Compensations of Plunder
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1700s
20th century
A01=Justin M Jacobs
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analysis
antiquities
antiquity
archaeologists
archival
archives
art
artifact
artifacts
Author_Justin M Jacobs
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Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=HBJF
Category=HD
Category=NHF
Category=NK
china
chinese
colonial
colonialism
colonialist
COP=United States
cosmopolitan
cultural
culture
Delivery_Delivery within 10-20 working days
elite
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
excavation
global
historical
history
IL
international
Language_English
museums
PA=Available
postcolonial
Price_€20 to €50
PS=Active
SN=Silk Roads
softlaunch
stealing
stolen
theft
thievery
thieves
treasure
treasures
western world
worldwide
wwi
Product details
- ISBN 9780226712017
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 06 Jul 2020
- Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
- Language: English
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From the 1790s until World War I, Western museums filled their shelves with art and antiquities from around the world. These objects are now widely seen as "stolen" or "plundered" from their countries of origin, and demands for their return grow louder by the day. In this pathbreaking study, Justin M. Jacobs challenges the longstanding assumption that coercion, corruption, and deceit were chiefly responsible for the exodus of cultural treasures from northwestern China. Based upon a close analysis of previously neglected archival sources in English, French, and Chinese, Jacobs finds that many local elites in China acquiesced to the removal of art and antiquities abroad, understanding their trade as currency for a cosmopolitan elite. In the decades after the 1911 Revolution, however, these antiquities went from being "diplomatic capital" to disputed icons of the emerging nation-state. A new generation of Chinese scholars began to criminalize the prior activities of archaeologists, erasing all memory of the pragmatic barter relationship that once existed in China. Recovering the voices of those local officials, scholars, and laborers who shaped the global trade in antiquities, The Compensations of Plunder brings historical grounding to a highly contentious topic in modern Chinese history and informs heated debates over cultural restitution throughout the world.
Justin M. Jacobs is associate professor of history at American University. He is the author of Indiana Jones in History and Xinjiang and the Modern Chinese State. He also serves as editor of The Silk Road journal and hosts Beyond Huaxia, a podcast on East Asian history.
