#105 The Torching of the Yuanmingyuan

Background:

• Vast collection of parks and structures known as the Yuanmingyuan or Summer Palace was built beginning in 1707 by the Kangxi emperor.
  
• The Western palace structures (Xiyang lou 西洋楼) built in the eighteenth century with help of Jesuits Giuseppe Castiglione and Michel Benoist.
  
• The overall complex was the main place of residence for Manchus unaccustomed to the formalistic and confining Forbidden City.
  
• Second Opium War began in 1856 when Britain and France each took advantage of pretexts:
  
  • British were outraged over ship (The Arrow) boarded to investigate smuggling.
    
  • French similarly angered over a French missionary in southwestern Guangxi province.
    
• The 1858 Tianjin Treaty reached to end hostilities (it was even more humiliating than the Nanjing Treaty), but hostilities resumed after court conservatives sought to limit Anglo-French access past the Dagu forts in Tianjin.
  
• The renewed fighting ended finally after the flight of the humiliated Xianfeng emperor from the capital and the torching and looting of the Yuanmingyuan in October 1860.
  

Questions for discussion:

• Why was it looted and destroyed? What motives do you think drove Anglo-French actions?
  
• Would you consider this legitimate wartime conduct on the part of British and French forces?
  
• What meaning do you think looted artifacts had/have for Europeans? Chinese? How might have this meaning changed over time?
  
• What is the responsibility of those who possess formerly looted objects?
  
• How has the physical site of the Yuanmingyuan transformed in the years since its destruction in 1860?
  
• As a historian, if you were to advise the Chinese government on its future, what would you suggest? What would be your goals?
  

Homework: Assignment #106