I really enjoyed this book, at first I thought it might be a dry academic book but I was pleasantly impressed by the quality of the writing. Chamberlin writes with extensive knowledge of the subjects and with humour which makes for easy and pleasurable reading. Overall very enjoyable and interesting. Well done. My thanks to the author, publishers and netgalley for allowing me to read this book.

*2.8/5

I'm always glad to read about stuff I know very little of but I don't feel this taught me anything.
Not because I already knew these stuff, but because most of it was filler, especially the last few chapters and despite the writing being kinda good, I feel like everything in this flew completely over my head. Finally, I still cannot tell if the author wrote without any bias or not. He seems to excuse powerful nations stealing other countries' artifacts from time to time. Maybe someone with more knowledge on the matter will be able to see that. Anyway, this book wasn't for me.

I received a free e-book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I was unable to finish this book. I have experience with this topic and found the author's stance difficult. There were odd comments early on, including listing New Zealand as a third world country. I felt that the author is supportive of the theft of cultural artefacts, as demonstrated by their lack of criticism of the British Museum's stance of the Greeks being unable to care for the Elgin Marbles. I expected a more nuanced discussion from a book with this title.

I received a review copy from the publisher via Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.


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I was so happy when I saw this book on Netgalley because looting is an important aspect of art history and museology but it's seldomly taught. I got the ARC and then I saw that this is merely a re-print of the 1983 original and my alarm bells rang. As any academic knows, the older books are, the less usefully and critical they become. They are oftentimes entrenched - and I mean dripping - with racist, Eurocentric and colonialist views. I feared that this might sadly fall under that umbrella.
And I was right.

Let me begin by saying that there are no footnotes. This is incredibly frustrating because this is an academic publication aka scientific and therefore should follow certain standards, one of them the ability to know the sources that are used so that readers can trace the material and, if need be, check for themselves if the author is being precise or dishonest.
Yes, there are sources. At the end, which means that I would have to read every single book and paper and then try to puzzle together when he references which source. It would basically have to re-engineer and rewrite the book in order to connect the text with the sources. That should not be my job, that's the author's job. Already, huge drop in quality and star-rating.

But worse than that - and you know it has to be bad for me to say that it's worse that lack of footnotes and therefore untraceability of sources - is the fact that Chamberlin doesn't do his job: there is no critical analysis. His perspectives is heavily Eurocentric, White and British. He talks about Elgin, who looted the Parthenon, as a heroic saviour of cultural artefacts and ultimately as the victim of a misunderstanding and an evil smear campaign. The latter represented by a certain Payne Knight. Yes, that is his real name and thus he perfectly fits into self-insert fanfics about goth vampires who go to Hogwarts.
Anyhow, Knight dared criticise Elgin for looting and instead of looking at Knight's argument, Chamberlin calls him a vicious person, arrogant, jealous and just generally mean-spirited. He ends by literally saying "Payne Knight and his cronies". Even Lord Byron, who criticised and satirised Elgin, is attacked by Chamberlin. Chamberlin has no interest into looking at the arguments against looting but instead paints a picture of a poor old chap who should be remembered as a hero but instead has been unjustly vilified by mean people who have, in his opinion, no valid criticism.

Chamberlin also says that looting has been going on since time immemorial, thus justifying the thousands upon thousands of stolen pieces in countless museums. Then he also says that the British Museum may have stolen goods but others stole too, like France, and they were actually bad, not like the British, who saved artefacts from "squalor", "barbarians", "indifference" or any other negative connotation. Yes, he uses these exact words and many more. Only other empires did wrong by looting, but the British were actually misunderstood heroes.
If this wasn't absurd enough, Chamberlain claims that Tribe A stealing from Tribe B is the same as empires looting thousands of artefacts, like Napoleon emptying Egypt. However, it's not the same because one is a very localised, usually short-lived happening that may include cultural artefacts but usually encompasses goods for daily use.
Looting of artefacts, however, is a state-sponsored and systematic emptying and stealing of heritage from another culture and moving those objects away. Behind looting are economic, political and social motivations. Looting meant that an invading power used physical and later legislative force, born from physical force aka military power, to collect, transport, categorise and exhibiting objects in "the metropole". It's a SYSTEM of POWER expressed through the CALCULATED extinction of a culture's heritage and history through violence, oppression and questionable legality.
Tribe A stealing some wheat, textiles and pigs is not the same as the systemic and state-funded emptying of a culture's complete artefacts.
And it was done for political purposes, it was a power move and served to show wealth and historicise conquering other nations/countries.

Chamberlin's false equivalence is not only ahistorical and shows a gross misunderstanding of how looting actually functions, but also underscores his Eurocentric, British-phile perspective where looting is equated with just mere tribalistic fights or petty theft. And this perspective is present in the whole book, beginning with Elgin who, as I've said, is presented as a poor dude who should be revered as a hero and who was vilified by vindictive and uncultured people, like Knight or Byron.

When Chamberlin talks about Elgin, he also mentions his wife whom I assume is called Young Wealthy Bride Wife, Lady Bride because he never uses her name and consistently refers to her as either bride or wife. He also is just a few words away from calling her a cheating wh*** because she leaves Elgin for another man and you can see the contempt dripping from the pages.

The text is filled with colonialist and racist perspectives directed at pretty much any non-European/White dominant country/culture. Even when he tries to be fair, the perspective is solidly grounded in White supremacist language and thought. It may be written positively but there is always a clear sense of superiority present.
He also seems to think that only other empires, aka non-British empires, committed the crime of looting, as seen in his jabs against France or Germany, while the British global enterprise of systemic amassing of the world’s cultural heritage and riches is never but seen as an act of grace, saving these bereft and bedraggled artefacts from ruin, barbarians and disinterest.

This becomes also clear when he says that people protest the looting of the Parthenon but that nobody batted an eye and Napoleon’s looting of Egypt. Which is incorrect, the Egyptians cared a great deal, they just couldn’t fight the invading French military force. Some Europeans also objected the looting, some because they saw it as amoral and others because they wanted their empire to be the looters, as it was the case with Britain, to pick one example.
It’s not only an ahistorical claim, Chamberlin undermines his own statement because when people opposed Englin’s emptying of the Parthenon, he shows nothing but contempt for the criticism. So he uses Egypt as an example of people not caring (much like people use the bad faith argument that if you care so much about racism, why don’t you also care about dying children as if one and the other weren’t related or if you couldn’t care about both – it’s not an argument, it’s a deflection) but then when criticism arises, he protects his hero at all costs and instead vilifies the critics in every possible way.
It’s especially egregious because later the Greeks wanted the stolen artefacts back. Chamberlin chooses not to opine on this or give an analysis of the arguments. Instead he just says Greek wanted the stolen artefacts back and that is that. In fact, the tone of the text makes it rather clear that he doesn’t agree with the returning of looted objects in general and I think this is because he thinks that it’s rightfully “theirs” and that they can truly protect these objects, not these other poor, uneducated barbarians, “Third World Countries” or jealous haters.

I swear he should write a song with Taylor Swift.

Ultimately, the text is one of the bad examples of its time. Useful as primary material to analyse the history of opinions on looted art and certainly a quick read with an overview of some of the most notorious cases of looting but the Eurocentric, colonialist, racist and sometimes sexist perspective makes it an unappealing read. Chamberlin has very clear heroic figures and lacks a critical analysis of systemic issues and greater networks. It’s purely a retelling of happenings with a perspective that amounts to fanboying and that does not make a decent scientific analysis.

To be fair, as I saw that this book has been first published in 1983, I regretted requesting it, because that's not only older than I am, but academic writing and history research has come a long way since then. Thus I kept off reading it, not feeling motivated for it.

In the end, I started reading it, then started leafing through the ebook to see if it goes on like this.

This book retells instances in which historically relevant artifacts were taken from the country and the people who brought it forth, stolen, and what their story was after that. Sadly, there are no footnotes. You can look up the bibliography if you fancy, and see if you can match up the chapters with the sources.
Another thing that bothered me that the tone was either almost fanboy-ish, or a bland retelling of things that happened without critical reflection.

All in all, I think this book may be interesting for the layman who is new to this topic, but as a person who studies archaeology it felt more like a waste of time due to the fact that so much new data has become available since this book was written and the non-existence of footnotes, which means I am not sure about the sources that were used.

The arc was provided by the publisher.

The author begins by defining the term "Elginisme" as being coined by the French as "the retention by richer nations of the cultural treasures of poorer nations-usually under duress. The irony is the amount Napoleon stole from about six nations for the glory of France and put in the Louvre. He tells of the rivalry of Great Britain and France for the antiquities of Egypt and brings to life the colorful Giovanni Belzoni and he suggests how Germany absconded with the infamous bust of Nerfertiti. He discusses in more depth Hitler, Hans Posse, Alfred Rosenberg, Martin Bormann and the brutality of WW II, which leads to the interesting story of the US involvement post war with the crown thought to be St. Stephen's of Hungary. He then propels the readers to: the Stone of Scone, artifacts of the Ashanti people in Ghana, artifacts of the people of Benin, the papers of a slave holding family much wanted by Antigua and Barbuda, but sold to an unknown higher bidder. He finishes rather abruptly with Native American Tribes seeking their religious creations, the efforts of the Netherlands and Indonesia to cooperate in returning items to Indonesia, and ends with the Maori and what has been done by a Dr. Simmons to discover artifacts in museums around the world that are of Maori origin. In all cases the author tries to bring up the ethical issues that occurred in the past and what is happening now. I wish that these later chapters had been fuller as there is less written about them, but for discussion points this is a good review.

Loot!: The heritage of plunder is a succinct history of some of the major art lootings in the world. It shades new light on the transfer of art done by the Napoleonic and Nazi regimes in Europe but it also brings into focus some less known situations, that of the artefacts of the Ashanti people, the Kingdom of Benin or the Maori people.

This may not be a book for the highly specialized historic, but it's definitely a book for anyone passionate about art, history, anthropology, ethnography. The subject is so vast, so complex that you will be left thinking and analyzing your position. I appreciate how the author makes no strong judgments but takes one on a journey of discovering new opinions and aspects of the situations. It's a book that will leave you with an enriched knowledge about the world we live in, its history and with a more careful approached, an inquisitive eye to objects on auction or displayed in museums. Highly recommend it!

The plundering of other people's treasures is older than civilisation and as new as the most recent war. The French, no mean practitioners in the art themselves, have labelled it elginisme, meaning the acquisition of cultural artefacts by an imperial power, after the much misjudged Lord Elgin (the guy who illegally transported the Parthenon Marbles from Greece to London between 1801 and 1805.) Loot: The Heritage of Plunder examines the looting of major ancient civilisations and of many Third World nations. It ranges from the pillage of important archaeological sites in Greece and Egypt by conquerors, archaeologists and tourists to the fate of the Stone of Scone and other major symbols of nationhood, and the campaigns of epic looters such Napoleon and Hitler. The book also explores the differing attitudes through the ages - the understanding that 'might is right' or 'to the victor the spoils' is currently being challenged by the growing debate concerning the ethics of one nation retaining the historical treasures of another.

This is a fascinating, accessible and well-written book which addresses issues associated with looting as well as the morality of it. Ruminating on whether imperialists and colonialists have a right to the antiquities of another country is a pressing problem and one that has long been talked about but nothing solid has come of it. The underground smuggling of cultural treasure is a highly profitable business and there is no chance of it ceasing any time soon; those in the business either sell artefacts on for a profit or place them in museums, which of course also makes them money. The only niggle I have about the book is that it feels quite dated as all of the anecdotes are from decades past. Russell Chamberlin's book is a lively and informative exploration of the passion for collecting and its effects on the course of history. It will appeal to everyone interested in the past and its preservation. Many thanks to Sapere Books for an ARC.

Plundering and looting have been happening since time began, for personal and patriotic reasons, as leverage and tourist gain. In this riveting book, Chamberlin explores several examples of looting, examines the looters themselves and details the repercussions for the looted.

To me the biggest question is who should claim ownership of the artifacts...should the originals stay in the country in which they were created or should they be shared in museums worldwide? As a traveler I ask myself this question often...should artifacts be returned to the rightful owners (whomever that is deemed to be)? Greece, Egypt and Italy are good examples, all ancient, all with coveted antiquities, all vulnerable at some point.

I learned more about antiquities, different concepts of ownership, how wars affected looting (border closures, hiding artifacts), the West African slavery connection and results of tourism. I did not realize that burnt marble becomes lime (which, of course was utilized in war and at other times happened in catastrophes). I also wonder where St. Stephen's crown actually is? And hadn't known about The Mask! And where are art pieces plundered by Hitler which haven't been found? Private collections? Black market? In plain sight?

So much mystery swirls around, so many questions and unanswered questions.

Reading this prompted me to dig into the bibliography. Fascinating!

My only wish is that there were pictorial examples of some of the treasures. I'm knowledgeable about some but not others and realize many have not been recovered.

If you are intrigued by missing treasures and the impact of looting by leading looters such as Napoleon and Hitler, read this. Looting has affected countries more profoundly than I realized.

My sincere thank you to Sapere Books and NetGalley for providing me with an ARC of this enthralling book in exchange for an honest review.