Regular readers of this blog will know that Thomas Bruce, AKA the Seventh Earl of Elgin, who removed the sculptures from the Parthenon, was not the only one in his family with a reputation for pilfering historic artefacts.

His son, the Eighth Earl of Elgin was responsible for the ransacking of Beijing’s Summer Palace and the fallout from this single event still causes controversy and tension between Britain and China today, whenever one of the artefacts is put up for public auction.

The full documentary is available to listen to on BBC’s iPlayer.

Some Bronze Zodiac heads looted from the Summer Palace have now been recovered and are on display in Chinese Museums

From:
BBC History Magazine

2 February 2015 Last updated at 08:52
The palace of shame that makes China angry
By Chris Bowlby BBC News, Beijing

There is a deep, unhealed historical wound in the UK’s relations with China – a wound that most British people know nothing about, but which causes China great pain. It stems from the destruction in 1860 of the country’s most beautiful palace.

It’s been described as China’s ground zero – a place that tells a story of cultural destruction that everyone in China knows about, but hardly anyone outside.
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Both of the major auction houses dealing with fine art seem to be equally comfortable about selling looted & disputed artefacts. In many cases however, subsequent public outcry has led to postponement of the sale. In this case, Christies in Hong Kong is selling yet more artefacts that came from Beijing’s Summer Palace. This looting during the ransacking of the Summer Palace is particularly relevant of course, as it took place under the instruction of the Eighth Earl of Elgin – the son of Lord Elgin who removed the sculptures from the Parthenon in Athens.

From:
Artinfo

Looted Imperial Treasure Hits the Block at Christie’s Hong Kong

HONG KONG— There were just three lots in the sale of imperial treasures from the Fonthill Collection at Christie’s Hong Kong on December 1, but they attracted intense interest and raked in a total of HK$226.3 million ($29 million). The reason? Their links to one of the most infamous acts of foreign plunder inflicted on 19th-century imperial China.

The Fonthill Collection was the creation of a passionate collector by the name of Alfred Morrison (1821-1897). The Chinese works in the Christie’s sale came to him via one Lord Loch of Drylaw, who served as private secretary to Lord Elgin on the latter’s fateful mission to China at the end of the Second Opium War. Lord Loch acquired the plundered items after the 1860 destruction and looting by French and British troops of the Old Summer Palace in Beijing.
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Many experts feel that China’s attempts to catalogue (with the aim of eventually recovering) the artefacts looted from the Summer Palace in Beijing is unlikely to be successful.

From:
France 24

01 November 2010 – 17H15
China bid to regain looted relics a tough task: experts

AFP – China’s call on museums and antique collectors around the world to return relics looted from the Old Summer Palace in Beijing 150 years ago is unlikely to yield any significant results, experts say.

The Army Museum in Paris and London’s Victoria and Albert Museum are just two of the institutions that possess items taken from the former resort for Qing dynasty emperors — and are not about to give them up easily, they say.
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For some time, China has been trying to catalogue the vast numbers of looted Chinese artefacts that have ended up in museums & private collections around the world. Based on data from UNESCO, it appears that of all the Museums holding disputed artefacts, the British Museum has by far the most with twenty three thousand in its collection (only two thousand of which are part of its permanent displays).

From:
People’s Daily

British Museum holds highest number of looted Chinese relics
15:57, October 25, 2010

Data from the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) shows that a total of more than 1.6 million Chinese cultural relics looted in the past are now housed in 47 museums worldwide, and the British Museum collected the largest number of them.

Currently, it has collected a total of 23,000 Chinese relics, and about 2,000 Chinese relics are on long-term display in the museum.
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One hundred and fifty years after the looting & destruction of Beijing’s Summer Palace under the instruction of the Eighth Earl of Elgin (son of the seventh earl who removed the sculptures from the Parthenon), China is still trying to retrieve some of their cultural treasures that were taken following the event.

From:
New York Times

China Remembers a Vast Crime
By SHEILA MELVIN
Published: October 21, 2010

BEIJING — In early October of 1860, the commanders of the British and French forces waging war on Qing Dynasty China held a tense conference outside the gates of the Garden of Perfect Brightness — Yuanmingyuan — on the western outskirts of Beijing.

Victory was at hand, the emperor having fled on an “autumnal hunting tour,” and the meeting concerned its spoils: Each side feared the other would obtain more booty from looting the huge complex.
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During a visit to Athens, China’s Premier, Wen Jiabao toured the New Acropolis Museum & pledged to support Greece in their efforts to secure the return of the Parthenon Marbles that are in the British Museum.

This display of support is not unexpected, considering that China has in recent years been making many efforts to track down artefacts looted from Beijing’s Summer Palace under the instruction of the Eighth Earl of Elgin (son of the Seventh Earl who removed the Parthenon Sculptures).

From:
Athens News Agency

10/21/2010
Chinese support for return of Marbles

(ANA-MPA) — Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, accompanied by Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou, toured the Acropolis in central Athens on Sunday morning, where the return of stolen antiquities and cultural treasures to their country of origin was discussed, amongst others. (ANA-MPA)

Wen Jiabao pledged to support Greece’s standing demand for the repatriation of the Parthenon Marbles, currently displayed at the British Museum in London, to the new Acropolis Museum.

The Chinese premier also recounted the looting and destruction in 1860 of the old summer palace Yuan Ming Yuan, outside Beijing, by British troops. The soldiers were acting on the orders of then British High Commissioner to China Lord Elgin, the son of the notorious Lord Elgin, the diplomat who connived of the operation to slice off and (ANA-MPA) remove the sculptures from the Ottoman-occupied Parthenon less than two decades before the Greek War of Independence.

The looting & destruction of the Summer Palace in Beijing (under the instruction of the Eighth Earl of Elgin – son of Lord Elgin who removed the Marbles from the Parthenon) has had lasting consequences for China – many of the artefacts are still located abroad & many more were destroyed. China is now making efforts to piece together some of the surviving fragments from the building to reconstruct the original artefacts.

From:
Daily Telegraph

Piece by piece, China reconstructs treasures destroyed by British troops
By Peter Foster, Beijing
Published: 6:13PM BST 22 Aug 2010

Almost 150 years after British and French troops looted and destroyed the Old Summer Palace in Beijing, Chinese archaeologists are painstakingly patching together treasured historical artefacts excavated from the ruins.

Archaeology students are piecing together thousands of fragments of Qing Dynasty porcelain that have been excavated over the past 30 years from what is known in China as the “Gardens of Perfect Brightness”.
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Following China’s plans to track down artefacts looted from Beijing’s Summer Palace, the first reports are now coming back of positive identifications of artefacts. What remains to be seen though is whether China is going to take any sort of action to retrieve any of them.

From:
China Daily

Experts track relics from old palace
By Lin Shujuan (China Daily)
Updated: 2010-01-19 07:47

Painting dates back to Song Dynasty in Boston Museum: expert

China has recovered significant records of the Old Summer Palace from a recent effort to trace and document relics taken from the garden that are now in foreign countries, a park official said yesterday.
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The looting of the Summer Palace in Beijing (an act carried out largely under the instruction of the Eighth Earl of Elgin – Son of the Seventh Earl who took the Parthenon Marbles) continues to cause controversy today, due to the fact that many of the artefacts from the site have ended up in museums around the world – although often they are not even on public display.

Now though, China is making a first step towards resolving the issue, building up a catalogue of the surviving artefacts & where they are located.

From:
Wall Street Journal

China Goes Treasure Hunting
Nationalism, not art history, drives the hunt for Summer Palace artifacts.
OPINION ASIA – NOVEMBER 23, 2009, 1:16 P.M. ET
By PETER NEVILLE-HADLEY

Next year Beijing will mark the 150th anniversary of the burning and looting of the Summer Palace by British and French forces. But the city has hit on an odd way to commemorate these events: In preparation, Palace Director Chen Mingjie recently announced that researchers will attempt to catalogue every item looted from the complex and now in museums overseas.

At first sight this might appear to be a purely academic exercise. Mr. Chen says he wants to identify works of art, not repatriate them, but on closer examination the plan has all the makings of a public-relations effort aimed at the Chinese people themselves.
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China is sending teams of experts to catalogue the Chinese artefacts in museums abroad. This raises the question though of why the Museums do not already have such records of their own – or if they do have them, why they are unwilling to share them.

From:
Modern Ghana

CHINESE RESEARCH ARTEFACTS LOOTED IN ANGLO-FRENCH ATTACK ON SUMMER PALACE IN 1860: DO “GREAT MUSEUMS” NOT KEEP RECORDS?
By Kwame Opoku, Dr.

“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. (1)

China has announced its intention of sending groups of researchers to various museums in the West, especially France, Britain and United States, such as the British Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum to draw a list of the artefacts that were looted in 1860 during the Anglo-French invasion of Beijing, (then Peking).(2) Victor Hugo had expressed the wish and the hope that one day France and Britain would return the looted objects taken from an Asian country, thousands of miles away from France and Britain, that had been attacked because of its resistance to European imperialism. (3)
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Further coverage of the decision by China to try & catalogue the artefacts in museum around the world that were looted from the Summer Palace. The British Museum says that they don’t see this as a threat – but then they said in the past that the New Acropolis Museum adds nothing to the argument for the reunification of the Parthenon Sculptures.

From:
The Times

October 20, 2009
China in worldwide treasure hunt for artefacts looted from Yuan Ming Yuan palace

China is to send a team of artefact hunters to nearly 50 countries to track down thousands of treasures looted by foreign armies 150 years ago.

The experts will scour museums, libraries and private collections in Britain, the US, France, Japan and elsewhere to photograph and catalogue what was taken from the Yuan Ming Yuan, popularly known as the Old Summer Palace, after British and French armies sacked it in 1860 then picked through what remained in 1900.
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China hopes to send experts to foreign museums to build a more complete catalogue of the Chinese artefacts looted from Beijing’s Summer Palace in foreign museums (many of which are not on public display).

From:
Agence France Presse

China experts to search abroad for looted relics
(AFP) – 2 days ago

BEIJING — China will send a team of experts to museums around the world in an effort to record more than a million cultural relics it says were looted from Beijing’s Old Summer Palace, state press reported Monday.

Museums, libraries and private collections in the United States, Britain, France and Japan will be the primary targets, the China Daily reported, citing the director of Beijing’s Yuanmingyuan, or Old Summer Palace.
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