The Compensations of Plunder: How China Lost Its Treasures by Justin M. Jacobs (review)

The sub-subtitle to Justin Jacobs' compelling new book on the late nineteenth and early twentieth century removal of antiquities from northwestern China could have been In a Thoroughly Gentlemanly Manner and to Everyone's Satisfaction. Jacobs, a historian of modern China, carefully examines the details surrounding the major archaeological expeditions in Xinjiang and Gansu led by Western scholars (especially, but not exclusively, those overseen by Aurel Stein and Paul Pelliot). In short, Jacobs convincingly shows that, until there emerged modern nationalist sentiment in China and a corresponding group of Chinese scholars modeled on Western ones, most workers, local elite, and even national Chinese officials cooperated with the Western archaeological projects. Part of Jacob's persuasive power in Compensations of Plunder is due to the breadth of his sources. He makes extensive use of English, French, and Chinese language documents, including numerous unpublished diaries and private letters, local gazetteers, and of course the published record. After reading Jacobs' thoroughly-sourced account, though one might dispute an occasional interpretation or supposition, it is hard to imagine that there exists somewhere a smoking gun that would outright refute Jacobs' thesis.

Jacobs uses his sources to debunk post-hoc evaluations of the Western explorers that either lionized them for their academic and adventurous prowess or severely criticized them for their role in the wider imperialist enterprise. Rather than making such a dualistic assessment, Jacobs proposes that we consider these expeditions in light of the rising power of nationalism in China vis-à-vis earlier frameworks such as class, empire, and profit. With great clarity, Jacobs lays out a paradigm for understanding the value of artifacts as existing on a scale from "worthless" to "profitable" to "precious" and finally on to "priceless" (p. 35). In the beginning of Jacobs' story, only the Westerner explorers viewed the artifacts as priceless, and that only because they had in mind an imagined link between artifact and national history. Confucian scholar-officials in the region also valued antiquities of course, but not in the same manner nor to the same degree. As Jacobs puts it, it was only when "a new generation of fully Westernized Chinese elites began to do as their Western counterparts did—that is, conflate the material culture of the past with the political legitimacy of newly conceived nations—the art and antiquities of China attained a valuation just as priceless within China as they had already attained outside of China" (p. 36). Jacobs proceeds, then, to tell the story of the emergence of this conflation in China.

The first three chapters examine the earliest Western expeditions in the northwest, which did not experience the challenge of Chinese nationalism. In these chapters, Jacobs explores the way Western archaeological expeditions engaged with both commoners (primarily Muslims) and elites (usually Chinese). In the case of the former, Jacobs finds that despite occasional conflicts over pay and labor conditions (which can be considered ordinary problems of labor relations in any context), in general the commoners who signed on to work with the foreign expeditions did so knowing full well what was involved, and in fact often made a great effort to be included as a part of these teams. It was generally believed among laborers in the northwest that there were obvious material benefits to working with the Westerners, including higher than average salaries, access to Western medicine, and the potential prestige of being associated with a foreign outfit, among other things (pp. 62–75). Jacobs calls these expeditions "economic stimulus package[s] of sorts" to the poor oases of Xinjiang (p. 69). If for the lower classes there was a tangible financial benefit to associating with the "Western sahibs," for the Confucian gentlemen, including both the non-office-holding elite and officials, there was a somewhat less tangible but no less real value in "accumulating culture" through association with...