Between the wheelings and dealings of ancient civilizations and the spoils of war, antiquities have circulated the globe.
Jacobs problematizes the modern lens through which society sees these turn-of-the-century exchanges.
Below is our conversation, lightly edited for clarity.
A centaur and a Lapith struggling in a scene from the Elgin marbles.Photo: Carole Raddato / Wikimedia Commons
Justin Jacobs:My original area of specialty is modern Chinese history.
So that was what I did my PhD in.
People always ask me, they say it seems very exotic.
The cover of Plunder?, Justin Jacobs’ new book. Photo: The University of Chicago Press
How do you get into modern Chinese history?
I knew nothing about China back then, but the game was so much fun.
I just played it endlessly.
After that, you just want the experience to continue after youve conquered China like 200 times.
Gizmodo:And that interest persisted.
Jacobs:That low-level interest continued into college.
And then my third year I tried it again and it finally stuck.
Actually, that turned into academia and I went and got a Ph.D. in modern Chinese history.
Growing up a white boy in American suburbia, nothing was cooler and more fun than Indiana Jones.
Its one of the best places to preserve ancient antiquities outside of Egypt.
Its incredibly dry and there are ruins that go back thousands of years.
Its often referred to as the Silk Road area.
So I thought, what can I find in the Chinese source base?
It couldnt just be what Westerners were saying about themselves.
Is it possible to find what they thought of these people?
And thats not what I found.
Gizmodo:Whatdidyou find?
Long story short, I found that the Chinese elites praised them to the skies.
It wasnt just modest praise.
Our view today largely is that you go into a major Western museum and its like a crime scene.
The mainstream assumption now is that these things were stolen or acquired by immoral imperialist means.
And the thing that was really powerful for me is that I didnt just have Westerners talking about themselves.
I had Chinese voices.
And that is not so easily dismissed, to have native voices saying these things about these foreigners.
No country goes to war over archaeologists.
Ive actually written two books, one a more scholarly monograph, and then this one.
How do we make sense of this?
What were the means by which things got into Western museums?
And its complicated, as everything is in history.
We need to explain why that is the case.
Gizmodo:You mention giving case study examples that people can grasp.
These are artifacts around the world that people are very familiar with.
The Rosetta Stone is another example thatsin a crosshairssometimes.
I think what is important to do is to acknowledge that, yes, those ugly attitudes were there.
But we need to scratch beyond that.
Gizmodo:What do the sources on the ground say?
Its not so much the haughty imperialist anymore.
And yes, theres the racism.
Yes, theres the imperialism.
That was there, but thats not why they let them take these things away.
Gizmodo:Can you give an example?
Jacobs:One of my favorite ones is the British archeologist Aurel Stein.
He did four expeditions to northwestern China from 1900 to 1930, but that was always his backup plan.
They still had the right to say no.
All it took was people in the host country to say, I dont want to work with you.
I dont want to stamp your passport.
I dont want to give you permission.
Im not going to let you hire the laborers or the camels or the donkeys that you need.
If they were willing to say no, that was enough.
Sometimes battles already happened completely independent of archaeology.
Then once the soldiers are in, things will enter that community and theyll be studied.
But no country goes to war over archaeologists.
Stein looked for another country that would say yes, and the Qing Empirethe Chinesesaid yes.
They [locals] were getting something out of it.
They were getting something out of it that they perceived as more valuable than what he was taking away.
You see that sort of cultural exchange.
In the case of some of the scrolls from China, theres upcycling of these diplomatic gifts.
Jacobs:Regifting, to use the modern term.
Jacobs:That question goes right to the heart of the matter.
Gizmodo:So what were attitudes towards those antiquities at the time?
Jacobs:Theyre thinking in terms of private property.
These things dont belong to the nation.
Now over time, nationalist ideas take root everywhere.
And the Westerners really are the ones who actually seed those ideas as well.
We believe its priceless.
Well, eventually they [locals] do agree with them.
Were really twisting and perverting history here to make these cases.
I have a hard time supporting those arguments simply because I know the original context.
I know that this was not viewed as a symbol of the nation.
This was 2,000 years ago.
The ancient Greeks spoke a different language than modern Greeks that would be mutually unintelligible today.
It was originally a symbol of Athenian imperialism to other Greek city states.
Were really twisting and perverting history here to make these cases.
Gizmodo:So those artifacts didnt have political value back then?
Theres absolutely a political aspect to that back then.
Theyre not just going to give it away for nothing.
Its going to be part of a larger deal, a larger acknowledgment.
General public goodwill, something like that.
Gizmodo:What do you think the responsibility is of museums, cultural institutions, in this conversation?
Is their responsibility coming down hard when it comes to disclosing provenance histories?
What do you think museums should be doing in light of these conversations?
You know, it will enlighten people.
Lack of information is not in the museums interest.
It only will help them if they actually are able to reconstruct the original context.
When I say reconstruct the provenance, I mean, what did the laborers think of this?
Did he pay them well?
Were they okay seeing this thing leave?
What did the local Chinese officials think?
Were they okay with this?
Thats what I mean by reconstructing the original context.
I would definitely encourage museums to take a stab at find out the provenance.
Theres going to be some ugly things.
Theres going to be some dark secrets and whatnot.
And most of its not.
Jacobs:Priams treasure for me is very instructive.
But he had so many ugly, pejorative views towards the Turks.
He did it all clandestinely and he flouted Ottoman laws.
I think thats a wonderful case where I would totally support restitution today for that to go back.
Now, there are a couple more interesting wrinkles here.
It was excavated and within the boundaries of modern-day Turkey.
So legally, if youre going to return that, it should go back to the Turks.
So then he took it again and donated it to a museum in Germany, his original homeland.
He was a German-born American.
But you could see how complicated this gets.
But I would support the return of Priams Treasure to Turkey today, absolutely.
Gizmodo:Ultimately, what do you hope readers get out of this book?
Those four means pretty much account for everything.
Each one of those has a unique moral context that needs to be reconstructed.
It was seen as odious at the time that it was taking place.
And there isnt really any defense against that today or then.
Essentially: The artifacts were not viewed as priceless emblems of a nation at the time.
And thats our conundrum today.
Gizmodo:The modern lens is a tricky thing through which to see things!
And Im trying to explain why they did according to their own standards of the day.
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