216pp., illus., paperback, Reprint, Reaktion Books, London, (2024) 2025

ISBN: 9781836391081

Historian Justin M. Jacobs challenges the widely accepted belief that much of Western museums’ treasures were acquired by imperialist plunder and theft and argues that most artifacts that reached Western shores got there through fair exchanges between locals and foreigners.

"How rare it is for an author to upend a common view and retell history in defiance of fashionable ideas - and to do so with ease and flair!" Times Literary Supplement

"During the past century or so, an unfortunate dichotomy has developed which divides archaeologists, museums and collectors into two camps. One views them as heroic explorers who rescued long-neglected antiquities that were going to rack and ruin, while the other sees them as rapacious foreign devils grabbing whatever pelf they could acquire for financial gain or imperialistic glory. In this meticulously researched and carefully illustrated volume, historian Jacobs adopts a more balanced, neutral stance which takes a whole panoply of factors into consideration. He convincingly demonstrates that there is no single narrative that can account for the multifarious ways in which archaeological materials ended up in lands other than where they originated, or indeed were destroyed inside the very nations where they were created. Plunder?, rightly posed as a question, provides the reader with a whole range of evidence for complicity from all sides involved in the acquisition." Victor H. Mair, Professor of Chinese language and literature, University of Pennsylvania

Justin M. Jacobs is Associate Professor of History at American University. He is the author of Indiana Jones in History and Xinjiang and the Modern Chinese State. He also serves as editor of The Silk Road journal and hosts Beyond Huaxia, a podcast on East Asian history.

PLUNDER? How museums got their treasures

: Jacobs (J.)

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