Our galleon crossed nothing more turbulent or more dangerous than a princely European dinner table, but it is a very fair likeness of those great European ocean-going vessels; it is the kind of galleon that Henry VIII had in his Mary Rose, and most notably the kind of ship that Spain sent against England in the Great Armada of 1588. They were normally three-masted, round-hulled war vessels designed to carry both troops and guns, and they were the key element in any sixteenth-century state’s navy. Absurdly, they were also popular table decorations, always referred to by the French word for this kind of ship – a nef.
The marine archaeologist Christopher Dobbs, who is in charge of the Mary Rose at Portsmouth dockyard, compares it to our gilded nef:
The Mary Rose is a little different from the nef – it’s a slightly earlier ship – but the Mary Rose is a very important part of naval warfare, because it was one of the first to have purpose-built lidded gun ports close to the waterline. These ships were so important, they were the powerful symbols of the time. This is the equivalent of the Space Shuttle. And I think that’s why they would have been so proud to have a nef that would trundle along the tables at a great dinner, because it wasn’t only a fantastic mechanical object but it also reflected the glory of the warships, perhaps the most advanced technological features of their time.
These great ships were the largest and most complex machines in the Europe of their day. The miniature gilded galleon is also a wonderfully constructed object, a masterpiece of both technological skill and high artistic decoration, of mechanics and goldsmithery. Paradoxically, this little ship was created for a society hundreds of miles from any sea, and it is highly likely that Hans Schlottheim, the landlocked craftsman who made it, had never seen a sea-going vessel. It was made towards the end of the sixteenth century in the rich banking city of Augsburg, in southern Germany, a Free City within the Holy Roman Empire, and so part of a huge sprawling territory that ran from Poland in the east to the Belgian channel ports in the west, all of which owed allegiance to the emperor, Rudolph II.
It is Rudolph that we see sitting in state on the deck of our ship. In front of the emperor are the seven electors, those princes of church and state in the German-speaking world who chose each new emperor and enriched themselves by bribes in the process. It is very likely that this ship was made for one of those electors, Augustus I of Saxony. Augustus’s inventory includes a description that almost exactly matches the British Museum’s galleon, so much so that we think it must refer to our nef.
A gilded Ship, skilfully made, with a quarter-and full-hour striking clock which is to be wound every 24 hours. Above with three masts, in the crow’s nests of which the sailors revolve and strike the quarters and hours with hammers on the bells. Inside, the Holy Roman Emperor sits on the Imperial throne, and in front of him pass the seven Electors with Heralds, paying homage as they receive their fiefs. Furthermore ten trumpeters and a kettle-drummer alternately announce the banquet. Also a drummer and three guardsmen, and sixteen small cannons, eleven of which may be loaded and fired automatically.
High on the stern of the ship sits the Holy Roman Emperor, circled by the seven electors
What would those south German dinner guests have thought as they watched and listened to this amusing and amazing object in action? They would, of course, have admired the clockwork brilliance of the playful automaton, but they must also have been fully aware that this was a metaphor in motion, a symbol of the ship of state. That idea of the state as a ship and its ruler as the helmsman or captain is a very old one in European culture. It is frequently used by Cicero, and indeed our word ‘governor’ comes from the Latin for ‘helmsman’ – gubernator. Even more enticingly, the root of gubernator is the Greek kubernetes, which is also the origin of our word ‘cybernetics’; so the notions of ruling, steering and robotics all coincide in our language – and in this galleon.
The state that this model ship symbolized was like no other. The Holy Roman Empire was a unique phenomenon in Europe. Covering the area of modern Germany and a great deal beyond, it was a mechanism every bit as complex as our galleon. It was not a state in the modern sense of the word but an intricate meshing of church lands, huge princely holdings and small, rich, city-states. It was an old European dream that so many diverse elements could coexist in peace, all held together by loyalty to the person of the emperor, and a dream that had proved astonishingly adaptable.
By the time of our gilded galleon the ancient metaphor of the ship of state was acquiring a new layer of meaning. Ships had become the focus of an intense interest in mechanics and technology, subjects which were absorbing, indeed obsessing, rulers right across Europe. The historian Lisa Jardine explains:
The rich, the wealthy of all kinds, the aristocracy, everybody wanted to own a bit of technology – something with cogs and wheels and winding bits, a very ornamental clock or a very ornamental position-finding instrument. It was fashionable to own scientific instruments, because they were the means of expansion and discovery. Clockwork is fundamentally European, and it develops in the early sixteenth century, at least on a small scale. It’s all hand-worked, minute craftsmanship, not mass-produced at all, and it’s mostly done by gold and silversmiths. It immediately fascinates everyone that you can wind something up and it goes without your touching it. Clockwork is magic in the sixteenth century.
Magic it may have been, but clockwork was also big business in sixteenth-century Germany. In our ship, the greatest technical skill is not the modelling or the gilding of the galleon itself but the engineering of the clock and the automated moving parts. Observers repeatedly stressed the precision, the orderliness, the grace of mechanisms like this one, which embodied the ideal of the early modern European state as it ought to have been and rarely was, with everything working together harmoniously under the control of one guiding idea and one beneficent sovereign. Its appeal went far beyond Europe: automata like our galleon were presented as gifts to the emperor of China and the Ottoman sultan and were greatly prized. What ruler, from Dresden to Kyoto, would not gaze in delight as figures moved to his command in strict and unswerving order? So unlike the messiness of rule in the real world.
Even in the sixteenth century, automata like this were far more than just toys for the rich: they were central to the experimental sciences, mechanics, engineering and the search for perpetual motion, the growing desire to control the world by taking possession of the secrets of its workings. Even more fundamentally, they speak of that urge to imitate life by mechanical means, which would ultimately be the basis of modern automation and cybernetics. You can say that it is around 1600 that our understanding of the whole world as a mechanism really begins to crystallize, seeing the cosmos as a kind of machine, complex and difficult to understand but ultimately manageable and controllable.
The state that the galleon symbolizes, the Holy Roman Empire, was handicapped by its cumbersome structures of government and weakened by religious division, and was heading into very stormy seas. Hemmed in to the east by the Turks, it was about to be overshadowed by the Atlantic-facing states of western Europe – Portugal and Spain, France, England, the Netherlands. These states, backed by the new ocean-going technologies represented by the galleon, were embarking on a dialogue with the rest of the world that would make them rich as never before and ultimately overturn the balance of power in Europe. Sailing in ships like this gilded galleon, they would encounter kingdoms and empires around the world whose sophistication dazzled them, with whom they would trade, whom they would often misunderstand and some of whom they would ultimately destroy. Those ocean-going expeditions have in large measure shaped the world we live in today. In the next chapter I will be looking at the first part of the world that these new ships allowed the Europeans to visit: West Africa.
77
Benin Plaque: The Oba with Europeans
Brass plaque, from Benin, Nigeria
AD 1500–1600
In 2001 the UK National Census recorded that more than 1 in 20
Londoners were of black African descent, a figure that has continued to rise in the years since. Modern British life and culture now have a strong African component. This development is merely the latest chapter in the history of relations between Africa and western Europe, and in that long and turbulent history the Benin Bronzes, as they used to be known, hold a unique place.
Made in what is now modern Nigeria in the sixteenth century, the Benin plaques are actually made of brass, not bronze. They are each about the size of an A3 piece of paper and show figures in high relief that celebrate the victories of the Benin ruler, the Oba, and the rituals of the Oba’s court. They are not only great works of art and triumphs of metal-casting; they also document two quite distinct moments of Euro-African contact – the first peaceful and commercial, the second bloody.
In these chapters we are looking at objects that chart how Europe first encountered and then traded with the wider world in the sixteenth century. These magnificent sculptures record the encounter from the African side. There are several hundred Benin plaques now in European and American museums, and they offer us a remarkable picture of the structure of this West African kingdom. Their main subject is the glorification of the Oba and of his prowess as a hunter and soldier, but they also tell us how the people of Benin saw their first European trading partners.
This plaque is dominated by the majestic figure of the Oba himself. It is about 40 centimetres (16 inches) square; its colour strikes you as coppery rather than brassy, and there are five figures on it, three Africans and two Europeans. In the proudest relief, on his throne, wearing a high helmet-like crown and looking straight out at us, is the Oba. His neck is completely invisible – a series of large rings runs from his shoulders right the way up to his lower lip. In his right hand he holds up a ceremonial axe. To either side kneel two high-court functionaries, dressed very like the Oba, but with plainer headdresses and fewer neck-rings. They wear belts hung with small crocodile heads, the emblem of those authorized to conduct business with Europeans – and the heads and shoulders of two tiny Europeans can be seen floating in the background.
The Europeans are Portuguese, who from the 1470s were sailing down the west coast of Africa in their galleons on their way to the Indies, but who were also seriously interested in West African pepper, ivory and gold. They were the first Europeans to arrive by sea in West Africa, and their large ocean-going ships astonished the local inhabitants. Before then, any trade between West Africa and Europe had been conducted through a series of middlemen, who transported goods over the Sahara by camel. The Portuguese galleons, cutting out all the middlemen and able to carry much bigger cargoes, offered a totally new kind of trading opportunity. They and their Dutch and English competitors, who followed later in the sixteenth century, carried gold and ivory to Europe and in return brought commodities from all over the world that were greatly valued by the Oba’s court, including coral from the Mediterranean, cowry shells from the Indian Ocean to serve as money, cloth from the Far East and, from Europe itself, larger quantities of brass than had ever before reached West Africa. This was the raw material from which the Benin plaques were made.
All European visitors were struck by the Oba’s position as both the spiritual and the secular head of the kingdom, and the Benin brass plaques are principally concerned with praising him. They were nailed to the walls of his palace, rather in the same way that tapestries might be hung in a European court, allowing the visitor to admire both the achievements of the ruler and the wealth of the kingdom. The overall effect was described in detail by an early Dutch visitor:
The king’s court is square … It is divided into many magnificent palaces, houses and apartments of the courtiers, and comprises beautiful and long square galleries, about as large as the Exchange at Amsterdam, from top to bottom covered with cast copper, on which are engraved the pictures of their war exploits and battles, and are kept very clean.
Europeans visiting Benin in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries discovered a society every bit as organized and structured as the royal courts of Europe, with an administration able to control all aspects of life, not least foreign trade. The court of Benin was a thoroughly international place, and this is one aspect of the Benin plaques that fascinates the Nigerian-born sculptor Sokari Douglas Camp.
Even when you see contemporary pictures of the Oba, he has more coral rings than anybody else and his chest piece has more coral on it. The remarkable thing about Nigeria is that all the coral and things don’t actually come from our coast, they come from Portugal and places like that. So all of that conversation has always been very important to me – we have things that are supposed to be totally traditional yet they are traditional through trade.
The brass needed to make the plaques was usually transported in the form of large bracelets – called manillas – and the quantities involved are staggering. In 1548 just one German merchant house agreed to provide Portugal with 432 tons of brass manillas for the West African market. When we look again at the plaque, we can see that one of the Europeans is indeed holding a manilla, and this is the key to the whole scene: the Oba is with his officials who manage and control the European trade. The three Africans are in the foreground and are on a far bigger scale than the diminutive Europeans, both of whom are shown with long hair and elaborate feathered hats. The manilla shows that the brass brought from Europe is merely the raw material from which Benin craftsmen would create works of art like this; and the plaque itself is a document that makes clear that this whole process is controlled by the Africans. Part of that control was a total prohibition on the export of the brass plaques. So, although carved ivories were exported from Benin in the sixteenth century and were well known in Europe, the Benin plaques were reserved to the Oba himself and were not allowed to leave the country. None had been seen in Europe before 1897.
On 13 January 1897, The Times announced news of a ‘Benin Disaster’. A British delegation seeking to enter Benin City during an important religious ceremony had been attacked and some of its members killed. The details of what actually happened are far from clear and have been vigorously disputed. Whatever the real facts, the British, in ostensible revenge for the killing, organized a punitive expedition which raided Benin City, exiled the Oba and created the protectorate of Southern Nigeria. The booty from the attack on Benin included carved ivory tusks, coral jewellery and hundreds of brass statues and plaques. Many of these objects were auctioned off to cover the costs of the expedition and were bought by museums across the world.
The arrival and the reception of these completely unknown sculptures caused a sensation in Europe. It is not too much to say that they changed European understanding of African history and African culture. One of the first people to encounter the plaques, and to recognize their quality and their significance, was the British Museum curator Charles Hercules Read:
It need scarcely be said that at the first sight of these remarkable works of art we were at once astounded at such an unexpected find, and puzzled to account for so highly developed an art among a race so entirely barbarous …
Many wild theories were put forward. It was thought that the plaques must have come from ancient Egypt, or perhaps that the people of Benin were one of the lost tribes of Israel. Or the sculptures must have derived from European influence (after all, these were the contemporaries of Michelangelo, Donatello and Cellini). But research quickly established that the Benin plaques were entirely West African creations, made without European influence. The Europeans had to revisit, and to overhaul, their assumptions of easy cultural superiority.
It is a bewildering fact that by the end of the nineteenth century the broadly equal and harmonious contacts between Europeans and West Africans established in the sixteenth century had disappeared from European memory almost without leaving any trace. This is probably because the relationship was later dominated by the transatlantic slave trade and, later still, by the European scramble for Africa, in which the punitive expedition of 1897 was merely
one bloody incident. That raid and the removal of some of Benin’s great artworks may have spread knowledge and admiration of Benin’s culture to the world, but it has left a wound in the consciousness of many Nigerians – a wound that is still felt keenly today, as Wole Soyinka, the Nigerian writer and Nobel laureate, describes:
When I see a Benin Bronze, I immediately think of the mastery of technology and art – the welding of the two. I think immediately of a cohesive ancient civilization. It increases a sense of self-esteem because it makes you understand that African society actually produced some great civilizations, established some great cultures, and today it contributes to one’s sense of the degradation that has overtaken many African societies, to the extent that we forget that we were once a functioning people before the negative incursion of foreign powers. The looted objects are still today politically loaded. The Benin Bronzes, like other artefacts, are still very much a part of the politics of contemporary Africa and, of course, Nigeria in particular.
The Benin plaques, powerfully charged objects, still move us today as they did when they first arrived in Europe, a hundred years ago. They are arresting works of art, evidence that in the sixteenth century Europe and Africa were able to deal with each other on equal terms, but also contested objects of the colonial narrative.
A History of the World in 100 Objects Page 43
