Liberal Barbarism: The European Destruction of the Palace of the Emperor of China

by Erik Ringmar

Book Overview

In Liberal Barbarism, Erik Ringmar sets out to explain the 1860 destruction of Yuanmingyuan - the Chinese imperial palace north-west of Beijing - at the hands of British and French armies. Yuanmingyuan was the emperor's own theme-park, a perfect world, a vision of paradise, which housed one of the greatest collections of works of art ever assembled. The intellectual puzzle which the book addresses concerns why the Europeans, bent on "civilizing" the...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1137268905
• ISBN13: 9781137268907
• Release Date: October 2013
• Publisher: Palgrave MacMillan
• Length: 258 Pages
• Weight: 1.36 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.3" x 9.4"