Stolen Art and the Epistemes of Imperialism

Recently, on December 16th 2009, in the New York Times an article by Andrew Jacobs entitled China Hunts for Art Treasures in U.S. Museums repeatedly bashed the Chinese government for their assertion that certain cultural relics held in western museums were in fact stolen from the Summer Palace in 1860. In the article a professor of Chinese Studies at Duke University referred to China as “An adolescent who took too many steroids” and made other culturally insensitive and provocative statements. Kang’s statements are misguided at best. James L. Hevia’s English Lessons: the Pedagogy of Imperialism in Nineteenth-Century China, published by Duke University Press in 2003, tells the story of the reterritorialization of China and the brutal rampaging and burning of the Chinese Summer Palace in 1860, largely for the purpose of insuring that China would be forced to accept the importation of Opium against the Emperor’s wishes in 1860, at the hands of western imperial powers. Intricately related to this process, both military exhibitions and the production of knowledge aided western powers in their remapping of China in an image suitable to western interests.

With the second Opium War’s conclusion in 1860 China was forced to change. After seeing first hand the power of western military technology the Qing government sought to acquire similar weapons and hire Westerners to train their armies to use them. China clearly wanted these technologies to protect themselves from the changes which the English sought to introduce. A stipulation of a tariff conference in the Tianjin Treaty led directly to the Shanghai Tariff Conference, which Hevia explained for westerns meant they could reorder the thinking of Qing officials in terms of how westerners preferred to be dealt with in future delegations. The very manner in which the negotiations took place reordered the manner of Chinese official dealings with outside sovereigns and international traders. Westerners keenly sought to train the Chinese in how to approach western powers: on the terms that western powers wanted.

Among other arguments that Hevia makes, he claims that western domination in Asia was maintained through the development of comprehensive knowledge about peoples under imperial rule. The production of knowledge about China had a significant impact beyond the humiliation by military conquest and its accompanying looting, which obviously played a significant role as well. The process of epistemological development participated in the remapping of China into the image of a western nation. China was forced to learn the interstate game by western rules of protocol and etiquette; for China this meant interacting with other sovereigns at all.

Through the standardization of information and the creation of new and novel ways of knowing China and indeed its inhabitants that western writers, cartographers, and other participants were able to contribute to the cause of remapping China into the international community. These producers of knowledge narrated the western agent as a victim of Chinese aggression, while it was the European who was an unwelcome force in China. The settlements allotted by the treaties signed in 1860 gave westerners the right to appropriate space for themselves. This space provided for further educational opportunities for the Europeans to teach the Qing court of their interests, namely that they ought to be those of Britain. Hevia’s is a thick book, which is immensely quotable. Along with military might the production of novel epistemes also remapped, literally also, the geography of China.

Liu Yang, a Beijing lawyer was quoted in Jacob’s article as saying the “The wound is still open and hurts every time you probe it,” with reference to the stolen art held in German, American, British, and French museums, all of these powers having actively participated in the looting of the palace and following lessons in western diplomatic etiquette. Michael Conforti, president of the Association of the Art Museum Director, recently made the claim that we now live in what he calls a “post-repatriation environment.” In spite of his claim to the contrary repatriation of stolen art and artifacts is still actively ongoing. Whereas he and other possessors of stolen art would like to hold onto these pieces, perhaps their rightful place is in the hands of those to whom they belong. In a way the possession of these pillaged art pieces represents the whole brutal mentality of colonialism. Maybe with their return some of the wounds of the imperial project could begin to mend.

Sartre on Intellectuals

In the last week at The Notes Taken:

1) Jason posted a review of Mary A. Renda's Taking Haiti. The importance of Renda's book, as Mr. Smith rightly points out, is that it documents the role of U.S. imperialism in Haiti from 1915-1940. One might also want to view this short history of U.S. interventions in Latin America.

2) I posted a 'review' of Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship that juxtaposes the views of Schelling and Lukács.

3) and I posted a short piece on maps as ideological instruments, with reference to surrealism.

In the upcoming week we'll talking a bit about Sartre (whose first volume of the Critique of Dialectical Reason 'turns 50' this year), so to get you prepared, I've included an interview with him. Without further ado, the youtube (If you click through to the site, there's even a list of clueless comments, not that I am encouraging you. It's just a warning.):

Marx, Lenin, Mao, Nepal?

The recent political struggle in Nepal has taken a course that, ideologically, couldn't seem less possible in the 21st century: there the Maoist party (now called the United Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist) took up armed struggle in 1996 against the repression of Nepal's government, and in the last few years has brought down the monarchy and restored parliamentary democracy. Despite this, social struggle in Nepal has not drawn the same kind of attention that the Bolivarian Revolution has. There are few books about the subject, and even articles that are not ideologically loaded against the struggle are difficult to find (for the non-expert). For books, after some research, I chose Li Onesto's Dispatches from the People's War in Nepal (Pluto, 2004), which is written with much sympathy for the struggle, but not without some criticism.

Obviously, that book's story ends five years ago. For more recent developments, I recommend reading Gary Leupp's article "The Andolan in Kathmandu and the Revolution to Follow" (in Counterpunch), about the more recent political struggle in Nepal. By 2005, the Maoist party controlled 80 percent of the country, and, as Leupp summarizes,

agreed to the 2006 Comprehensive Agreement with the political parties whereby they would all jointly work to bring down the king, restoring parliamentary democracy, while the Maoists would lay down their arms under UN supervision, ending the war. A key provision of the Agreement was that the soldiers of the People’s Liberation Army be integrated into the Nepali Army (formerly the Royal Nepali Army).The Maoists also demanded the convening of a Constituent Assembly to write a new constitution, and the proclamation of a republic. They won these demands, and in the April 2008 elections for the assembly, won 38% of the vote, twice the number of the next party.

To say that is was a surprise to many Western commentators that the Maoist party-- which, incidentally, is not on good terms with post-Maoist China-- won an election after setting down its arms would be an understatement.

However, when the Nepali army refused to integrate, the Maoists quit the government and returned to extra-parliamentary tactics with the goal of forcing the integration of the military. The basic idea behind this move is that without an integrated military, there is no possibility of true "civilian supremacy," because the military is not neutralized as a political force. According to Leupp, the UN Mission in Nepal, with very little ideological interest in doing so, has found that the government is at fault. Leupp concludes,

the Maoists who now boast they have all Kathmandu behind them can say much of the world as represented by the UN secretary general agrees with their goal of “civilian supremacy,” and that the 22-party coalition with the UML and Congress at its head, linked to the Army, India and ultimately U.S. imperialism is the isolated, marginalized force.

Imperial Brutality Revisited

The magnitude of the atrocities committed by British colonists in Kenya against the Kikuyu and other groups, in the form of dozens of internee camps and many more villages that had undergone ‘villagization,’ is shocking. Caroline Elkins’ Imperial Reckoning: the Untold Story of Britain’s Gulag in Kenya, published in 2005 by Henry Holt and Company, delineates the tragic and underrepresented narrative of hundreds of thousands of tortured Kenyans. The task undertaken in this work was massive. Elkins tells the story of how British colonialists systematically tortured an entire population of people. Both in the camps and the villages in Kenya, the British Colonial Office waged a campaign of terror for nearly a decade.

Telling the story of such atrocities isn’t a small task. The British colonists cordoned off of an entire people, methodically used of their labor for state and other projects, aimed at psychologically reprogramming those within the camps, and routinely tortured and raped or murdered at will. Imperial Reckoning starts from what Elkins believes to be the roots of the conflict. She tells of the coming of Europeans to Kenya, their settlement, and various missionary activities. She then discusses the problem of scarcity of land and the reserves created by the settlers and the colonial government. European white racism prevailed and laws were enacted with increasing regularity, which marginalized and unfairly treated non-whites. Among these laws were the often discussed ‘pass laws’ used throughout much of the British colonies. In response to these injustices the Kikuyu and other groups banded together and sought justice, often through peaceful channels, and less often militant groups formed which carried out acts of violence on colonial and loyalist agents. In response to the resistance to the unfair rule established by the European settlers, the colonial government began increasingly to hunt down and capture or kill Kikuyu, eventually establishing a monstrous machine of forced labor and torture.

These events are not often spoken of publicly in Kenya itself, nor are these crimes known to most of the world. Elkins wrote that neither official apologies nor reconciliation of any kind existed in Kenya at the time her book was published. A former Mau Mau adherent and object of Britain’s Gulag wrote “I despise them . . . this will only change when everyone knows what happened to us. Maybe then there will be some peace once our people are able to mourn in public.” Though it’s not official the job of an academic to right wrongs or prevent tragedies, perhaps this work can aid in the prevention of such carnage in the future. What else is knowledge for if not to change the trajectory of humanity?

Since the publication of this book Kenya has taken steps to establish Truth and Reconciliation Committees but Amnesty International and other international human rights groups have criticized the bills proffered by the Kenyan government. These groups claim that these committees would simply absolve the criminals of their crimes, among other things. The debate on how to move forward is still underway. But beyond simply prosecuting the wrong doers remains the material reality. The vast majority of Kenyan resources are in the hands of European colonists and their progeny. This book could not be expected to have as it’s scope both the historical recording of this awful chapter and be expected to outline the appropriate means of redressing colonial violence. But Elkins does an incredible job of evoking the spirit of empathy in her reader by carefully describing the gruesome details of this epoch. At the bare minimum this book opens up a channel for dialogue.