The Punitive Expedition of 1897 and the Benin Bronzes

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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of I Heart Radio. Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy B. Wilson and I'm Holly Fry. We have talked about the artwork and other objects that have come to be known as the Benin Bronzes on several installments of Unearthed, including our most recent one. We also mentioned these pieces briefly at the end of our two parter I'm Lord Elegant and the Parthenon Marbles. We have not talked in detail, though, about how these cultural objects and works of art were taken from the Kingdom of Benin in Western Africa in the first place. What's happened in in what's typically described as a punitive raid or punitive expedition by the British. This is in an area that is part of Edo State in Nigeria. Today, the most most visible calls for the return of the Benin Bronzes started in the nineteen seventies, and they've really escalated over the past decade or so and the last few years. Some nations and institutions have committed to returning these pieces, but only a few have actually been returned at this point, including at least two that came from a private individual. So that is what we're going to talk about today, and just a heads up, there's a lot of heavy material in this episode, including slavery and colonialism, a lot of warfare and human sacrifice. The Kingdom of Benin was founded by the Edo people also known as the Beanie by about the eleventh century, and it's governed by the Oba and his court. This kingdom really started to flourish around the thirteenth century, including rebuilding the capital, which was originally named as Edo and today is known as Benin City. This capital was surrounded by ditches and earthwork walls, which also sectioned off parts of the city's interior. Although many of these walls are no longer standing, they're believed to have totalled a greater length than the Great Wall of China. According to ethno mathematician Ron Egglash, author of African Fractals, the city was laid out as a fractal in a pattern that was repeated on a smaller scale within compounds and then individual houses and then rooms. These widely quoted as saying that Europeans who first encountered this type of planning found it chaotic and disorganized, not realizing the underlying pattern that was involved. But that is really not how early visitors to the Kingdom of Benim described the capital. Multiple European accounts from the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries described the city and its palaces as impressive and orderly, with comparisons to various cities in Europe. Dutch doctor Olford Dapper described the compound housing the king's court as quote easily as big as the town of Harlem in sixteen sixty eight. As another example, in sixteen nine, one Portuguese captain Lorenzo Pinto wrote, quote, great Benin, where the king resides, is larger than Lisbon. All the streets run straight, and as far as the eye can see, the houses are large, especially that of the king, which is richly decorated and has fine columns. The city is wealthy and industrious. It is so well governed that theft is unknown, and the people live in such security that they have no doors to their houses. The Portuguese had been the first Europeans to make contact with the Kingdom of Benin, and the two nations started a trading relationship, with Portugal establishing an embassy at the OBUs court, and Benin sending ambassadors to Portugal as well. Benin became wealthier through its trade with Portugal, with Benin's exports including gold, paper, ivory, fabric, animal skins, and palm oil. Benin had a guild system for artists and crafts people who worked in materials like ivory, wood, and brass. Although this artwork and the techniques used to produce it were developed before contact with Europeans, they really flourished thanks to Portugal's use of brass as a trade good. The kingdom's artist used lost wax casting methods to make brass plaques detailing the kingdom's history, as well as life size heads of leaders, ancestors, and historical figures. Eventually, Benin's exports to Europe and its colonies included enslaved people. This was a smaller part of Benin's economy than that of many other kingdoms, including Dahome, which we've covered on the show previously. Captain John Adams, who was in the area between seventeen eighty six and eighteen hundred, noted that ivory was a more important part of Benin's trade. One of the likely reasons for Benin's compare of least smaller involvement in the slave trade is that the Oba outlawed the enslavement and sale of males in the early nineteenth century, and there wasn't as much demand for enslaved women and girls. From the fifteenth through late nineteen centuries. Most of what Europeans knew about the Kingdom of Benin came from the writing of traders and travel writers, including British, Portuguese and Dutch travel writers, who wrote about their experiences in various parts of the kingdom. None of the people writing these accounts stayed long enough to get a thorough sense of the kingdom's history or culture. They were visitors writing about their general impressions of the kingdom, cities and towns, and its people. And if you're thinking what about missionaries, the Christian missionaries who went to the Kingdom of Benin before the nineteenth century didn't really establish a huge presence there. Although some people did convert to Christianity, in general, the high ranking people, including the Oba, did not. Europeans who tried to of in this area also faced things like malaria and other diseases. They didn't have any resistance to or experience with, so illnesses and deaths were really common. In general, most mission projects in Benin during this period did not last long. Eventually, Britain replaced Portugal as Benin's primary trading partner. Britain was deeply involved in the slave trade from Western Africa, and its trade with Benin included trafficking enslaved people. After Britain passed the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act in eighteen o seven, it started pressuring African kingdoms and nations that it had relationships with to end their own involvement in slavery, including the Kingdom of Benin. As that happened, palm oil became an increasingly large part of Benin's exports to Britain. This was especially true as the Industrial Revolution progressed, since, in addition to its use in cooking and to make soap, palm oil was used as an industrial lubric him. By the late nineteenth century, two things were happening that dramatically affected Britain's relationship with Benin. The first was Benin's approach to trade. The Oba had a monopoly on all trade, most of it conducted through the port of Ugoton also known as Gutau. Anyone trading at the market paid tribute to the OBA, and the OBA controlled what was available. People were not paying tribute or were otherwise breaking trade agreements they had with the OBA, than the OBA could shut down the market entirely. So as Britain became increasingly reliant on palm oil and also wanted more access to Benin's other trade goods, merchants and traders became increasingly frustrated by the oba's restrictions. For example, a Mr. Brown Ridge, who was an agent for a merchant company wrote in a letter quote, if Benin was under proper government and the resources of the country properly developed, I am firmly of the opinion that the exports would be very great. So long as the King of Benin is allowed to carry on what he is doing at present, it means simply lost to the merchants, as also the protectorate. That word protectorate ties to the other interconnected piece of this that was the Scramble for Africa. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, European powers aggressively expanded their colonial interests and attempts to control the African continent. British consul Edward Hewitt started trying to sign treaties with various monarchs in Western Africa in eighteen eighty four, including along the coast of what's now Nigeria. By that point, Britain had been involved in various parts of Africa for decades, so this was really a ramping up of its earlier involvement. Through this process, Britain claimed multiple kingdoms in West Africa under its protectorates, and at first this mostly prevented them from making similar agreements with other European nations. But beyond that, again, at least at first, Britain was relatively hands off. Years could pass between Britain adding a West African kingdom to one of its protectorates and Britain really taking concrete steps to control the area. Britain's activities in Africa went way beyond what was happening in West Africa, but that's really the part we're focused on here from the European point of view. Many of these claims to territory in West Africa were negotiated at the Berlin Conference also known as the Berlin West Africa Conference, which ran from November fifteen eighty four to February eighteen eighty five. At this conference, European nations mapped out which of them had the strongest claims to what territory and set standards for trade among those regions. The thousands of kingdoms, nations, and ethnic groups in Africa were not part of this negotiation at all, and there were no provisions for their involvement in their own governance. Just in terms of the region that later became known as Nigeria, there were at least two hundred fifty different ethnic groups involved. Much of what's now Nigeria today was outlined as British territory, but in practice Britain's influence didn't extend very far from the coast. British efforts to lay claims to the interior of the Kingdom of Benin and to secure free trading rights with the Kingdom ultimately led it to pursue this punitive expedition. Who will have more about that after a sponsor break. Although early European accounts of the Kingdom of Benin had described it as large, impressive, and orderly, during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the kingdom had struggled. Both the Transatlantic slave trade and its abolition had affected the whole region dramatically, not just the Kingdom of Benin, so had the annexation of various African kingdoms by European powers, which we just discussed, and the Kingdom of Bening specifically. There was also a war over the Oba's line of succession that started in the mid nineteenth century. Throughout all of this, Benin had also been under increasing pressure from Britain to open up and expand its trade, especially its trade in palm oil. In eight, Captain Henry Galwi, deputy Commissioner and Vice Consul of the Benin District of the Oil River Protectorate, traveled to the capitol to try to get the Oba to sign a treaty with the British government. The Oba, named Ovan Romwin, seems to have verbally agreed to sign this treaty, but once the signing ceremony actually took place, he refused to touch the pen. A member of his court reportedly signed on his behalf. There are so many different interpretations and conflicting accounts of this moment. The Oba ruled by divine right as the kingdom's sovereign and its military commander, and up on his ascension as monarch, he was also understood to embody the kingdom's whole history and heritage. But Galway has been described as rude and arrogant, and either ignorant of the protocols involved with negotiating of the monarch of the Kingdom of Benin, or just not even considering those protocols to be something worth his notice. Some scholars have concluded that Ovan Romwin had verbally agreed to sign the Galway Treaty when he thought it was just a simple agreement of peace and friendship, but once the signing ceremony was happening and its interpreter read its actual terms, terms that stripped the Kingdom of Benin of its sovereignty, then he refused. Opinions also differ about whether Ovan Romwin signed the treaty through a proxy, under duress, or did not sign it at all. What's most clear is that Britain and Benin did not have the same understanding of this treaty and whether the Kingdom of Benin was bound to its terms. One of the treaty's provisions established free trade within the Opus territory, but four years later, in eighteen ninety six, Benin was still approaching trade as a monopoly that was entirely the ops prerogative. This had led to armed conflicts in some of the kingdom's more outlying villages and towns, and British officials based increasing pressure for merchants and traders to force Benin to abide by the treaty terms. British officials, including Galway, wrote that removing the Oba would be good for British trade. Consul General Ralph Moore wrote to the Foreign Office on June fourteenth, eighteen ninety six, saying that if they were not successful in getting a better trade arrangement by the dry season, quote, an expeditionary four should be sent about January or February to remove the king and his juju men. In another letter, More also said that such an expedition could quote prov the horrible human sacrifices and cruelties which were continually taking place therein. We will return to that idea in a bit. But More later went on leave. He returns to England and James Phillips was made acting Consul General in his absence. Moore had instructed Phillips to wait for his return, but instead Phillips wrote to the Obah himself, seeking an audience. The Oba replied that he was not available. He was observing a period of seclusion and preparation leading up to the Festival of Iguay, which is the Kingdom of Benin's most important cultural and religious festival. It's one that both honors the Oba and his ancestors and blesses the kingdom. The Obo's preparation for this festival are a time of spiritual cleansing and prayer. Customarily, foreigners are not allowed into the Oba's presence during this preparatory period or during the festival itself. So Ovian Romwin indicated that he would send a messenger in about a month to work at a time for Phillips and an attendant to visit. Phillips did not wait for this messenger, though. On November sixteenth, eighteen ninety six, he wrote to the Foreign Office seeking quote permission to visit Benean City in February next to depose and remove the King of Benin, and to establish a native council in his place, and take such further steps for the opening up of the country as the occasion may require. He suggested that this exhibition might pay for itself thanks to stores of ivory that he expected to find in the palace which could be seized and sold. Phillips did not wait for a response to this either. On January second, eighteen ninety seven, he left for Benien City with a retinue that included eight British officials, at least two hundred local porters, and a pipe and drum corps. In some accounts, these porters and the pipes and drums were really hired African soldiers in disguise. The party as you really described as being unarmed. But there was also correspondence going on between various British offices during this period about what would be needed for an expedition to remove the OBA. One such letter describes four hundred armed African troops to seven pounder guns, a Maxim which was an early machine gun, and a rocket apparatus that belonged to the Niger Coast Protectorate Force. It's likely that at least the British officials in this expedition were provided with weapons, but it's possible that those weapons were packed in their baggage rather than being carried on their persons. As Phillips and his party approached Beneen City, they were stopped and told to turn back. Again. The city was in the middle of observing its most important cultural and religious festival when Phillips refused, the oba's fighting force attacked, something that was done without the oba's knowledge or approval. Phillips most of his party were killed and only two British officials escaped the attack. This became known as the Benin massacre, and the British Admiralty learned about it on January eleven, eight seven. That was the day after it had sent word to Phillips ordering him to postpone the expedition because a large enough fighting force couldn't be raised in time to carry it out. When the Admiralty learned about this, it mounted a punitive expedition of twelve hundred men under the leadership of Sir Harry Rawson. This force divided into three columns, one of them under the command of Henry Galway. They departed for Beneen City on February ninth, burning outlying villages and killing civilians and soldiers who resisted as they went. Armed combatants were not the only people who were killed. Eyewitnesses also described the British force firing machine guns into the bush wherever they thought people might be hiding. Once they were in the capital, the British force looted the royal Palace and the Queen Mother's home and burned them. On February one, which was the last day of the expedition, a massive fire also destroyed many of the city's homes and buildings. Sometimes this fire is described as unintentional, but it really may have been an intentional blaze that just spread a lot farther than the British force had anticipated. Eight members of the British force are known to have been killed during this punitive expedition. The death toll among Benin's military and civilians is not really known, but it is assumed to be much much higher. None of the sources that I used for this episode even like attempted to estimate they were not keeping track at all, they being the British force that was carrying this out. As it was looting the capital, this British force found nine hundred brass plaques in a warehouse. These had been removed from the palace during a remodeling. There were also life sized brass heads depicting various monarchs and other ancestors. Other objects included brass depictions of animals, a store of ivory, tusks and various works of art and cultural objects. Members of the punitive expedition were given some of these items to keep. The rest were taken back to Britain, where about two hundred were given to the British Museum and the rest were auctioned off to pay for the expedition. It is not known exactly how many objects were taken, since they were not cataloged at the time, but it is estimated to be about three thousand works of art and other objects. The British force departed from Beneen City on February. The Oba and his surviving court had fled, but in the days and weeks that followed, they were captured and tried opan round when's chiefs testified that he had never left his compound during Phillips's earlier expedition and that he had ordered that no harm come to that British force, but he was convicted and exiled to Calibar. His chiefs were sentenced to be executed. One of them took his own life while awaiting trial, and British soldiers had his body hanged outside the palace, where they used it for target practice. After the Punitive Expedition. One subject dominated European discussions of Britain's actions in the Kingdom of Benin, and that was human sacrifice. And we're going to get into that after a sponsor break. Before James Phillips left for Benin City in early Britain's primary rationale for planning to remove the Oba was trade. Then the Punitive Expedition set out to punish Benin for the deaths of Phillips and most of the rest of his party. But after the Punitive Expedition was over, the focus shifted to the idea that Britain needed to take control of Benin to put a stop to horrifying practices there, particularly the practice of human sacrifice. Sort of rewrote that earlier history to make it seem as though this had always been the rational. As one example, Consul General Ralph Moore wrote to Lord Salisbury saying, quote, it is imperative that a most severe lesson be given the King's chiefs and jujumen of all surrounding countries, that white men cannot be killed with impunity, and that human sacrifices, with the oppression of the weak and poor, must cease. This, of course, ignores the fact that the Punitive expedition had killed the citizens of Benin with impunity, including the weak and poor, over the course of the Punitive expedition. To contextualize this, human sacrifice was distant multiple nations and kingdoms in Western Africa prior to contact with Europeans. Most sacrifices were carried out to honor deities or ancestors, or so the sacrificed person could carry a message to them. In some kingdoms, when a high ranking person died, especially the Oba, others would be sacrificed to accompany that person into the afterlife. Usually living people would be entombed with the deceased person's body, and they were understood to have done this willingly, although societal expectations that a person would sacrifice themselves also influenced these decisions enormously and then many kingdoms most are all of the people who did not offer themselves as sacrifices had been condemned to death for committing a crime. This was usually the case in the Kingdom of Benine. In some places, prisoners of war or enslaved people were also sacrificed. Today, all of this sounds deeply and irrevocably horror fining, but the first Europeans to witness or learn about this practice did not have quite the same response because where they lived, public executions were commonplace. Portugal conducted public executions until ending executions altogether in eighteen forty six. The United Kingdom did not outlaw public execution until eighteen sixty eight, and the last public guillotining in France was in nineteen thirty nine. From the fifteenth through the seventeenth centuries, Europeans often drew a parallel between public executions in Europe and human sacrifices in parts of Africa. This was especially true when the people being sacrificed had been condemned for committing a crime. Around the eighteenth century, though European attitudes towards human sacrifice started to shift. Human sacrifice then became a justification for the practice of slavery, even though nations in Europe were still carrying out public executions. Europeans in braazingly saw human sacrifice in Africa as barbaric, uncivilized, and cruel, so many Europeans this reinforced the idea that Africans were innately inferior and therefore deserved to be enslaved. Europeans also suggested that being enslaved was a better outcome than being sacrificed. This was an idea that people expressed explicitly. In a new account of some parts of Guinea and the slave Trade, William Snellgrave wrote, quote, it is evident that abundance of captives taken in war would be inhumanely destroyed. They're not an opportunity of disposing of them to the Europeans, so that at least many lives are saved and great numbers of useful persons kept in being. By the nineteenth century, as European nations started to outlaw the slave trade and the practice of slavery within their empires, more people started to view slavery itself as barbaric, but a lot of European writing about Africa continued to focus on the practice of slavery there, as well as the continuing practice of human sacrifice, as evidence that Africans were inferior. Over time, human sacrifice became increasingly associated with the Kingdom of Benin. Specifically, European descriptions of Benin from the nineteenth century are nothing like those seventeenth century accounts that we read earlier in the show. For example, Sir Richard Burton visited Benin in eighteen sixty three and described it as a place of quote gratuitous barbarity which stinks of death. He also wrote a lurid and gruesome account of fetish worship and human sacrifice in the region. Western observers reported an increase in the number of sacrifices happening in Benin in the late nineteenth century, although it's not clear how much these reports may have been exaggerated or influenced by evolving European attitudes to Africans as inferior and backward. To return to the Punitive Expedition, various colonial officials had mentioned human sacrifice and their letters before this point, and in some cases they've discussed putting a stop to it, but even in these earlier mentions that was often ancillary to the idea of opening up trade. Knowledge of the practice of human sacrifice in Benin also hadn't gone far beyond colonial and military leadership after the Punitive Expedition, though British eyewitness accounts were horrifying, graphic, and publicly available. For example, Sir Reginald H. Bacon wrote a book about the expedition in eighteen seventy nine titled Benin the City of Blood, and in it he wrote, quote crucifixions, human sacrifices, and every horror the eye could get accustomed to a large extent, but the smells no white man's internal economy could stand. Blood was everywhere, smeared over bronzes, ivory, and even the walls. Others described the British force finding a scene of slaughter in the capital, with victims of human sacrifice scattered through the city, some of whom had been members of Phillip's earlier expedition. And instead of the impressive walled streets that were so safe that people didn't feel the need for doors, there was, in the words of Captain Allen Wasser Gone quote, a collection of half ruined mud houses, not better than the huts in an ordinary native village. By the eighteen nineties, British visitors to Benin were describing these post expedition accounts as exaggerated. In more recent decades, some people, particularly historians and scholars from West Africa, have also put forth other explanations for what people like Reginald Bacon described. One is that many of the bodies assumed to have been victims of human sacrifice were really people who had been killed by British machine guns while high in the bush, whose bodies had been brought back to the capital to be buried. Another hypothesis is that the city's residents, knowing it was about to be captured by the British, intentionally defaced it to try to make it uninhabitable to them. Regardless, the accounts written by Bacon and others really painted the Kingdom of Benin as a horrific, violent place that was deserving of Britain's wrath. It influenced the way that people thought about Benin and about Africa more generally. News coverage was just effusive in its praise of British forces, and that coverage focused on the idea that Britain was freeing Benin from its own barbarism. Some of this was also threaded through with the idea that Britain needed and even deserved access to Benin's palm oil. This framing also implied that Britain deserved the artwork that had been looted from Benin during the expedition. Britain was entitled to it by virtue of being superior and as compensation for the expense involved with the invasion. After the fact, the idea of human sacrifice became a major justifying factor for all of this, for the expedition itself, for British claims to the Kingdom's artistic and cultural property, and for Britain's colonial rule of the Kingdom, even though what had motivated all this in the first place was first trade and then retribution for the Phillips Expedition's death. As we said earlier, the artwork British forces took from Benin was not kept as one collection. Pieces were auctioned off to museums around the world. At first, most of the museums who bought these pieces were ethnographic museums rather than art museums. Some of this was because many ethnographic museums were actively working to expand their collections at the turn of the twentieth century, but there was also implicit or sometimes explicit racism involved. Even though the objects taken out of Benin fit into European definitions of art, the fact that it was African led institutions to categorize it as ethnography. It wasn't until around the nineteen thirties that Art Museum started to show an interest in the Benin bronzes, as art or started to curate them as part of their art collections rather than their ethnography collections. Although Benin had managed to retain most of its sovereignty before eighteen seven, including after possibly signed the Galway Treaty, Britain took full control of the kingdom after the Punitive Expedition. Britain replaced the Oba with a system of colonial administration that involved in native council and warrant chiefs. Britain struggled to make this system work, though, and started trying to restore the monarchy with Opan round One's son, Awaka the Second, as a figurehead. When Oban Roun One died in nineteen fourteen, Britain placed his son on the throne, but with the monarchy positioned as subordinate to the colonial it administration. The British Protectorates of Northern and Southern Nigeria were joined to form Nigeria in nineteen fourteen as well. In Nigeria became an independent nation on October one, nineteen sixty In nineteen sixty three, Nigeria adopted a constitution that established itself as a republic, removing the monarchs of its many kingdoms from formal political power. Many many kingdoms still exist today, though with their monarchs still playing a cultural and less formalized political role. In nineteen seventy seven, a festival of arts and culture was being planned in Lagos, Nigeria that had adopted an ivory pendant of Queen Idia of Benin as its emblem. The festival's planning committee asked the British Museum to loan it the sixteenth century mask of this queen from its collection. There are contradictory reports of what happened next. According to the British Museum, this mask was just too fragile to move, but Nigerian sources reported that the museum had required the festival to provide three million dollars in insurance. This incident started to raise global awareness of the objects that have been taken out of Benin, collectively called the Beniin Bronzes. Even though most of the items are made of brass and some are made of other materials, efforts to repatriate at least some of the pieces have gone on for decades, and there are some real complexities involved, like if the bronzes are returned, who exactly should they be returned to? Most came from Beni City, specifically from the Oba's palace, so should they be repatriated to the Oba or to the Kingdom of Benin, or to Edo State, where Benien City is located, or to Nigeria as a nation, or to some museum or cultural institution built specifically to house these works. Such a museum is planned for Benin City, with the Beni Royal family and the Nigerian government involved, but that mean Zum has not been built yet. The Benin Dialogue Group was established in two thousand seven to work through these questions and other issues, and its most recent mission statement specifically references the creation of a royal museum to reunite Bening's historical artifacts, but progress toward that end has been slow. In eighteen, the late ful Laurens Hyland published an article in Art, Antiquity and Law titled Bening Dialogue Group Bening Royal Museum, Three Steps Forward, Six Steps Back. One reason why progress has been slow is that there is debate about the best path forward, including from within Nigeria, and there are also people who argue that the bronzes should not be returned, at least not all of them. In while at the British Museum, Nigeria's Edo State Governor Godwin Obaseki said, quote, these works are ambassadors. They represent who we are and we feel we should take advantage of them to create a connection with the world. Still, others feel that it's impossible to create a museum display they would really convey all the cultural and historical context of these objects. As of now, only a few pieces of artwork have been returned. Mark Walker traveled to Nigeria in twenty fifteen to return two pieces he had inherited from his grandfather, Captain Herbert Walker, who was part of the expedition. We've discussed announcements from various universities and museums and governments that they would return the bronzes that are in their collections. We've talked about those in several installments of Unearthed. Some of those returns haven't happened yet, and they also represent just a fraction of the thousands of pieces that were taken. So that is the context on all of those pieces that have come up as just a couple of sentences. Summaries on Unearthed episodes do you have listener mail to wrap us up. I do before we have listener mail. Uh. We just did our unearthed of the a year end of one and we talked about an announcement UM that that Homer Plessy was going to be pardoned, but the Governor of Louisiana needed to sign the pardon, and that was the final step that actually happened almost immediately after we recorded that episode. So as was plans when we did that recording, UM, the Governor of Louisiana, John Bell Edwards, did publicly sign the pardon of the late Homer Plessy, and there were people from both the Plessy and the Ferguson families there at the ceremony. So I just wanted to this is the earliest opportunity go ahead and say yes, that did happen. And then I also have email from Kelsey. Kelsey wrote to say thank you so much for your podcast. I first been listening years ago when I heard you did one on Frankie Manning and Lindy Hop As a dancer myself, it was so nice to hear his story and the story of the dance. I love. This email is also about a dance. I love the civic Northwest Ballets Nutcracker. I've lived in Washington State my whole life, and traveling to Seattle for the Nutcracker at Christmas time is something I've gotten to do a few times in my life as a child. It was a transformative experience. In the Mari sinback designs were all I knew. I was incredibly sad when I heard they were doing away with the sunback version, but the current production is fabulous. It was so cool to hear you mentioned Pacific Northwest Ballet in the podcast, as I think they are doing some incredible things. One new thing this year is a sensory friendly Nutcracker performance. Kelsey provided a link to UH document about that. The other is the introduction of the green tea cricket character for the Chinese dance. They have been very intentional and they're reworking of these dances. There are some pictures in this article, and there's a link to a story about the Nutcracker returning for the season with some of the UH the cricket pictures. I went down a rabbit hole looking for more about that cricket because that did seem amazing. Kelsey and on to say I'm a band teacher now in a suburb of Seattle, and my students performed the Nutcracker Suite for our concert this Christmas, so I've been listening to it quite a lot. You may also enjoy this podcast, which focuses on the music by Tchaikovsky. I have not listened to that podcast yet, but I did go look at stuff about the sensory friendly Nutcracker performance and the green tea cricket character for the Chinese stance. If anyone can hear a cat mewing in the background, that is my cat Onyx, who has struck up a new behavior called be as disruptive during re recording as possible. Uh. Thank you so much Kelsey for sending this email. I tried to find some video maybe if the new green tea cricket character in this ballet, and if if they may put that on online sometime at the future. I don't know. I don't want to speak for them, but that's not there yet, but the pictures of it looks so interesting. Um, and that has been done in conjunction with an organization that is just trying to move away from the anti Asian stereotypes in ballet. So thank you so much. Kelsey for sending this um if you'd like to send us a new or a history podcast at i heeart radio dot com and we're all over social media Missed in History, so you'll find our Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Instagram. And you can subscribe to our show on the I heart radio app and wherever else do you like to get your podcasts. Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts from I heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.