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vi c o n t en t s

10 Provisional Application of Treaties and the Internal

Logic of the 1969 Vienna Convention 303
a n n el i e s e q u a s t m e r t s c h
11 Characteristics of the Vienna Convention Rules on
Treaty Interpretation 335
richard gardiner
12 Subsequent Practice and Treaty Modification 363
i r i n a bu g a
13 Treaty Obligations, Universalized Norms and
Differentiated Responsibilities 392
m ic ha e l b o wm a n
14 Regulating Treaty Breaches 440
c hr is t ia n j . ta m s
15 Territory and Its Relationship to Treaties 468
b a r ba r a m il tn er

PA RT II Contextual Perspectives 507

16 Human Rights 509
c hr ist in e m . c hi nkin
17 Law of War/Law of Armed Conflict/International
Humanitarian Law 538
f r a n ço i s e j . h a m p s o n
18 Disarmament 578
l is a t a ba s s i a n d ol uf em i e l ia s
19 International Criminal Law 621
el iz abet h w il mshu rst
20 International Investment Law 653
j u l ia n d a vi s m o r t en so n
21 International Environmental Law 677
d u n c a n f r e n c h a n d ka r e n n . s c o t t
22 International Law of the Sea 710
d a v id m . o n g
 c o n te n t s vii

23 The Law of Treaties, the Law of State Responsibility

and the Non-performance of Treaty Obligations:
A View from the Case Law 748
m a l g o s i a fi t z m a u r ic e
24 Security Council Resolution 687 (1991) 790
michael wood
25 The World Trade Organization 809
j o o s t p a u w e l y n a n d i s a b e l l e va n d a m m e
26 The International Labour Organization 848
a n n e t r e bi lc oc k
27 The World Health Organization 881
egle granziera and steven a. solomon
28 The International Maritime Organization 907
d or o t a l os t - s ie m i n s k a
29 The European Union 933
panos koutrakos
30 The Council of Europe 966
j e r e m y m c br id e

PART I II Final Reflections 1005

31 Taking Stock: Where the Modern Law of Treaties Goes
from Here 1007
m i c h a e l b o w m a n a n d d in o k r i t s i o t i s
32 The Interplay of Concept, Context and Content in
the Modern Law of Treaties: Final Reflections 1031
michael bowman

Index 1100
 CONTRIBUTORS

f ran k be rma n kcm g qc Barrister and international arbitrator;

formerly Legal Adviser, Foreign & Commonwealth Office, United
Kingdom; Visiting Professor of International Law, University of
Oxford and University of Cape Town; Member of the Permanent
Court of Arbitration.

michael bowman Associate Professor of Law, University of

Nottingham; Director of the Treaty Centre, University of Nottingham.

ca therine bröl mann Associate Professor of Law, Amsterdam

Center for International Law, University of Amsterdam.

i r i n a bu g a Associate in International Arbitration at De Brauw

Blackstone Westbroek, Amsterdam.

c h r i s t i n e m . ch in k i n Emerita Professor of International Law and

Director of the Centre on Women, Peace and Security, London School of
Economics and Political Science.

matthew craven Professor of International Law and Director of the

Centre for the Study of Colonialism, Empire and International Law,
School of African & Oriental Studies, University of London.

olufemi elias Legal Adviser and Director, Organization for the

Prohibition of Chemical Weapons; Visiting Professor of Law, School of
Law, Queen Mary University of London.

malgosia fitzmaurice Professor of Public International Law,

School of Law, Queen Mary University of London.

viii
 list of co ntr ibutors ix

duncan french Professor of International Law and Head of Lincoln

Law School, University of Lincoln.

richard gardiner Visiting Professor of Law, Faculty of Laws,

University College London.

egl e granzie ra Legal Officer, Governing Bodies and International

Law, Office of the Legal Counsel, World Health Organization.

fr ançoise j . h ampson Professor Emerita, University of Essex.

jan klabber s Academy Professor (Martti Ahtisaari Chair), University

of Helsinki; Visiting Research Professor at Erasmus Law School,
Rotterdam.

panos koutrakos Professor of European Union Law and Jean

Monnet Professor of European Union Law, City University London.

d i n o k r i t s i o t i s Professor of Public International Law, University of

Nottingham; Head of the International Humanitarian Law Unit, Human
Rights Law Centre, University of Nottingham.

r a n d a l l le s a f f e r Professor of Legal History, Tilburg University

and University of Leuven.

dorota lost-sieminska Head, Legal Affairs Office of the

International Maritime Organization, London.

jeremy mcbr ide Barrister, Monckton Chambers, London; Visiting

Professor, Central European University, Budapest.

barb ara m iltner Wydick Fellow, University of California Davis

School of Law.

daniel moec kli Assistant Professor of Public International Law and

Constitutional Law, University of Zurich.

julian dav is m ortenson Professor of Law, University of Michigan

Law School.
x l i s t o f c o n tr i but o r s

d a v i d m . on g Professor of International and Environmental Law,

Nottingham Law School, Nottingham Trent University.

joost pauwelyn Professor of International Law, Graduate Institute

of International and Development Studies, Geneva; Murase Visiting
Professor of Law, Georgetown Law Center, Washington, DC.

anneliese qua st mertsch Associate Legal Officer at the United

Nations Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals (UNMICT),
The Hague.

k a r en sc o t t Professor of Law and Head of the School of Law,

University of Canterbury, New Zealand.

s t e v e n a . sol o mon Principal Legal Officer, Governing Bodies and

International Law, Office of the Legal Counsel, World Health
Organization.

l i sa tab a s si Head of Legal Services, Organization for Security and

Co-operation in Europe (OSCE); formerly Chief of Legal Services
Section, Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear-
Test-Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) and Legal Officer,
Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).

c h r i s t i a n j . ta m s Professor of International Law, School of Law,

University of Glasgow; Academic Member of Matrix, London.

anne trebilcock Former Legal Adviser of the International Labour

Organization; Member of the Asian Development Bank Administrative
Tribunal and of the Centre de Droit International, University of Paris
Nanterre-La Défense.

isabelle van d amme Référendaire, Chambers of Advocate General

Sharpston, Court of Justice of the European Union; Visiting Lecturer,
Université Catholique de Louvain.

m i c h a e l wa i b e l University Senior Lecturer in International Law,

Fellow of Jesus College and Deputy Director of the Lauterpacht Centre
for International Law, University of Cambridge.
 list of co ntr ibutors xi

nigel d . white Professor of Public International Law and Head of the

School of Law, University of Nottingham.

el izabet h w ilmshurst cmg Distinguished Fellow of the Royal

Institute of International Affairs, London; Visiting Professor, University
College London.

s i r mi c h a e l w o o d k c m g Barrister, 20 Essex Street, London;

Member of the International Law Commission.
 FOREWORD

Participants in the contemporary debate about the sources of interna-

tional law will probably still agree that the international treaty appears as
a resting pole in an environment marked by decomposition of established
truths and loss of orientation. Just observe the current discussion on the
theory and doctrine of customary international law: a dance-floor on
which anything goes, few bother about traditional steps, wishful thinking
reigns and I certainly don’t envy the International Law Commission in its
effort to have people fall again into the familiar foxtrot of the two
elements …
Compared to this disquieting picture, treaties and their law do strike us
as solid, stable, orderly. Law-making by treaty may appear to the most
progressive within our profession as ‘medieval’, but if that is so, it feels
good to live in such a medieval world. As to practical relevance, it is the
treaty that for a long time has enjoyed priority, and at least for the
practitioner, this priority is here to stay. For many decades now, writers
have witnessed a movement away from customary international law
towards treaties. This movement has grown so strong that nowadays
one needs to emphasise that international custom does still have a role to
play. In the practical business of international legal relations, treaties still
are the unchallenged backbone, workhorse, coalface, (‘sadly over-
worked’) instrument, to name just a few terms by which they are being
appreciated in the literature. And, of course, the figures are truly stagger-
ing: more than 50,000 treaties having been registered with the United
Nations and its predecessor.
On the other hand, recent doctrine has noted a marked increase in
informal norm-setting, quite apart from the dilution of custom men-
tioned above, and thus another cause of ‘thinning’ international law.
According to a growing stream of voices, also among practitioners, the
difference between legally binding and ‘soft’ commitments is not as sharp
as traditional international lawyers claim it to be. Against this, a call for a
return to formalism is building up. I would suggest that this provides an
xiii
xiv f o r ew o r d

element explaining the renaissance of interest in the law of treaties on the

part of doctrine, witnessed by the present book: a certain defensive
stature, a doctrinal trench dug to preserve the (relative) stability and
formalism of the treaty.
Developments in the literature on the law of treaties in the wake of the
adoption of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties of 23 May
1969 appear to confirm this observation. There was a first wave, modest
in quantity but laden with authenticity, stemming from veterans of the
International Law Commission’s and the Vienna Conferences’ labours –
above all the works of Paul Reuter, Shabtai Rosenne and Ian Sinclair. But
what I find striking is that following that early reaction to the successful
codification exercise, while, as could be expected, large numbers of
articles and monographs on certain topical issues of the law of treaties
were being published all along, for several decades no great comprehen-
sive treatise appeared. This abstinence came to an end only in 2006, when
Olivier Corten and Pierre Klein published the French two-volume edi-
tion of their commentary on the 1969 and 1986 Vienna Conventions,
followed in 2011 by an English edition to which no fewer than eighty
authors contributed. In 2009, Mark Villiger published his single-author
commentary on the 1969 Convention, while the commentary edited by
Oliver Dörr and Kirsten Schmalenbach and published in 2012 is the joint
effort of twelve scholars. This sudden wave of commentaries, accompa-
nied by the monograph on Modern Treaty Law and Practice by Anthony
Aust for Cambridge University Press in 2000, was soon joined by a
number of collective works, like The Law of Treaties beyond the Vienna
Convention, a (beautifully) camouflaged Festschrift for Giorgio Gaja
edited by Enzo Cannizzaro in 2011; The Oxford Guide to Treaties edited
by Duncan Hollis, which appeared in 2012; and, most recently, in 2014,
the Research Handbook on the Law of Treaties organised by Christian
Tams, Antonios Tzanakopoulos and Andreas Zimmermann. The present
anthology on Conceptual and Contextual Perspectives on the Modern Law
of Treaties now completes – and, in a way to be explained later, tops – this
impressive display of scholarship.
The reader will have noticed that among the works just cited, several
titles put the emphasis on a ‘modern’ law of treaties. This is not just a
coincidental use of smart adjectives. At a first, positive-law level, it is the
recognition that the text of the Vienna Convention does not exhaust the
law of treaties in its entirety, its ‘infinite variety’, and, of course, that this
law has not remained frozen in the almost five decades since the
Convention was adopted. We have to remember that, from the outset,
 f o r e wor d xv

the International Law Commission’s project was designed to be modest

and embrace only those issues that had a chance of success. This explains
the limited scope of the Convention – see, for instance, its Article 73 – but
also that the Commission left unanswered a number of important ques-
tions also within what everybody would regard as the core of the law of
treaties. To give just one example: I find it no less than shocking that the
Vienna Convention left open what was to happen with a reservation to a
multilateral treaty clearly incompatible with that treaty’s object and
purpose and thus allowed a view to appear respectable according to
which the Convention could outlaw certain reservations and then go
on to subject such impermissible exceptions to precisely the same regime
as harmless ones. It took decades until Alain Pellet’s and the
International Law Commission’s low-profile ‘Guidelines’ came up with
a reasonably satisfactory answer, without calling the spade a spade and
the Convention’s omission to regulate the fate of impermissible reserva-
tions a major loophole.
But the recent ‘modern’ works on the law of treaties intend to go
further than just fill gaps. The ways in which they intend to go beyond
the technical debate on how to make the law of treaties more complete
and more smooth comes out beautifully in the very title of the present
collection – the emphasis now is on conceptuality and contextuality:
conceptuality in the sense of attempting to identify and explore concepts
and mechanisms recurrently encountered, but straddling various law-of-
treaties themes or extending beyond the scope of that law, in recognition
of the inherent interdependence of the law of treaties and other branches
of international law, like the law of State responsibility; and contextuality
aiming at a depiction of treaty law as it operates in a variety of fields, like
human rights, disarmament or protection of the environment.
It is to this second point – of contextuality – that the present work
accomplishes a truly remarkable contribution. To my knowledge,
nowhere else has the law of treaties been so thoroughly shown at work
in the various branches of international legal regulation and in the
context of major international organizations. The book devotes no
fewer than fifteen chapters – about half of its content – to the task of
demonstrating how the law of treaties applies or undergoes specific
modifications, both in fields like human rights, international criminal
or world trade law and in the functioning of international organizations.
Two of these contributions caught my particular attention: Christine
Chinkin’s virtuous treatment of (a favourite subject of mine) the specifi-
cities of human rights treaties and Sir Michael Wood’s case study on
xvi f o r ew o r d

Security Council Resolution 687 (1991) and the law of treaties, demon-
strating the differences between treaty interpretation and the interpreta-
tion of Security Council resolutions and concluding that ‘[i]t was for the
Security Council, not one or more members of the “coalition of the
willing”, to determine whether there was a material breach [of
Resolution 687] … ’.
In conclusion, the present collection does fulfil the promise of unco-
vering the dynamics of the modern law of treaties and of determining
how particular instruments function within that system. I am convinced
that it will trigger further intra-disciplinary research and thus contribute
to solidify that tower of strength, the international treaty.

Bruno Simma
 PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This project was formally inaugurated by the University of Nottingham

Treaty Centre in the spring of 2011. It sought to bring together two
distinct dimensions to the study and practice of the modern law of
treaties – what were called respectively the ‘conceptual’ and ‘contextual’
perspectives – which are further explained in the Introduction to this
work. However, at its heart, the project was a collaborative enterprise, not
only providing an intellectual home of sorts for all of its authors but
encouraging them to exchange ideas, anecdotes and interpretations – and
to do so on a regular and ongoing basis. To this end, we were incredibly
fortunate to benefit from the wonderful generosity of our then Head of
School, Professor Stephen H. Bailey, to host two stimulating workshops
for authors – the first of these was held at University Park, University of
Nottingham, in September 2012, and, prompted by the immense success
of that meeting, a second in January 2013 at Essex Court Chambers, in
Lincoln’s Inn Fields, London. We are most indebted to one of our
contributors, Sir Frank Berman KCMG QC, for facilitating and hosting
that second meeting, as we are to Gordon Pollock QC, then Head of
Chambers, for kindly agreeing to the use of that venue.
The project could not have survived, and it certainly would not have
seen the light of day, without the impressive and efficient assistance we
received throughout from the secretarial team at the University of
Nottingham. Particular mention should be made of Anne Crump, Ann
Chudleigh, Jo Grabowksi, Kobie Neita, Vicky Spencer and Helen Wade,
who stoically kept on top of a vast correspondence, ferried draft chapters
back and forth and kept the work environment alive with good cheer
when there were many other demands on their time.
We wish also to thank Cambridge University Press and, in particular,
Elizabeth Spicer for expertly steering this project to its conclusion; she
did so with enormous enthusiasm and commitment, and we are
delighted that she shared in the vision of this ambitious work from the
outset. And, with her characteristic professionalism and endless charm,
xvii
xviii preface a nd acknowledg ements

Finola O’Sullivan has overseen the entire project to its ultimate conclu-
sion; her support has been invaluable to us, too, over these many years.
Our final expression of gratitude is to our authors, who produced a
series of first-rate essays that, we are confident, will make its mark on the
literature of treaties for a good while to come. They have also participated
in a process that, we hope, will put front and centre the importance of a
methodological commitment to the pursuit of research on the law of
treaties that takes on both the conceptual and contextual perspectives
explored in the chapters that follow. However, without exception, they
have also shown an immense patience with the progress of publication,
and that has meant much to us as editors of this work. The fact is that,
while we kept to the structure of our original vision for the project, as it
got under way, we gave in to various temptations to conscript new
authors and chapters to the cause, and this resulted in various delays,
but we believe the volume has been enriched immeasurably. And we took
frequent advantage of the editorial prerogative to probe contributors for
more detail on the themes and arguments being prepared for a wider
readership; the publication of this volume must provide them consider-
able respite that they no longer stand at risk of receiving our voluminous
and often very detailed prods and enquiries. That said, we were pro-
foundly encouraged when one of our contributors was moved to remark
at the London meeting of January 2013 that the extent of editorial
engagement with contributors and their contributions really meant that
this project had acquired a ‘soul’ of its own – that it stood apart from
other similar projects of collective endeavour.
This has all meant that the project has taken a while longer to come to
fruition, with chapters presented to us in their final form on a rolling
basis from October 2013 onwards. Contributors were subsequently
offered a chance to make limited updates to their chapters, but not all
of them were able to avail themselves of this opportunity. The nature of
the exercise has thus precluded us from setting a single deadline for the
law and material contained in each contribution, and we would ask
readers to bear this point in mind as they set to reading the chapters
that we are delighted to include in this volume.

MJB & DK
Nottingham, December 2017
 ABBREVIATIONS

AC Appeal Cases
AFDI Annuaire Français de Droit
International
AJIL American Journal of International Law
AJIL Supp. Supplement of the American Journal of
International Law
ALR Australian Law Reports
African HRLJ African Human Rights Law Journal
Am. Pol. Sci. Rev. American Political Science Review
Am. Univ. Int’l L. Rev. American University International Law
Review
Ann. Digest Annual Digest of Public
International Law
Annual Rev. Earth & Planetary Sci. Annual Review of Earth and Planetary
Sciences
Asian J. WTO & Int’l. Health L. & Pol’y Asian Journal of World Trade
Organization and International
Health Law and Policy
Asian YbIL Asian Yearbook of International Law
Austrian Rev. Int’l & European L. Austrian Review of International and
European Law
BYbIL British Yearbook of International Law
Boston Coll. Int’l & Comp. L. Rev. Boston College International and
Comparative Law Review
Brooklyn JIL Brooklyn Journal of International Law
CETS Council of Europe Treaty Series
CLR Commonwealth Law Reports
CTS Consolidated Treaty Series
CYbELS Cambridge Yearbook of European Legal
Studies
California WILJ California Western International Law
Journal

xix
xx l i s t o f a b b r e v i a t i o ns
Cambridge JICL Cambridge Journal of International and
Comparative Law
Cambridge Law J. Cambridge Law Journal
Canadian YbIL Canadian Yearbook of International Law
Chicago JIL Chicago Journal of International Law
China Oceans L. Rev. China Oceans Law Review
Chinese JIL Chinese Journal of International Law
Colorado J. Int’l Env. Law & Policy Colorado Journal of International
Environmental Law and Policy
Columbia JTL Columbia Journal of Transnational Law
Columbia L. Rev. Columbia Law Review
Common Market L. Rev. Common Market Law Review
Comp. & Int’l L.J. Southern Africa Comparative and International Law
Journal of Southern Africa
Comp. Labor L. & Policy J. Comparative Labor Law and Policy
Journal
Connecticut JIL Connecticut Journal of
International Law
Const. Comment. Constitutional Commentary
Cornell ILJ Cornell International Law Journal
Cornell Law Q. Cornell Law Quarterly
Dalhouise Law J. Dalhouise Law Journal
Denver JILP Denver Journal of International Law and
Policy
Dept. of State Bull. Department of State Bulletin
ECR European Court Reports
EHRR European Human Rights Reports
EJIL European Journal of International Law
EJLS European Journal of Legal Studies
ER English Reports
ETS European Treaty Series
EYB European Yearbook
Ecology L. Quarterly Ecology Law Quarterly
Emory ILR Emory International Law Review
Encyclopaedia PIL Encyclopaedia of Public
International Law
European L. Rev. European Law Review
European Rev. Private L. European Review of Private Law
Finnish YbIL Finnish Yearbook of International Law
Fordham ILJ Fordham International Law Journal
Fordham L. Rev. Fordham Law Review
 list of abbreviations xxi
Ga. J. Int’l & Comp. L. Georgia Journal of International and
Comparative Law
Georgetown JIL Georgetown Journal of
International Law
Georgetown Law J. Georgetown Law Journal
George Wash. JIL & Econ. George Washington Journal of
International Law and Economics
German YbIL German Yearbook of International Law
Goettingen JIL Goettingen Journal of International Law
HRLR Human Rights Law Review
Hague Recueil Collected Courses of the Hague
Academy of International Law
Hague YbIL Hague Yearbook of International Law
Harvard ILJ Harvard International Law Journal
Harvard L. Rev. Harvard Law Review
ICJ Rep. International Court of Justice Reports
ICLQ International and Comparative Law
Quarterly
ICLR International Community Law Review
ICSID Review Foreign Investment Law Journal
ILM International Legal Materials
ILR International Law Reports
ITLOS Rep. International Tribunal on the Law of the
Sea Reports
Indian JIL Indian Journal of International Law
Industrial Law J. Industrial Law Journal
Inter-Am. L. Rev. Inter-American Law Review
Int’l Aff. Journal of International Affairs
Int’l J. Comp. Labour L. & International Journal of Comparative
Industrial Relations Labour Law and Industrial Relations
Int’l J. of Marine & Coastal L. International Journal of Marine and
Coastal Law
Int’l Rev. Red Cross International Review of the Red Cross
Int’l Negotiation International Negotiation
International Labour Rev. International Labour Review
Irish YbIL Irish Yearbook of International Law
Israel L. Rev. Israel Law Review
Italian YbIL Italian Yearbook of International Law
JIWLP Journal of International Wildlife Law
and Policy
Japanese YbIL Japanese Yearbook of International Law
xxii list of abbreviations
J. Am. Med. Assoc. Journal of the American Medical
Association
J. Bio. Ed. Journal of Biological Education
J. Conflict & Sec. L. Journal of Conflict and Security Law
J. Env. L. Journal of Environmental Law
J. History of Ideas Journal of the History of Ideas
J. History Int’l L. Journal of the History of
International Law
J. Industrial Rel. Journal of Industrial Relations
J. Inst. Theor. Econ. Journal of the Institutional and
Theoretical Economics
J. Int’l Crim. Just. Journal of International Criminal Justice
J. Int’l Econ. L. Journal of International Economic Law
J. Law, Medicine & Ethics Journal of Law, Medicine and Ethics
J. Maritime L. & Comm. Journal of Maritime Law and Commerce
J. Politics Journal of Politics
J. World Trade Journal of World Trade
Kobe J. Law Kobe Journal of Law
LNOJ League of Nations Official Journal
LNTS League of Nations Treaty Series
LQR Law Quarterly Review
LR Law Reports
Law & Contemp. Prob. Law and Contemporary Problems
Law & Practice Int’l Courts & Tribs. Law and Practice of International Courts
and Tribunals
Legal History Rev. Legal History Review
Leiden JIL Leiden Journal of International Law
Lloyd’s Rep. Lloyd’s Law Reports
Maastricht JECL Maastricht Journal of European and
Comparative Law
Maine L. Rev. Maine Law Review
Max Planck Yb. UN Law Max Planck Yearbook of United
Nations Law
Melbourne JIL Melbourne Journal of International Law
Michigan JIL Michigan Journal of International Law
Michigan L. Rev. Michigan Law Review
Michigan State Int’l L. Rev. Michigan State International Law
Review
Modern L. Rev. Modern Law Review
N.Y.U. J. Int’l L. & Pol. New York University Journal of
International Law and Politics
N.Y. Univ. L. Rev. New York University Law Review
 list of abbreviations xxiii
N.Z. J. Public & Int’l L. New Zealand Journal of Public
International Law
Netherlands ILR Netherlands International Law Review
Netherlands YbIL Netherlands Yearbook of
International Law
Nonproliferation Rev. Nonproliferation Review
Nordic JIL Nordic Journal of International Law
NZLR New Zealand Law Reports
OJ (OJEU) Official Journal of the European Union
OJLS Oxford Journal of Legal Studies
ÖZöR Österreichische Zeitschrift für
öffentliches Recht
Ocean Dev. & Int’l L. Ocean Development and
International Law
PAULTS Pan-American Union Law and Treaty
Series
Policy Studies J. Policy Studies Journal
Proceedings ASIL Proceedings of the American Society of
International Law
Proc. Nat. Acad. Sci. Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences
Q. Rev. Biology Quarterly Review of Biology
Quinnipiac L. Rev. Quinnipiac Law Review
RIAA Reports of International Arbitral Awards
RBDI Revue belge de droit international
RGDIP Revue Générale de droit international
public
Revue de droit de l’ULB Revue de droit de l’Université libre de
Bruxelles
SUR Int’l J. on Hum. Rts. SUR – International Journal on Human
Rights
Santa Clara J. Int’l L. Santa Clara Journal of International Law
Stanford L. Rev. Stanford Law Review
Stat. United States Statutes at Large
Sydney L. Rev. Sydney Law Review
Syracuse J. Int’l L. & Comm. Syracuse Journal of International Law
and Commerce
TIAS Treaties and Other International Acts
Series (U.S. Dept. of State)
Texas ILJ Texas International Law Journal
Texas L. Rev. Texas Law Review
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 \ 1 1 48 THE BENIN MASSACRE Benin River about twenty-
five miles lower down from Sapele. As one goes down the Benin
River all the forest land and high banks gradually disappear, and the
melancholy mangrove takes the place of everything. Some twenty
miles from the sea is the entrance to what is called the Forcados or
Nanna's Creek, the latter after Nanna, who until 1894, when he was
smashed up and his town of Brohoemi burnt by a combined force of
Naval Brigade and Niger Coast Protectorate Force, under Admiral Sir
Frederick Bedford, K.C.B., was the head Jakri chief of the Benin
River. This I Forcados Creek is the waterway for steamers (doming
from the Forcados River and the sea, the bar of the Benin River
being too shallow to let anything but small steamers come across it.
Opposite the entrance to the Forcados Creek, which is on the left
bank of the Benin River, is the entrance to the Gwatto Creek. Farther
down the river, on the same side as the Gwatto Creek, i.e. the right
bank of the river, are two big creeks called respec 
 POSITION OF BENIN 49 tively Adabrassi and Lagos Creeks,
and amongst many others one important small one leading to
Brohoemi, the town of Nanna, the chief mentioned above, and, as
he thought, the only way of arriving at his town, surrounded by
swamps as it was, — in fact, it was actually built on a swamp.
Consequently, this creek was defended by a battery of big guns
mounted behind a hidden stockade, most artistically screened so as
not to be seen from the creek. This battery fired on H.M.S. Alecto's
steam pinnace, which was reconnoitring up the creek, and very
nearly sank her, the pinnace only reaching the Alecto in a sinking
condition, and with everyone on board her, some six or seven, with
the exception of her commander. Captain J. Heugh, badly wounded.
Amongst these was Major Crawford, who was killed in the last fatal
expedition to Benin City. Unfortunately for Nanna, the force, when
they eventually attacked Brohoemi, waded through the swamp,
generally waist-deep in mud, and attacked from the side Nanna least
expected, and on which he had got but few of his guns trained.
 50 THE BENIN MASSACRE To return to the Benin River: on
the left bank, nearly opposite the entrance to the Lagos Creek, is the
Deli Creek, the route that steam launches take going to the Forcados
River, but which is too narrow for steamers. Passing the Lagos
Creek, and on the same bank, we come very soon to the factories
and the old Vice-Consulate, which are about six miles from the
mouth of the river, and which are called, as I have said, New Benin.
The Government House is only a Customs and Post-office station,
part of the house and most of the outbuildings having been removed
to Sapele; while, of the many factories that there used to be here,
only four remain used, the rest being represented by a few remains,
as trade at the mouth of the river has year by year sunk to
something very small. On the opposite side of the river to New
Benin, and some way from the river bank up a small creek, is the
town of Baterri, where Chief Dore, the head chief of the river since
Nanna's downfall, lives. It is built on one of the few patches of solid
ground to be found hereabouts.
 POSITION OF BENIN 51 for the whole country near the
coast-line is simply a network of creeks and mangrove swamp, any
villages that there are being hidden some distance away from the
banks of the river, or creek, and the only entrance to which is usually
some insignificant-looking little creek. It is melancholy work
sometimes steering through these creeks from station to station in a
launch, going hours together without seeing a sign of a human
being, and nothing to look at but the depressing mangrove and
swamp, and smelling nothing but the still more depressing effluvia of
the mud. For many years past the only way of reaching Benin City
was by Gwatto, which is about forty -five miles up the Gwatto Creek
from its entrance into the Benin Riven There the Gwatto Creek is
about three-quarters of a mile wide, and surrounded by mangrove,
but gradually one leaves that behind as the creek narrows, and
when one gets to the Benin Country at Gwatto, or at Gilli Gilli, which
is two or three miles nearer, one reaches once more the high banks,
good solid ground,
 52 THE BENIN MASSACRE and forest country. At Gwatto
the creek is only about forty or fifty yards wide, and comes down
from the northwards, narrowing and narrowing the farther one gets
up, till it dwindles away from the source, wherever that may be. The
Gwatto Greek might be called the western boundary of the late
Benin Kingdom. The boundaries on the north and east I do not
know, except that somewhere to the north are a tribe called Mahins,
who were supposed to be enemies of the Benins, but toward the
northeast, in which direction the King must have fled, the country
was open to him, being part of the possessions of the late Benin
Kingdom. Away beyond is the great Yoruba land, and plenty of the
Yorubas, who are great traders, and semi-Mohammedans, used to
trade in the Benin Country, and I believe the Yoruba language is
more or less understood in Benin City. When this part of the
Protectorate has been opened up and settled, it will join the
hinterland of the Lagos Colony on one side, and the possessions of
the Royal Niger Company on the other.
 CHAPTER IV OUR EXPEDITION AFTER 1892 no white man,
with the exception of Mr. M'Taggart of the Niger Company, has been
allowed to visit Benin City. After the expedition against Nanna in
September 1894 there was some chance of another expedition being
sent to Benin City in the dry season of 1895, which falls in about
February or March, but owing to many causes this could not be
done. Nanna was the head chief of the Benin River natives, a Jakri,
and an extremely powerful and rich man. His town, Brohoemi, made
by his father Alluma, was a most wonderful sight, the ground on
which the greater part of it was built having been reclaimed from the
 54 THE BENIN MASSACRE mangrove swamp by millions of
canoe-loads of sand poured on it. The whole place .was kept
extremely clean, and the houses built in streets running at right
angles to the main road, broad as Piccadilly, which connected
Nanna's own part of the town with his father's, Alluma, which lay
some half-mile distant. Brohoemi was approached by a narrow
winding creek from the Benin River, which was some three-quarters
of a niile distant. It is not necessary here to describe how the place
was captured and destroyed by a naval and military expedition under
Admiral Sir Frederick Bedford, K.C.B., and Consul-General Moor,
K.M.G. Nanna before this expedition was the greatest and most
powerful of all the trading chiefs in the Benin River, and his canoes
used to visit all the different markets of the Benin City Country itself,
and also those of the farther parts of it which were situated between
the Jamiesoti and Ethiope Rivers, and as a consequence his name
and prestige were well known to the King of Benin. Still, strong
though he was, Nanna always paid the King of Benin a yearly
tribute.
 OUR EXPEDITION 55 partly on account of the powerful Juju
of ' Benin City, and partly for trade to bfe kept open ; and neither he
nor his Jakris would have dared to attack the King of Benin, for
whom, and for whose men, the Jakris, like the Ejaws, and other
trading tribes in that part of the world, have always had a most
wholesome dread. After Nanna's fall, the Benin City people were in
much fear that they would be attacked in their turn, and, I believe,
began making preparations accordingly. After some time the King
began "putting Juju on," and closing all his markets, that is,
preventing his people from bringing palm-oil and other trade
produce down to the waterside villages, where the Jakris and others
used to collect it. In answer to remonstrances from the Consul -
General, the King of Benin consented to open a few markets, but
demanded extra tribute from the Jakri chiefs of the Benin River, from
Chief Dore, now the head of the River Dudu, and others, before he
would allow all the markets to be open as before. His latest demand
at the end of 1896, soon after Mr. Phillips had arrived in
 56 THE BENIN MASSACRE the Protectorate, was for some
twenty thousand sheets of corrugated iron roofing for his houses. At
a meeting of the chiefs of the Benin River in November 1896, Mr.
Phillips advised them to refuse to comply with this exorbitant
demand. In 1894 Mr. M'Taggart, an official of the Royal Niger
Company, visited Benin City unintentionally, so I was told. He was
accompanied by a detachment of some forty soldiers and carriers
from the Niger, and, according to repute, was misled by his guides to
Benin City. He was, I believe, kindly received by the King of Benin,
but I know no more about his visit than that he came back by way
of Sapobah on the Jamieson River. From there. Captain Gallwey, at
that time Vice-Consul of the Benin River, brought him and his men
down by launch to the Vice-Consulate at Benin, and from that place
the Protectorate yacht Ivy took him to Forcados, where he was put
on board one of the Royal Niger Company's steamers. During 1895
and 1896 several attempts had been made by Major Copland
Crawford, the
 OUR EXPEDITION 57 « Vice-Consul of the district ; Mr.
Locke, Who acted for him during his leave ; Captain Maling, who was
in command of a detachment of troops at Sapele, and others, to get
to Benin City. They made their attempts from Gwatto and Ilogbo, the
two main routes from the Protectorate, but all were in vain, as each
time they were stopped by Benin City soldiers. By "stopping" is
meant that they could go no farther without the certainty of fighting,
which, of course, they were not allowed to do by very strict orders
from the Consul-General. On one of these expeditions Major
Crawford and Captain Maling landed at Gwatto with a detachment of
twenty soldiers and some Jakri carriers. The white men and the
soldiers were allowed to come into the town, but any wretched Jakri
who showed himself was chased by the Benin City men, and hunted
back to the waterside again. During these years every opportunity
was taken by the Protectorate officials of getting every information
from natives about the Benin Country roads, creeks, water supply,
etc. ; but as 5
 58 THE BENIN MASSACRE all this came, of course, from
native sources only, nothing reliable was known about the country
except from Captain Gallwey's report of his visit in 1892. When Mr.
Phillips, who had been appointed Acting Consul-General some six
months before, arrived in the Protectorate about the end of
November 1896, he held the meeting with the Benin River chiefs
already referred to, and at the same time sent a letter to the King of
Benin saying that he would be returning to that part of the
Protectorate about the beginning of the New Year, and would much
like to pay him a visit, as he was the most powerful king in the
Protectorate. The object of the expedition was to try and persuade
the King to let white men come up to his city whenever they wanted
to. All their horrible customs could not be put down at once, except
by a strong-armed expedition ; but could be stamped out gradually
by officials continually going up. Trade would also be opened up.
The expedition was arranged to start shortly after the New Year;
and, to give notice of it, messengers were sent to the King of Benin
a short
 OUR EXPEDITION 59 time before that date, to carry him a
small present (or, in West African phraseology, a **clash'*), and to
tell him that the Acting Consul-General (Phillips) was coming to visit
the King, and would bring eight or nine other white men with him.
The answer received to this message, which arrived after we had
actually started from Sapele for Gwatto, was to the effect that " the
King was extremely pleased at receiving the present, which he did
not expect ; but, at the same time, could not see any white men just
then, as he was celebrating the 'custom* [West African for festival]
of his father's death." This meant that he was engaged in sacrificing
some hundreds of unfortunate slaves. " But," the message went on,
** in one or two months* time he would send down, and let the
ConsulGeneral know when he was ready to see him ; at which time
he hoped that he [the ConsulGeneral] would come, accompanied by
one Jakri chief and by no other white men." However, more of this
message later on. All arrangements for the expedition had been
made by the officials at Sapele; and most
 6o THE BENIN MASSACRE excellent arrangements they
were, especially on the part of poor Kenneth Campbell, who was in
charge of the carriers, and had worked like a slave at setting
everything in perfect order. In consequence of the number of white
men going, — each of whom had three carriers ; two to carry
baggage, and one for camp bed, and the extra food wanted for their
maintenance,— the necessity of having to carry water for everyone,
rations for carriers themselves, and for the drum and fife band of the
Niger Coast Protectorate Force, which Phillips intended taking with
him to make some sort of show, the number of carriers mounted up
to some two hundred and forty. One hundred and eighty of these
were Jakris, supplied by the different chiefs in the Benin and Warri
Districts, and about sixty Kroo boys, supplied, some from the
Government Consulate at Sapele and Warri, and the rest kindly lent
from the different factories at both places. These Kroo boys are the
labourers of nearly all West Africa, and leave their country in
thousands yearly to go and work at different
 OUR EXPEDITION 6i places, returning after twelve months
with their year's wages in the shape of clothes, singlets, hats of
many and wonderful shapes, and other such - like articles calculated
to rouse the admiration of their fellow-countrymen, and so useful for
trade, money being absolutely useless on the Kroo Coast. They are a
wonderfully cheery, hard-working race these Kroo boys, and very
fairly honest, and the white men in West Africa would find it hard to
do without them. The other natives of that part of the world have a
very small relish for hard work. All these two hundred and forty men
we found that Campbell, with the help of Lyon (another Assistant
District Commissioner of Sapele), had numbered and told off, each
to the charge of his particular head man and load ; in fact, Campbell
had made all his arrangements as nearly perfect as possible. If it
had been only on poor Kenneth Campbells account, the expedition
deserved to have succeeded. Phillips left Old Calabar in the
Protectorate yacht Ivy on Sunday mornings 27th December,
accompanied by Captains Searle and Ringer of
 62 THE BENIN MASSACRE the Niger Coast Protectorate
Force, who were going on a military expedition in the Isokpo
Country up the New Calabar River, myself, and Mr. Powis, one of
Messrs. Miller Brothers' agents at Old Calabar, who had lived at
Gwatto for some time, and had been to Benin City on two or three
occasions a few years previously. We left the military expedition at
Degamah on the 28th December, returning ourselves to Bonny the ,
same day. There we saw Captain Gallwey, who was at that time
Vice-Consul of the district. It has been stated by several newspapers
that if Captain Gallwey, with his knowledge of the Benin City Country
and people, had known about this expedition, he would have
persuaded Phillips not to go. Of course Gallwey did not hear the
message received by Phillips afterwards ; but at the time we met
him he, like all the rest of us, never dreamt of anything serious
happening, and thought we should be entirely successful. Personally,
from what I had gathered in long talks with Captain Maling about
the Benin City people, I thought all along we should be
 OUR EXPEDITION 63 stopped, most probably at Gwatto.
That is, I expected we should be met by a body of Benin soldiers,
and told we could get no farther. I had said so about a month
previous to this to Phillips, and had bet him the large sum of ;^i that
we would not reach Benin City. He, poor old fellow, was most
sanguine about our success. Of course if we had been stopped, it
would have meant that, when sanctioned by the Foreign Office, the
next expedition to Benin City would be an armed one, and we should
have gone up with as many of the Force as could be spared from the
different posts we had to keep up, and been prepared to fight if
received with opposition. The King of Benin, in the treaty he signed
with Captain Gallwey, had agreed to place himself and his country
under H.M. Protectorate, and it was becoming a perfect disgrace
that in the Protectorate, particularly in a part so close to one of our
vice-consular districts, so terrible a state of affairs as that in, what
was not very improperly called. The City of Blood should continue.
As regards my opinion about being stopped,
 64 THE BENIN MASSACRE I learnt afterwards that this was
shared by both Crawford and Locke. However, I fancy they, like
myself, were only too ready to try any chance of getting up, none of
us ever dreaming of anything so treacherously cruel as the massacre
that took place. So absolutely treacherous was it, that it horrified all
the surrounding tribes, who said, "It be monkey palaver, it no be
man palaver," meaning that they never thought that any men could
have behaved so treacherously. We called in at Brass on the 29th
December to land some troops to relieve a detachment there,
leaving again the next day. From Brass also we took on board
Captain Maling, who had been on detachment for a short time there,
and also Dr. D'Arcy Irvine, whose time for going home on leave had
arrived, and who came round with us as far as Sapele. As Dr. Elliot
was going up on the expedition. Dr. Irvine took over his duties at
Sapele temporarily, and consequently was the doctor who tended
Locke and myself when we arrived back from the expedition as
wounded fugitives. Irvine waited
 OUR EXPEDITION 65 on afterwards for the Punitive
Expedition, a division of which he accompanied up the Jamieson
River. The Ivy arrived at New Benin on the 30th of December, and at
Sapele on New Year's Day, As Phillips was very anxious that some
member of each of the big trading firms should come with us, he
invited Mr. Gordon of the African Association, and Mr. Swainson of
Mr. Pinnock's firm, both of whom accepted the invitation gladly. Mr.
Swainson had visited Benin City several times already, once with
Captain Gallwey ; and had we been successful in getting there, his
knowledge and information would have been of immense value to
us. However, luckily for himself, though he didn't think so at the
time, he was suffering so badly from rheumatism that he was unable
to accompany us. All the Jakri carriers were sent off on the ist in
their canoes, with all our stores, etc., with orders to meet us at
Gwatto the next day.^ ^ On the 2nd of January, that is. The
expedition left Sapele about 7 a.m. on the 2nd January in the two
Protectorate launches. Primrose and Daisy ^ each of which was
towing a surf boat or lighter, in which were our carriers and the
drums and fifes.
 66 THE BENIN MASSACRE There were Phillips, the Acting
Consul-General ; Major Copland Crawford, Vice- Consul of the Benin
and Warri District ; Mr. Locke, District Commissioner of Warri, and
who acted as ViceConsul for Crawford when the latter was away on
leave; Captain Maling, of the i6th Lancers, and of the Niger Coast
Protectorate Force; Mr. Kenneth Campbell, a District Commissioner at
Sapele; Dr. Elliot, the medical officer of Sapele and Benin District ;
Mr. Lyon, also Assistant District Commissioner at Sapele, who
accompanied us as far as Gwatto; Messrs. Powis and Gordon, and
myself; and, leaving out the last mentioned, I think it would be hard
to find a better lot of men the wide world over. Every one of them
was fit and ready to go anywhere, and do anything. All of them were
men, in polo language, ^'hard to hustle off the ball." One thinks to
oneself that the whole continent of Africa is hardly worth one of
such men's lives. However, I suppose plenty of men quite as good
have lost their lives for as little, and they died doing their duty ; so
what more can one say ?
 OUR EXPEDITION 67 To continue the story : we had also
with us two Government interpreters; both were coloured men. One
of them, Herbert Clarke, afterwards escaped, and the other was
Towey, who had been with Nanna when Brohoemi was taken. He
was then taken to Old Calabar, and educated by the Protectorate
Government for interpreter's work. He turned out exceedingly well
afterwards. Both of these men went up in a kind of bicycling
costume — blue knickerbockers, stockings, and cloth tennis shoes.
Poor Towey! His swagger clothes were the cause of his death ; as
we heard afterwards that he was captured by the Benin men, who
said they would have let him go if he had been dressed like a native
; but being like a white man, he must be killed. We had also a guide,
— a Benin City man, called Basilli, — who had fled from Benin City
some years before, and who, I believe, was a scoundrel, as he must
have known something of what was going on. About 10.30 a.m., as
we were steaming down the Benin River, we met Chief Dore, the
head chief of the Benin River, in a canoe, with
 68 THE BENIN MASSACRE the messengers that had been
sent to the King of Benin a few days before. They brought back the
message already mentioned, namely, that the King of Benin was
extremely grateful for the unexpected present he had received ; but,
owing to the annual ** customs " being in the process of
celebration, he hoped the Consul-General would defer his visit for
one or two months, until he (the King) sent to tell him that he was
ready to receive him. The King hoped he would come then,
accompanied only by one Jakri chief and no white men. The
messenger added, that as they were leaving Benin City they heard
orders given for parties of soldiers to be sent to all the waterside
towns; but as this was usually done whenever any white men
arrived in the Benin City Country, no one thought any more of it.
However, it made both Crawford and myself suggest that it would be
advisable to send back the drum and fife band, as, owing to their
uniform, the Benin people might think we were bringing soldiers,
and this might well lead to a collision straight away. Phillips agreed
to this, and accordingly
 OUR EXPEDITION 69 the band was sent back in Chief
Dore's canoe, luckily for them, as their only arms consisted of
bandsmen's swords, and they could not have done much in the way
of resisting men armed with guns. We took the messengers with us
in the Primrose y and the chief one of them, a Jakri, — whose name
I am sorry to say I have forgotten,amost intelligent man, —
informed Phillips afterwards, that just as he was leaving the King's
house, the King had spoken to him very privately, and had told him
that if the white men really were coming up, he (the messenger)
was to come back as quickly as possible and inform him. This we
took to mean that the King understood that we really meant coming
to Benin City this time, and wanted to make preparations for
receiving us. The guess turned out more or less true, but the
preparations he made (namely, those for the ambush and massacre)
were hardly those we thought of. This man I met afterwards, when
we were escaping in a canoe on the 9th January, and he told me
that after he had
 70 THE BENIN MASSACRE taken Phillips' last message to
the King he had to run away, as the Benin men wanted to catch and
kill him ; he certainly looked nearly as much of a wreck as we did
that day, and we were fairly miserable-looking objects. Chief Dore
before he left us told us the Benin men meant to stop our getting to
Benin City, and tried to persuade Phillips not to go on ; but, as I
have said before, all the Jakris fear the Benin City men so much that
we thought nothing of his advice or warning. Chief Dore told me
afterwards that though he advised us not to go on at the time he
never dreamt of such cruel treachery as the Benin men showed. He
only meant that he thought we should be fired on if we insisted on
going any farther than Gwatto. It was he that first used the words I
have already quoted: ** It be monkey palaver, it no be man
palaver."
 CHAPTER V OUR EXPEDITION {continued) ON leaving us
Chief Dore went on to Sapele, taking the drums and fifes back with
him, while we proceeded on in the two launches down the Benin
River as far as the entrance to the Gwatto Creek, reaching there
about midday. Another of the big chiefs of the Benin River District,
Chief Dudu by name, lives about four miles up the Gwatto Creek,
but, like all the towns of the district, his has to be approached by a
small creek leading out of the Gwatto Creek. Phillips wanted to see
Chief Dudu, but as it was very low tide when we arrived at the
entrance of the narrow creek, at which time only the smallest canoes
can get up, and ias we hadn't any time to spare, a 71
 72 THE BENIN MASSACRE message was left for Chief Dudu
to follow us up and come on to Gwatto. Starting off again, we
arrived at 4 p.m. at Gilli Gilli, the first Benin village on the Gwatto
Creek, which is about one and a half mile from Gwatto itself, and
about thirty-five miles from the Benin River. The Gwatto Creek,
which at its entrance to the Benin River is some three-quarters of a
mile or more wide, at Gilli Gilli narrows down to about fifty yards
wide, but with plenty of water, eight to ten feet or more, for
launches. Immediately on our arrival at Gilli Gilli, the first thing done
was to send the same messengers back to the King of Benin with
the following reply from Phillips: — **The Acting Consul - General
had received the King's message, and was very pleased to hear that
his friend, the King of Benin, had been gratified with the present
sent up to him. As he had accepted this present, it proved the King
was the white man's friend, and he [the Acting Consul-General] was
now coming to visit the King with nine other white men, and was
 OUR EXPEDITION 73 bringing a much larger present with
him. He regretted he could not wait two months, as the King
suggested, but he had so much work to do in other parts of the
Protectorate that he was obliged to come up now, as there were
several matters he wished to talk over with the King." As soon as a
canoe had been obtained for them the messengers left at once, t.e.
about five o'clock, and were to reach Benin City the next day.
Another message was sent for a man called Dudu Jerri to come
down and see the Acting Consul-General. This Dudu Jerri was the
head man of a big village of Jakris settled at the waterside below the
Benin town of Gwatto, and was a great friend of the Benin City
people. In fact, he was supposed to be too much so at times, as he
was suspected of giving them information of every expedition that
left the Benin River with the object of trying to get to Benin City.
This information he would get from his people when they were
trading at the different factories on the river, Dudu Jerri turned up
soon after, and he was \
 / 74 THE BENIN MASSACRE also full of warnings and
forebodings, all of which we laughed at at the time. He declared that
Gwatto was full of Benin soldiers, who wouldn't let us land there,
and would fire on us if we attempted to do so. However, he was sent
back to Gwatto to tell the chief of the town and Ijis people that "we
were coming entirely on a peace palaver ; that the King of Benin
was our very good friend, having just accepted a present from us;
that we were bringing him a still bigger ^dash,' and that we were
only going to Benin City to see the King in an entirely friendly way."
He was also bidden to tell them to have some quarters ready for us
on the next day. At Gilli Gilli we found all our Jakri carriers had
arrived with their canoes apd our stores, etc. ; and soon after we
arrived, three or four of us, including Phillips, Crawford, and myself,
landed to look at the place. We found it was only a very small village
of about ten halfruined huts, deserted entirely except for an elderly
female, who received us in the most friendly way. She ^informed us
that all the
 OUR EXPEDITION 75 men had gone away, as they were
frightened. It was suggested at one time, by Crawford I think, that
we should land our carriers and stores here, and let them march
round to Gwatto, so as to avoid the trouble which would be caused
by the ladder at Gwatto, which we had heard such a lot about from
Crawford and Maling. However, the suggestion was not carried out.
By the way, while on the launch, we had all been busy learning from
the messengers who had been up to Benin the proper form of
salutation. This consisted of making three circles with the right hand
closed, thumb pointing upwards over the palm of the left hand held
open, then rubbing the two open palms together, and at the same
time nodding slowly and gravely like a Chinese mandarin. Poor
Crawford tried this salutation on the Benin men when they were
shooting at us, but, alas, it was of no avail. We had a very cheery
dinner that night, all the ten of us dining together on the steam
launch Daisy,
 76 THE BENIN MASSACRE On the morning of the 3rd of
January Dudu Jerri came back from Gwatto to say that the Gwatto
Chief had got a house ready for us to sleep in, and was very glad to
hear we were coming. We didn't leave Gilli Gilli till about midday
ourselves, but our Jakri carriers were employed clearing the creek of
weeds and cutting down branches which were likely to interfere with
the launches, as about here the creek became very narrow. It was
only about twenty minutes' steaming to Gwatto, but on arriving
there Phillips decided not to land till about 4 p.m., when it would be
cooler. -At Gwatto, as at all other Benin cities situated on the
waterside, there are two villages of the same name, one being that
of the Benin City men, built some little distance away from the creek
on the top of the bank, which averages, I should think, from twenty
to thirty feet high, and the other being a waterside village of the
same name, which consists of a few huts occupied by the Jakris and
Ejaws trading at that place. As I have said before, these trading
tribes have a most whole 
 OUR EXPEDITION 77 some dread of the Benin City men,
and always make their big and more permanent villages on the other
side of the creek, a few mfen only living on the Benin side to collect
the oil, etc. that is brought down, and to take it over to their
brethren on the other side, who paddle it down to the factories on
the river. A few; years ago there were two factories at Gwatto, * the
agent for one of which had been Mr. Powis, who was with us now ;
but in consequence of the King of Benin stopping trade, both of the
factories had to be given up, and when we went into Gwatto itself
we saw not a vestige of either of them, not even a signboard that
Mr^.s* Powis expected to see, announcing that it (the signboard)
was Messrs. A. Miller Brothers^ factory. The carriers arrived very
soon after thd launches, and Campbell at once proceeded to get all
the stores, etc. landed. Meanwhile some of our demon
photographers — I believe there were six or seven cameras amongst
our party of nine — began taking photos of everything they could
get within range of. Amongst
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