Liberal barbarism and the oriental sublime: The European destruction of the emperor's summer palace

Abstract

In 1860, a combined Anglo-French army looted and burned the Yuanmingyuan, a vast compound of palaces, temples, pagodas and gardens belonging to the Chinese emperor. This act of barbarism, they argued, was necessary in order to bring civilisation to China. This article explains this event as an expression of European' confrontation with the 'Oriental sublime', a fiction created by them as an exotic counterpart to the liberal and rationalistic social order they themselves represented. The desire for sublime experiences is still strong in modern societies and it still leads Europeans - and North Americans - to commit atrocities in the name of liberal values. © Millennium: Journal of International Studies, 2006.