The Benin Golden Age

The Benin Golden Age, roughly the fifteenth through seventeenth centuries, was the height of the Kingdom of Benin's power in what is now southern Nigeria, when rulers known as the Oba presided over a highly organized state renowned for its fortified capital city and for the famous Benin Bronzes, brass and bronze plaques and sculptures cast by court guild artisans to commemorate royal history and ritual. Benin built a prosperous economy on trade in pepper, ivory and textiles with Portuguese and later Dutch and English merchants, exchanging ambassadors with Portugal and maintaining a standing army that made it one of the most powerful states on the West African coast. The kingdom's independence ended in 1897, when a British punitive expedition sacked the capital, exiled the reigning Oba and looted thousands of its royal artworks, many of which remain in Western museum collections today.