuguese peoples in their local style and indicates the importance of Portuguese-Benin relations in what is now southern Nigeria, not too far from the modern city of Lagos, which began as a trading town under domination of the Edo peoples of Benin. The Kingdom of Benin, ruled by powerful obas who centralized the polity by the second half of the 15th century, impressed the Portuguese and other European travelers in the centuries to come. For instance, Dutch visitors were impressed by the palatial mini-city of the oba, comparing it in size to Haarlem in the Netherlands. Furthermore, the exquisite sculptural tradition of Benin impressed European observers and colonialists, particularly during the British conquest and sacking of Benin City in the end of the 19th century, ensuring plunder of priceless art pieces that would find its way into European museums and the hands of private collectors. Walls constructed of earth, well-designed and layed out city streets, and established, beautiful aesthetic values in sculpture indicate this was a powerful, relatively prosperous kingdom which had inherited aspects of ancient Yoruba "lost wax" method sculptural traditions (look up Yoruba city-states in earlier centuries in southwestern Nigeria, which some argue may follow an even earlier sculptural tradition of the Nok culture, dating back as far as a few centuries before the present era). Moreover, the Yoruba influence on the Edo peoples is likely evident in some of their religious practices, as well as founding myths which link them to Yoruba antecedents, though, of course, ethnic identities such as Yoruba were not firmly written in stone in ancient precolonial West Africa. Note the features of this Portuguese male, with a European-styled helm and a gun, yet barefoot. Perhaps as soon as the Portuguese traders reached this part of West Africa, they shed all their excessively warm clothing for the comforts of tropical West Africa and Central Africa.

Benin was, after the Wolof and Mali empires in the northwestern West Africa, the most centralized coastal polity the Portuguese encountered in the 15th and 16th centuries. Moreover, as an expanding, centralizing state, the oba did not initially participate in the slave trade, wanting to retain young male captives and slaves for labor within the confines of the kingdom. In fact, if I remember correctly, Benin initially imported slaves while exporting Malaguetta peppers, ivory, and other tropical exports. Soon enough, the kingdom would engage in slave trading from the export side of things and Lagos, the beautiful trading town along the fort with a centuries-long history of local and regional trade of salted fish and other products would become a center of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade and, by the second-half of the 19th century, British imperialism. Here are some other beautiful pieces of Benin art that deserve universal acknowledgement, which also show a West African visualization of white Europeans rather than the more typical European representation of Africans in art, as well as providing an illustrative history of the kingdom, European visitors, and its kings. Afro-Portuguese ivories also show cultural mixing through a combination of European and local styles as well as Portuguese Christian iconography appearing with Benin motifs and symbolism, a form of cultural creolization that could be found further south in the Kingdom of Kongo, whose king converted to Christianity before the end of the 15th century. The nkangi kidatu, or Kongo crucifix show a fusion of locally-derived forms of Christianity as well as Iberian Catholicism.