Cultural Property and Contested Ownership

The trafficking of artefacts and the quest for restitution

Brigitta Hauser-Schäublin, Lyndel V. Prott, Brigitta Hauser-Schäublin, Lyndel V. Prott

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781138188839
• eBook ISBN: 9781317281825
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

Against the backdrop of international conventions and their implementation, Cultural Property and Contested Ownership explores how highly-valued cultural goods are traded and negotiated among diverging parties and their interests. Cultural artefacts, such as those kept and trafficked between art dealers, private collectors and museums, have become increasingly localized in a 'Bermuda triangle' of colonialism, looting and the black market, with their re-emergence resulting in disputes of ownership and claims for return. This interdisciplinary volume provides the first book-length investigation of the changing behaviours resulting from the effect of the 1970 UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property. The collection considers the impact of the Convention on the way antiquity dealers, museums and auction houses, as well as nation states and local communities, address issues of provenance, contested ownership, and the trafficking of cultural property. The book contains a range of contributions from anthropologists, lawyers, historians and archaeologists. Individual cases are examined from a bottom-up perspective and assessed from the viewpoint of international law in the Epilogue. Each section is contextualised by an introductory chapter from the editors.

Part 1Plunder, trafficking and return

In its preamble, the 1970 UNESCO Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property states that “cultural property constitutes one of the basic elements of civilisation and national culture, and that its true value can be appreciated only in relation to the fullest possible information regarding its origin, history and traditional setting.” Many countries have suffered the same fate: material witnesses of unique cultures have become the focus of looting or voluntary destruction, causing immeasurable damage to the nation’s cultural heritage. The example of Cambodia impressively illustrates the dimensions of destruction, looting and illicit trafficking, and the three authors in Part I have jointly investigated this. Foreign art collectors, people in high society and entrepreneurs of wealth, traders from within and outside the country, Cambodia’s own military, police, municipal administrators, farmers and villagers – poor and less poor – have combined to make Cambodia one of the most ransacked countries for its artistic heritage, as Miura’s essay evidences. This country’s experience shows the necessity of international collaboration, such as that established by the 1970 UNESCO Convention. The destruction began centuries ago, but, despite international assistance, some of the worst destruction was in the 1970s. The provisions of this Convention seek to control illicit export (Art. 3) – a major feature of the exit of Cambodian sculptures – to engage international co-operation to protect other countries’ cultural property (Art. 2), to encourage states to improve their national administration and protection of cultural heritage (Art. 5), to educate and inform the population of the country (Art. 10), and to seek co-operation from other states to prevent their citizens pillaging abroad (Art. 9).

Cambodia ratified the Convention in 1972, but Thailand, one of Cambodia’s neighbours, has not yet done so. As a consequence, both countries have signed a bilateral agreement which should prevent the illicit trafficking of antiquities. However, as Tasdelen’s analysis shows, one of the major obstacles in efficiently preventing the illicit export of Khmer antiquities from Cambodia to Thailand does not lie in the contract as such, but in its consequent and strict implementation from both sides. Nevertheless, Cambodia was able to repatriate some of the major sculptures from its looted temples (at Koh Ker) during the Khmer Rouge regime. These statues had entered the international art market and finally ended up in renowned US museums, as Hauser-Schäublin’s chapter reveals. Thanks to the bilateral agreement between the US and Cambodia, complemented by UNESCO’s commitment, Interpol’s support and French scholars’ dedication as well as growing international pressure, these sculptures were finally returned to their country of origin.

1 Destruction and plunder of Cambodian cultural heritage and their consequences

Keiko Miura

DOI: 10.4324/9781315642048-1

Introduction

Prior to and even after the adoption of the so-called “Hague Convention” in 1954 (UNESCO 1983:13–31), the protection of cultural property (most often included in cultural heritage in the contemporary use of the term) was extremely precarious, with inadequate or no protection systems available in the respective countries, particularly in times of war. The destruction and vandalism of cultural heritage in Cambodia, as in many other countries, had mostly been conducted at sites with historical buildings, the royal palace and temples. Similar situations occurred well after the twentieth century, also in the museums and storage facilities of antiquities, during the invasions and occupations by foreign armies, war and its aftermath. The acts of destruction and vandalism were mostly conducted to cause maximum damage to the enemy, attacking their most revered achievements and erasing the material symbols of their power, spirit and unity, while trying to make profit from the trophies, booty and aggrandisement (cf. Brodie 2002:6). The most notable cases were the Siamese attacks and invasions in Angkor in the fifteenth century, when the latter collapsed, and again in Longvek ¹ – the capital in the sixteenth century. The destruction of the capital city and the ransacking of sacred and valuable objects, statues and precious texts went hand in hand with the removal of ideas, institutions and thousands of people, including members of the royal family, intellectuals, and skilled and religious men, to Siam, as the stories were transmitted to local villagers and also recorded (cf. Chandler 1992:79, 84–6; Groslier [1958] English translation 2006:3–19; Ngoun 2006:44–6).

The case of the French removing antiquities from Cambodia was motivated mainly by a passion for Khmer art, while some other cultural treasures were also removed for economic benefits. The first Frenchman to be recorded removing antiquities from Cambodia in the late nineteenth century was Louis Delaporte of the Mekong Exploration Commission. He brought back “some seventy pieces of sculpture and architecture” which he claimed to have acquired from King Norodom in exchange for a number of French art objects, according to Dagens (1995:62–8), or “with a doubtful agreement with the Siamese authorities on site”, because Angkor was still part of Siam until 1907 (Baptiste 2013a:66). The Cambodian objects that Delaporte brought back to France mostly ended up in the Indochinese Museum of Trocadéro, where he was curator until his death in 1925, and later in the Guimet Museum (Baptiste and Zéphir 2013; Baptiste 2013a:63–79; Dagens 1995:68).

Tourism of ancient sites in Cambodia became fully developed in the first decade of the twentieth century. Visitors included French officials, administrators on holiday, sailors on leave, writers, poets, photographers, artists, scientists and even activists. The majority of tourists were said to have visited southern Cambodia and Cochin China (the region encompassing south-eastern parts of Cambodia and southern Vietnam today) more than Angkor and other sites in the north, because Angkor had been in Siam until 1907 and the other sites were relatively inaccessible (Dagens 1995:68–106; Lafont 2004:20–22).

Angkor, after having been incorporated into French Indochina, saw an influx of more than two hundred tourists, and the number of tourists visiting there by 1920 became quite significant. Some of the visitors to such ancient heritage sites in Cambodia took back souvenirs: at times entire statues, more often heads or small bronzes that were easier to transport. Some of those artefacts ended up in large museums, such as the Trocadéro and Guimet, or lesser-known ones, while a number of objects remained in private homes or were sold to antique shops, which stimulated interest and passion among collectors and antiquarians (Dagens 1995:68, 84; Lafont 2004:20–22). While vandalism, graffiti and theft by disrespectful visitors to Angkor were noted at that time, original pieces and moulded copies of original statues were on sale at the École Française d’Extrême Orient (EFEO) in a pavilion in front of Angkor Wat or at the Albert Sarraut Museum in Phnom Penh, as recorded in the late 1920s by Henri Marchal, an EFEO conservator based at the Angkor Conservation Office (Clémentin-Ojha and Manguin 2007:84; Falser 2013:99; see also Singaravélou 1999:264–66). The sale of antiquities and replicas may have been conducted to stop the vandalism of ancient structures, but the selling of original pieces suggests that EFEO itself had contradictory roles of conservation and facilitating the outflow of antiquities from Cambodia, even though the country was then part of French Indochina. ²

One of the most famous Frenchmen who, together with his wife and a friend, tried to bring back Khmer antiquities to France was the writer and art dealer André Malraux. He had an official permit to study the monuments and architecture in French Indochina, but not to remove anything from the sites, which, he was warned, was illegal. Malraux was motivated to remove several stone pieces constituting a goddess figure from Banteay Srei Temple in Angkor in 1923 not only by his passion for Khmer art, but also by his need to secure funds. Malraux and his friend were arrested by the colonial authorities and tried in the law court in Phnom Penh. The pieces were subsequently returned to the original site and restored (Clémentin-Ojha and Manguin 2007:83–4; Dagens 1995:105–6; Lafont 2004:20). ³ The legislation concerning the historical monuments of Indochina at that time was vague and inadequate; however, this was rectified by the decree of December 1924, most likely responding to this well-publicised incident. A new law relating to the classification, protection and conservation of historical monuments and art objects in French Indochina was adopted in 1925 (Clémentin-Ojha and Manguin 2007:84; Greenfield 2007:392–5; Lafont 2004:2, 21).

The disappearance of cultural property from the Angkor area alerted the inhabitants of Siem Reap, who wrote a letter of petition to their king in 1949, four years before Cambodia’s independence, lamenting that Angkor Wat and Angkor Thom had been depleted of all their treasures over the past fifty or sixty years: statues made of wood, stone, emerald, or silver (Hauser-Schäublin 2011:46; Singaravélou 1999:265–6).

This chapter, however, will mostly discuss the period since the eve of the 1970s when the civil war intensified and the extent of the removal of cultural objects from the heritage sites (in this case, plunder) had become considerable, in response to the increase in the international demand for Khmer antiquities. I use terms such as “plunder”, “pillage” and “looting” of cultural heritage interchangeably regarding the relevant existing laws in Cambodia. In the midst of socio-economic instability, thick tropical jungles infested with malaria and people fleeing conflict, it was not so difficult for some military personnel with substantial manpower, equipment, vehicles and networks for illicit trafficking of antiquities to conduct a wholesale destruction of cultural heritage, some of which was witnessed by local villagers or former soldiers whom I interviewed between 2011 and 2013, and are reported elsewhere (see also Brodie 1999, 2002:6–7; Chaumeau 1997; D.A.C. 2010:28; Doole 1999; Lafont 2004; Mydans 1999; Nagashima 2002; Stark and Griffin 2004).

Figure 1.1Map of Cambodia with major cities and archaeological sites (italics) mentioned in this chapter

The destruction and looting of antiquities also continued during and after the Pol Pot period (1975–79) carried out by the Khmer Rouge. It was further intensified during the national reconciliation process in the 1990s. In addition to military personnel, some individuals and groups, often stimulated by the arrival of buyers, also began to engage in robberies of cultural property from monasteries and heritage sites despite their traditional regard for sacred materials and sites. The Cambodian authorities more or less confirm this as they estimate that “since 1986 more than half of the nation’s heritage has been stolen from the country” (Lafont 2004:67). From the 1990s to the early-2000s, some communities also began to conduct digging, including at prehistoric sites that, in most cases, have no standing monuments, often fomented by the appearance of buyers of antiquities and/or chance discoveries (cf. Aglionby 2013; Gharbi 2013; Huffer 2009; Meo 2007; Reinecke et al. 2009). In short, the issue of looting and illegal trafficking is fairly complex, to say the least, and involves many actors who may sometimes collaborate, but in other cases have conflicting interests (cf. Lafont 2004).

This chapter will first illustrate an overview of the major heritage sites in Cambodia, the kinds of cultural heritage there and give an outline of the plunder, which will be followed by a study of the range and types of destruction and pillage of cultural property in selected sites in Cambodia and their consequences. The objective is to analyse the extent of the damage and loss, who the actors are, how they are involved, what kind of alliances or negotiations there may be and how various actors deal with the consequences.

Heritage sites, kinds of antiquities and looting

Cambodia has a whole range of heritage sites covering periods from prehistoric to Funan (first c. ce–550), Chenla (late-sixth c.–802), Angkor (802–1431), Longvek (sixteenth c.), Udong (eighteenth–nineteenth c.), western sites wi...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Figures
• Preface
• Contributors
• Introduction: changing concepts of ownership, culture and property
• PART I Plunder, trafficking and return
• PART II Between profit, authenticity and ethics
• PART III Negotiating conditions of return
• Epilogue
• Index