Read other sources on the history of the sack of Benin. This article romanticizes a city with human sacrifices and slave trade.

From Wikipedia's article on the Benin Massacre:

But the way Benin treated its slaves and the public display of large quantities of human remains hardened British attitudes towards Benin's rulers. The trader James Pinnock wrote that he saw 'a large number of men all handcuffed and chained' there, with 'their ears cut off with a razor'. T.B Auchterlonie described the approach to the capital through an avenue of trees hung with decomposing human remains. After the 'lane of horrors' came a grass common 'thickly stewn with the skulls and bones of sacrificed human beings.'

Oh I know. There's always many sides to these stories. I don't feel bad about it other than in an abstract modern moral way, it's history.

But the number of times something from the 18th-20th centuries like this comes up and you find out it was our ancestors...

I sometimes wonder whether this'll be the same reaction Americans will have in 200 years time. Things always look better when justified in the moral context of their time.

No, no, don't worry; there's been more than one occasion when I silently repeated to myself: "please not Texas, please not Texas..."

You're in luck, it's Florida again.

History is written by the victors justifying themselves.

Remember, this occurred in an era of "Social Darwinism" and "noble savages", etc.

That's not to say that these accounts aren't correct, but you can't just accept them at face value without some archaeological evidence to back them up.

You might be happy to hear that Jesus College at Cambridge just decided to remove the Benin Bronze they've had since 1897 and that it might go back to Nigeria: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/12188018/Cambridge-coll...

Actually, not really. I was disappointed with the recent controversy over the Cecil Rhodes statue at Oxford. I thought it was incredibly narrowminded and a poor reflection of the entire purpose of academic freedom. Quite glad when they kept the statue.

History always has multiple points of view, our most recent struggles reflect only one.

I think this is different, sounds like the Benin Bronze was basically stolen from the capital.

Well it was taken down because it was representative of an atrocity, not because it was stolen.

Although, arguing down that route, war spoils are a tricky thing to discuss historically. "Stolen" is very different from "appropriated after successful war". Like I've said above, history and modern morals don't always mix. For that matter, current events and modern morals don't always mix. Take the Iraq oil situation, a bit more than a statue worth there.