My book Saluting the Yellow Emperor: A Case of Swedish Sinography is out on Brill. The following is an excerpt.
Until the mid-1930s, Osvald Sirén was able to purchase sculptures and ancient bronze objects for good prices and, working together with Karlbeck and the MFEA, bring them out of China. Sirén planned to conduct archaeology on his second trip to China but for various reasons failed to do so. On that and the third trip, he could, thanks to Karlbeck, buy sculptures and bronze articles. But with the new government, as we have seen, came laws against removing antiquities from China. These laws mainly protected sculptures and bronzes. In light of the changing climate, both Sirén and Karlbeck were happy to get their sculptures out of China in 1929 and 1930, before it became impossible to do so. Sirén wrote to Andersson that “stone sculptures and larger bronze objects” were now forbidden for export, but paintings were still allowed to be taken out (OSA). In a letter home to Sweden the following year, it was apparent that Sirén had realized that there was a good market for paintings.
The situation had changed dramatically for Western collectors and archaeologists, who, of course, always were suspected not only of ruining China’s national heritage, but also of having imperialistic motives for doing that. So during the early years of the 1930s, conducting archaeology and collecting in China was a whole new ballgame, and foreign collectors needed some new approaches. Hedin, as we saw, used his good contacts among Chinese academics and the director of The Central Commission for the Preservation of Antiquities himself. Like his compatriot, Sirén was a resourceful man. As we shall see, in order to smuggle antiques he turned to Sweden’s diplomatic consulate in Shanghai and Bofors, an arms manufacturing firm, to get his and the National Museum’s precious antiquities out of China.
Sirén collected sculptures and bronzes for years, but when that became impossible, he turned back to the study of painting, probably because he believed it was still possible to bring paintings out of China. But by the time Sirén was able to return to China, five years later, in 1935, it had become even more difficult to get anything out. As early as 1929, Karlbeck remarked, “Customs was now run by the Chinese, and they could be both very petulant and unpleasant” (Karlbeck to Karlbeck Syndicate, January 1929, KSA). Li Ji’s efforts had borne fruit. In 1931 his former employer, Bishop, had been the victim of a public smear campaign as newspapers criticized his excavations and forced him to either stop voluntarily or suffer legal punishment. The combination of public opinion, new laws and stricter customs control probably stopped the Karlbeck Syndicate from undertaking trips after 1934. Sirén, however, was extremely resourceful and, as will be clear from the following discussion, he would come up with a way to circumvent the strict regulations in effect in China.
By his second trip to China, Sirén had learned a great many things from Karlbeck, such as how to deal with the authorities. When conducting archaeology, for example, Karlbeck advised, “Up against Peking authorities, a bribe in the shape of pottery would probably prove most useful” (Karlbeck to Sirén 17 July 1921, OSA). Another good piece of advice that we have already encountered was not to send packages directly to a museum or research institute. Sirén quickly adopted this trick and shared it with the director of the colonial Ecole Francais d’Extreme Orient in Hanoi, George Coedès (14 April 1935, OSA). Coedès of course did not have to worry about such things. As the director of the EFEO, he could willfully engage in removing magnificent treasures from “Indochinese” sites for French museums like the Guimet. Sirén was talking about how he would ship a box containing treasures such as Neolithic urns and figurines from the Han and Wei dynasties. These went from Shanghai to Hanoi in a trade with Coedès, and were sent not to the museum directly but to a private address. In exchange for the Chinese antiquities Coedès had requested, Sirén received two Khmer heads from Angkor Wat. As Sirén later explained, these ended up being the most valuable pieces added to the Swedish National Museum’s Asian collection after 1930 (Sirén 1945, 6). For his part, Coedès was very content with the sculptures he received and wrote Sirén to just send the address where he wanted his Angkor pieces delivered (Coedès to Sirén 29 April 1935, OSA). The conservator at Angkor would have no difficulty selecting and sending two heads from what is today regarded as one of the archaeological wonders of the world.
But the story does not end with the deal between the members of two European nations trading Asian treasures between them. In order to get the Chinese pieces out of Shanghai when Chinese Customs was now so rigid regarding exports, especially of statues, urns and sculptures, Sirén had come up with a new maneuver. He sent Chinese treasures in the French diplomatic pouch. The sanctity of diplomatic mail is part of diplomatic immunity, a Western concept of state-tostate relations forcefully imposed on China after the Opium Wars. Anything from weapons to drugs could be pouched, including antiquities. On his last collecting trip to China, Sirén planned to use this scam to remove a hundred or so Ming and Qing dynasty paintings from China.
After spending as much time in China as he was allowed, Sirén turned to the task of getting all his newly purchased paintings out of China. In letters to Birgit Fürstenberg, who administered the art purchasing funds at the National Museum, and to the Museum’s director, Axel Gauffin, Sirén described how this would be arranged. Sirén asked a diplomat at the Consulate General of Sweden in Shanghai to send a crate containing seventy-four paintings as diplomat mail—the same method he had tested with the French! For this particular shipment, Sirén and the Swedish Consul General, A. von Hartmansdorff, had to wait for a suitable “courier” to travel with the crate. The courier turned out to be an executive for Bofors, the Swedish arms manufacturer, Lieutenant Lundberg (Sirén to Gauffin, 12 Sept. 1935, OSA).19 “Brother Gauffin,” Sirén wrote from the Shanghai Metropolitan Hotel, “I am sending this letter to inform you that just a few days ago, a trunk was sent home as diplomatic post with address the Foreign Ministry in Stockholm. They will inform you when it has arrived so we can pick it up” (Ibid.). According to Sirén, the Consul General informed him it would not cost anything to send the crate, adding that another smaller trunk would leave as diplomatic post later. When Sirén was out of China, he wrote to one of his Chinese collectors to ask him to bring the paintings to the Consul General because “. . . when Mr. Hartmansdorff is leaving for Sweden, I think he might be willing to take three or four pictures with him” (letter to Lo Hsiao Dung, April 11, 1936, OSA).
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