The recent announcement by Christie’s of yet another auction including Summer Palace plunder continues the long tradition of corporate and national indifference to the depredations of European armies in Africa and Asia in the nineteenth century. Imperial and colonial warfare always resulted in plunder. This is not news, but does need to be remembered in a form other than the public sale of stolen artifacts. More importantly, no one has yet been able to arrive at a formula for addressing what are obviously understood by the descendents of victims of these events as ongoing forms of humiliation. It does not help the situation to read a Christie’s statement claiming that “for each and every item … there is clear legal title.” That is not simply preposterous, but Orwellian. How can there be clear legal title to looted objects? That bit of mendacity is further compounded by Christie’s claim that they also adhere to international law on cultural property. There was no international law in 1860 dealing with cultural property, which requires, I think, another way of thinking about the status and ownership of the objects in question. The same could be said for the museums like the Victoria and Albert, the British Museum, the Guimet in Paris, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and numerous military museums and officer’s messes in Europe and North America that hold objects taken in and around Beijing in 1860 and 1900-1901. Insofar as they are capable, the animal heads on sale at Christie’s stand in for this vast amount of plunder. Turning them into commodities only makes matters worse.
There is also a certain irony in all of this. Since 1997, when Hong Kong was returned to China, the Yuan Ming Gardens in Beijing was the site of the “Never Forget National Humiliation” memorial wall. There inscribed on numerous plaques was the sordid history of European and American incursions into China, of opium dealing, and the imposition of unequal treaties that made up the “century of humiliation.” For reasons that are unclear, the monument was taken down last year. Perhaps it had something to do with the Olympics. But given this recent reminder of the violent behavior of Westerners in nineteenth century China, I would not be too surprised to see a new monument, one that might be titled “Never ever forget national humiliation.”
comments:
Perhaps it is an unpleasant fact, but nearly all property to which there is clear legal title was at one point looted--all of England (by William the -->Conqueror<--) for example, the US (which was taken from folks who may not have had a modern understanding of property, but that it was wrested from them is indisputable), and Normandy France, which was, of course, named after its most illustrious looters, the Normans, or Vikings, who ended up settling down there.
If, for example, China were to adopt the notion of the alienatability of land, will every property transaction in Tibet be regarded by its Tibetan population as a humiliation? How about the Quighurs?
Obviously the sale of the Summer Palace relics is insensitive. Censure of the sale is probably warranted. But trying to legitimize any condemnation under cover of law is, well, more than just a tad disingenuous--on more than one level.
February 25, 2009 8:23 AM
February 25, 2009 1:15 PM
Dinesh said...
Trying to bring Tibet into this argument amounts to little more than a face saving measure to downplay the hypocrisy of auctioning off looted relics.
February 25, 2009 2:17 PM
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