The Great Plunder: How China Lost Its Treasures in the 19th and 20th Centuries

This book provides a comprehensive overview of the dispersal of Chinese cultural relics from the late 19th to the early 20th century. Following the Opium Wars, there was a surge of Western interest in uncovering treasures in China, leading to the removal of countless artifacts by foreign explorers and antique dealers. These national treasures were lost overseas, making their return to China nearly impossible. Beginning with the exploits of China’s Western explorers, such as Sven Hedin, the book unfolds in eleven chapters, detailing the adventures of figures like Stein, von Le Coq, Otani Kozui, and others in locations such as Lop Nur, Dunhuang, and the Blackwater City. It chronicles their plundering of precious cultural relics, including the Berzic Caves wall paintings, Han Dynasty documents, Dunhuang documents, and numerous other valuable artifacts. Filled with meticulously researched historical details, this book serves as both a lament and a commemoration of a century of Chinese cultural relics dispersed worldwide.

Chang Qing has bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the Department of Archaeology at Peking University and a Ph.D. in Chinese Art History from the University of Kansas, specializing in Chinese grotto temple art. After 2000, he served as a postdoctoral lecturer and visiting professor at the University of Missouri-St. Louis, where he taught Asian and Chinese art history and worked as a research curator at the Dallas Museum of Art in Texas. Since 2018, he has been a professor and doctoral supervisor at the School of Art, Sichuan University. Huang Shan has a passion for art, history, and ancient languages. She graduated from Central Saint Martins, University of the Arts London, with a master’s degree in 2021. Due to her interest in ancient artifacts and geopolitics, she is pursuing a Ph.D. in history at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. Her main research focuses on the dissemination and circulation of artifacts in ancient Central Asian cultures.