Kingdom of Benin

The Kingdom of Benin was an independent West African state from 1180 to 1897, centered on the city of Edo, known today as Benin City in Edo State, Nigeria, and developed from the earlier Edo Kingdom of Igodomigodo, which had existed from around the eleventh century. One of the oldest and most developed states in the coastal hinterland of West Africa, it reached its peak of prosperity and territorial expansion in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, ruled by a monarch bearing the title Oba, with the leopard and python serving as royal totems, and it produced a renowned artistic legacy of cast bronze, iron, brass and carved ivory works. The kingdom's independence ended when the British Empire annexed it in 1897 and absorbed it into the Niger Coast Protectorate, part of what became colonial Nigeria, though the Oba's monarchy survived in non-sovereign form and continues today as a traditional institution within independent Nigeria.