EMPIRE ON CANVAS, MORALITY IN QUESTION

Besides preserving the past, Art scrutinises the narratives through which the past is interpreted, contends PAT ONUKWULI

When a nation chooses what to hang on its walls, particularly in the diplomatic heart of another country, it is not merely curating art; it is curating memory, meaning, and moral posture. The controversy surrounding the installation of a Royal Navy painting depicting the 1851 bombardment of Lagos at the British High Commission is therefore not incidental. It is emblematic of a deeper, unresolved tension: the persistent inclination to aestheticised empire while neutralising its violence.

At first glance, the artwork itself appears composed, almost restrained. British warships are positioned with precision, their cannons discharging in disciplined sequence. Smoke rises over Lagos in a manner that suggests control rather than chaos. The visual syntax is unmistakable: this is not conquest, but “intervention”; not invasion, but “restoration of order.”

Yet this framing depends on a quiet but powerful semantic transformation. Language is softened, edges are blurred, and meaning is re-engineered. What was a calculated military operation to depose Oba Kosoko and restructure Lagos’s political authority becomes, in effect, a narrative of necessity. What was coercion is recast as responsibility. What was asymmetry in force is presented as balance in purpose.

This is where the moral question sharpens. The historical record makes clear that the bombardment was not an abstract clash of equals but a deliberate act of imperial projection. It resulted in regime change, the installation of Akitoye, and ultimately the incorporation of Lagos into British colonial rule by 1861. To present such an episode through imagery that foregrounds discipline while erasing disruption is not merely selective; it is sanitising.

Sanitisation is the first layer of distortion. The trauma, displacement, and human cost of the bombardment are absent, replaced by a composed spectacle of naval efficiency. War, in this rendering, becomes orderly, almost procedural. Catastrophe is repackaged as competence.

Closely following is narrative bias. The composition itself encodes hierarchy: British ships dominate the canvas, rendered with clarity and authority, while Lagosian resistance is marginalised, visually diminished, and historically subdued. The result is a familiar binary: the rational, civilising force versus the indistinct “other.” In this formulation, African agency is not simply reduced; it is structurally obscured.

From here, justification emerges almost effortlessly. If the image conveys inevitability, if British victory appears both rightful and ordained, then the methods employed recede from scrutiny. The implication, subtle but enduring, is that outcome validates process. This is the enduring logic of imperial storytelling: success confers legitimacy.

Such framing cannot be separated from the broader function of propaganda, not necessarily in its overt, orchestrated form, but in its quieter, inherited manifestation. Historical memory is curated. The official explanation for the invasion, namely the end of the slave trade, has long been contested, with scholars such as J.F.A. Ajayi arguing that economic and political control were central motivations. Yet in celebratory depictions, such complexities are flattened. What remains is a purified narrative, coherent, affirming, and largely insulated from moral interrogation.

The reaction to the painting’s display underscores that this is not a purely academic concern. Historians, activists, and cultural institutions have described the artwork as “disgusting,” “deeply distasteful,” and emblematic of a failure to grasp the horrors of empire. Their objection is not to history itself, but to its uncritical elevation. An embassy, after all, is not a museum of detached memory; it is a living symbol of contemporary values. To display such imagery without robust contextualisation risks signalling endorsement rather than reflection.

Defenders of the artwork argue that it serves as a “provocative reminder” of history or as recognition of naval efforts to suppress the slave trade. This position is not without nuance. But it raises a critical question: can a reminder that aesthetically privileges power over suffering ever be morally neutral? Or does its very form, its composition, its emphasis, its omissions, inevitably tilt it toward glorification?

This brings us to the deeper issue: desensitisation. When war is repeatedly framed as spectacle, whether through paintings, monuments, or curated narratives, it reshapes collective understanding. Violence becomes abstracted, even dignified. Future generations may come to interpret conflict not as a failure of human systems, but as a legitimate instrument of policy, provided it is executed with sufficient discipline and followed by victory.

Ultimately, what is at stake is a clash between political myth-making and human reality. Nations, understandably, seek coherent and affirming narratives. But when those narratives depend on the neutralisation of invasion as “engagement,” subjugation as “order,” and conquest as “duty,” they cross from remembrance into moral distortion.

The question, then, is not whether such artworks should exist. They are part of the historical record. The question is whether they should be elevated, particularly in sensitive diplomatic contexts, without confronting the full weight of what they represent. Therefore, to interrogate such images is not an act of erasure but one of restoration, reinstating history to its full, unvarnished complexity. It is to insist that collective memory must extend beyond the vantage point of power to include the lived realities of those upon whom that power was imposed.

In the final analysis, art does more than preserve the past; it scrutinises the narratives through which that past is interpreted and legitimised. When it fails in this duty, it no longer reflects history; it refines and distorts it, becoming an instrument of selective amnesia. And in that distortion lies the enduring tension: empire preserved on canvas, but its morality left in question.

Dr. Onukwuli is a legal scholar and public affairs analyst. patonukwuli2003@yahoo.co.uk