Collecting on campaign: British soldiers in China during the Opium Wars

Abstract

The controversial sack of Yuanmingyuan during the Second Opium War in 1860 brought large quantities of imperial art to Western Europe for the first time. The article looks at this event within the wider context of military collecting throughout the Opium Wars – documented in soldiers’ memoirs, auction house records and museum inventories – to determine men’s tastes and collecting practices during twenty years of operations in China and the impact they had on this extraordinary historical event.