Cultural Encounter Between Benin And European Culture

Every group of people or a certain country has its own culture. Culture is The arts and other manifestations of human intellectual achievement regarded collectively (OED). Culture is a part of any human being. Sometimes cultures get involved with each other and it's known as cultural encounter. Cultural encounter is the way that the culture clash with each other. You can see the similarity between them and the difference as well as the huge impact that they leave on the individuals and the society. Cultural encounters give us the chance to see and understand how different people and different society live, express themselves and the way they choose to maintain their history. We can see that effect of cultural encounter between Benin and European. The first contact between Benin and European started with the trades of object and goods in the fifteenth century to the …show more content…
Justus Brinckmann, an art historian said that those bronze were actually evidence of contact between Benin and the more civilized peoples of ancient Egypt. Augustus-Pitt Rivers an anthropologist argued that the sculpture could only have been made as a result of European influence. On the other hand, Henry Ling Roth, Director of the Bankfield Museum in Halifax said that they were only of African origin alone. On the twentieth century, the famous artist such as Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse and Constantin Brancusi used the African art for formal experiments and expressive effects. There were a lot of African people who tried to give a good image about Africa. Edward Wilmot Blyden worked with British individuals and institutions in campaigns to promote a better understanding of Africa in Britain. He was supported by Mary kingsley. She is a traveler and writer on West Africa. Together they promoted the view that Africans were a people with a distinct culture and history who could not be made