Review
“Jacobs tells the story of how the cultural relics of northwest China were collected, dispersed, and sometimes destroyed, in a new and refreshingly nonjudgmental way. Drawing on insights from literature on similar processes in the ailing Ottoman Empire as well as on primary sources in English, French, and Chinese, he narrates this story in granular detail and with a keen sense of the motives of the individual actors on both the Western and Chinese side of the story. Clearly the result of a very meticulously researched project, The Compensations of Plunder is a well-crafted and tremendously enjoyable read.” ― Pär Cassel, University of Michigan"This revisionist work challenges Chinese nationalist discourse of how China lost its treasure during the turn of the 20th century to reevaluate the rational historical actors—Western archaeologists who went on expeditions in Xinjiang—through a new explanatory framework: the compensations of plunder." -- G. Li ― Choice
