When the first shipment of spoils arrived in Brussels, Dürer was one of those who flocked to examine it. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Age of plunder … Olusoga explains how the brass sculptures of Benin ended up in the British Museum. Olusoga doesn’t mention this offensive slight until the end of his afterword, but his own work is a magnificent riposte to it. As often as not, the artistic objects it holds up for our inspection are but fragmentary relics and reflections of entire civilisations obliterated by European greed, hubris and disease. In the same bracingly revisionist vein, Olusoga sees slavery everywhere he looks: African, European, Islamic, Malay, Japanese.

Source: The Guardian March 31, 2018 08:48 UTC