Sven Lindqvist’s 1996 book, Exterminate All the Brutes, is a searching examination of Europe’s dark history in Africa and the origins of genocide. It compels us to acknowledge the exploitation and brutality at the heart of our modern, globalized society.1 It has been made into an HBO documentary by Raoul Beck.2
Exterminate All the Brutes has been used in the call to repatriate the Benin Bronzes3 among the items stolen from Benin (now Nigeria)4 in the Benin Expedition5 of 1897.6
Lindqvist, Sven, and Joan Tate. "Exterminate All the Brutes!": A Modern Odyssey into the Heart of Darkness into the Heart of Dark. New York: The New Press, 1996.
Democracy Now. “Exterminate All the Brutes.” Interview with filmmaker Raoul Peck. May 4, 2021.
Zetterstrom-Sharp, Johanna, and Chris Wingfield. 2019. “A ‘Safe Space’ to Debate Colonial Legacy? The University of Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology and the Campaign to Return a Looted Benin Altarpiece to Nigeria.” Museum Worlds 7 (1): 1–22.
Shanks, M. 2021 Decolonizing the Museum. Colonial Loot.
Obinyan, T. U. (September 1988). "The Annexation of Benin." Journal of Black Studies. 19 (1): 29–40.
Hicks, Dan (2020). The Brutish Museums. The Benin Bronzes, Colonial Violence and Cultural Restitution. Pluto Press.
Little known, the Oyo Empire, a part of the Benin that existed at that time, was one of the great military powers of the world. All boys entered the military, and there was a female warrior unit as well. I believe the predecessor to modern Benin, Dahomey, was a major supplier of slaves to the slave trade, conducting raids into the interior and bringing members of other tribes to the coast to sell.
The Nok culture, surfacing about as early as 1000 BC, developed sculpture and carving to a degree not seen anywhere other than Egypt or China during that period.