Benin Culture

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Benin is the only West African society that is extensively included in the European literature. To demonstrate, Benin was a pre-colonial West African state which undertook and regulated its internal and external issues with its political, socio-cultural and economic well-established institutions. Because they wished to improve their trade and commercial status, the Europeans signed a treaty with the indigenous people. It's important to point to the Igue festival which is regarded as one of the most important aspects of Benin culture that must be taken into consideration. During the period of this festival, the Oba and the people of Benin embarked activities such as self- cleansing and many prayers to the bygone predecessors for the…show more content…
The artworks and their craftsmen both were spirited out of Africa to foreign distinctions by the Europeans. Because the craftsmen who produced Benin artworks were kidnapped, then there is no doubt that their works are stolen. Although the consensual trade and the exchange of slaves, brass, ivory, wooden artworks, bronze and slaves was developed and progressive, the Europeans, who stole the Benin artworks, despised the Benin people as well as their works. Because of the connection between Benin and Europe, subjugation from 15th century onwards was produced in Benin. Moreover, the continent as a whole was colonized in 19th century. This dual experience led Benin to be a subservient of Europe and the African people to be labeled by the Europeans as either slaves or servants of the colony. Africa was completely in the hands of those who tended to exploit the magnificence of its art for their exaggerated interests. They tended to make the Benin artworks as objects created to be trampled on and defined by its Europeans occupiers. Just like the religious status of Benin which was regarded as primitive, the greatness of Benin art was not protected from the abasement of the European contempt. Even the producers of this great and magnificent works were regarded as savages, primitive, and peoples who suffer from inefficiency of imagination and creativity, primitive and liberal art. Darwin (1871) was the first to claim that Africa will prove to be the origination of humankind. This standpoint was regarded by many intellectual European thinkers as a doubtful point of view, and seen by the most prominent minds in Europe as incredulous. They questioned the fact that their great glorified predecessors were descended from the same species of the rudimentary Negro African. The people of Africa as well as their land were
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