Presentation I made for a Cultural Heritage Law class. Main point: China does not believe these items should have been taken from the summer palace because the war shouldn't have been fought in the first place. . . Their arguments have some merit.

2. Thesis
“The sale of these and other stolen
Chinese artifacts abroad continues to
this day, driving China to recently
implement a series of laws and
treaties in an effort to recover what
was lost and protect what remains of
this ancient nation’s history”

3. History Of China
• In Ancient Days. . . (i.e. 2070 B.C.!)

4. Qing Dynasty

5. British Empire

6. The Opium Wars: Britain’s Great Crime
• Special Impact on Modern Chinese Cultural
Resource Law
• Events Leading Up To The Wars:
– Cultural Differences (Britain Forced Its Views on
China)
– Economic Problems (Britain was Going Broke)
– Opium (Britain was Illegally Importing It).

7. Opium. . . A Cultural Problem

8. Opium Trade: A Cultural Problem

9. Opium Trade: A Health Issue

10. Opium Trade
• Illegal in Britain Itself:
“Since it is not permitted to do harm to your own
country, then even less should you let it be passed
on to the harm of other countries -- how much less
to China! Of all that China exports to foreign
countries, there is not a single thing which is not
beneficial to people: they are of benefit when
eaten, or of benefit when used, or of benefit when
resold: all are beneficial. Is there a single article
from China which has done any harm to foreign
countries?”

11. War Begins
• China moves to protect itself:
– 60 dealers, 20,000 boxes of Opium
• Britain responds on the offensive:
– “a grievous sin—a wicked offence—an atrocious
violation of justice, for which England had the right, a
strict and undeniable right . . . to demand reparation
by force if refused peaceable applications.”
– Troops sent to China
• War Begins

12. The Unequal Treaties
• Britain got:
– Opened ports
– $$$ in reparations
– Hong Kong
• China got:
– Loss of Pride
– Destruction of property and cultural history due to
the battles

13. Second Opium War
• Renegotiating treaties: UNFAIR
• Britain, France, US, and Russia v. China
• The Great Looting of the Summer Palaces. . .

14. “Officers and men, English and French, were
rushing about in a most unbecoming manner,
each eager for the acquisition of valuables.
Most of the Frenchman were armed with large
club, and what they could not carry away, they
smashed to atoms.
No one just then cared for gazing tranquilly at
the works of art; each one was bent on
acquiring what was most valuable.”

15. • Item’s Stolen
– State robes
– Antique boxes and furniture
– Items in the silk warehouses
– Brones
– Clocks
– Jeweled treasures
– Money
– The roof of certain buildings (originally mistaken
as bass, but later proven to be pure gold.)
• In total, some 1.5 million artifacts were taken

18. British Display
• The British actually put their portion of the
loot on display for sale amongst their men in a
local temple
– Jade ornaments
– Statues and statuettes
– Furs
– Silks and costumes

21. “All these [treasures] were plundered
and pulled to pieces, floors were
literally covered with fur robes, jade
ornaments, porcelain, sweetmeats,
and beautiful woodcarvings.”

23. And then, Destruction

24. Destruction

25. Elgin’s Son, Lord Elgin

26. “You can scarcely imagine the beauty
and magnificence of the places we
burnt. It made one’s heart sore to
burn them; in fact, these places were
so large, and we were so pressed for
time, that we could not plunder them
carefully. Quantities of gold
ornaments were burnt, considered as
brass.”

27. "'Two robbers breaking into a
museum, devastating, looting and
burning, leaving laughing hand-in-
hand with their bags full of
treasures; one of the robbers is
called France and the other
Britain.“—Victor Hugo

29. It Was A War China
Never Forgot, and
Never Forgave.

30. Now: Display and Sale
• Display
– Palace of Fontainebleau
– British Museum
– Metropolitan Museum of Art
• Sale
– Christie’s
– Various British Auction Houses

31. Efforts of Recovery: Non-legal Based
• Cataloging what was stolen
– In 2009, China began a massive effort to catalogue what
was stolen and where it is now located.
• 1.5 million relics housed in 200 museums in 47 countries
• Accomplishing little.
– Problem: Most reside in private collections so they have to
wait for them to go on sale.

32. Efforts of Recovery: Non-legal Based
• Buying Them Back
– This gold box was bought for 490,000 Pounds
– Other items in this collection have sold for a total
of 1.5 Million Pounds.
• A special fund

33. Efforts of Recovery: Looking to the Law
• Domestically:
– Law of the People's Republic of China on
Protection of Cultural Relics (Order of the
President No.76) (2002)
• “Moral encouragement or Material rewards”
• No Cultural Relics can be removed from China without
permission. Strict enforcement.
• Penalty:
– Huge Fines
– The Death Penalty for Looters (as late as 2003)
– Imprisonment

34. Efforts of Recovery: Looking to the Law
• Internationally
– Lawsuits seeks to stop the private sale of such
resources (i.e. Bronze Heads—lost case causes
problems)
• Implementation of Stronger Customs Regulations against
auction houses
• Conventions
– 1954 Hague Convention
– 1970 UNESCO Convention
• Treaties
– US: Treaty imposes import restrictions on China’s
cultural heritage from 75,000 B.C. on

35. Conclusion
• Issue of International Law
– Retroactive
– Defining Cultural Property
• Similar to the Elgin Marbles
– Return of Hong Kong—Items “Stolen” not
“looted”
• What will happen?

36. Cool Fact!
• “They dug through three subterranean streams and
poured molten copper for the outer coffin, and the
tomb was fitted with models of palaces, pavilions and
offices, as well as fine vessels, precious stones and
rarities. Artisans were ordered to fix up crossbows so
that any thief breaking in would be shot. All the
country’s streams, the Yellow River and the Yangtze
were reproduced in quicksilver and by some
mechanical means made to flow in a miniature ocean.
The heavenly constellations were shown above and the
regions of the earth below (quoting a translation of
Sima Qian’s work.”