These 100 extraordinary photographs, selected from over two thousand taken by Frederick R. Wulsin during his 1923 expedition to the northwest borders of China, document the interplay of culture and way of life among Mongols, Tibetans, and Hans. The photographs are supplemented by extensive selections from Wulsin’s journals and letters that offer a comprehensive portrait of these societies at a critical moment of transition. Joseph Fletcher places it in the context of centuries of shifting patterns of empires and ethnic dominance, which continues to this day. M. E. Alonso contributes an essay on Wulsin, and the expedition. The photographs are taken from the archives of the National Geographic Society and Harvard’s Peabody Museum.

From the 1790s until World War I, Western museums filled their shelves with art and antiquities from around the world. These objects are now widely regarded as stolen from their countries of origin, and demands for their repatriation grow louder by the day. In The Compensations of Plunder, Justin M. Jacobs brings to light the historical context of the exodus of cultural treasures from northwestern China. Based on a close analysis of previously neglected archives in English, French, and Chinese, Jacobs finds that many local elites in China acquiesced to the removal of art and antiquities abroad, understanding their trade as currency for a cosmopolitan elite. In the decades after the 1911 Revolution, however, these antiquities went from being “diplomatic capital” to disputed icons of the emerging nation-state. A new generation of Chinese scholars began to criminalize the prior activities of archaeologists, erasing all memory of the pragmatic barter relationship that once existed in China. Recovering the voices of those local officials, scholars, and laborers who shaped the global trade in antiquities, The Compensations of Plunder brings historical grounding to a highly contentious topic in modern Chinese history and informs heated debates over cultural restitution throughout the world.