Attitudes and sensibilities can change over time. In the twenty first century, for example, the British Museum is faced with a worldwide pressure campaign to restore cultural and historical artifacts seized in the days of the British Empire. In the nineteenth century, Britain’s Queen Victoria didn’t see anything wrong with that.
Her Majesty’s Looted Dog
The excessively prim and proper Victorian Era was aptly named after the excessively prim and proper Queen Victoria. When it came to seizing stuff from other cultures, though, Her Majesty neither saw anything improper about that, nor knew about nor cared for modern sensibilities about such things. Take her attitude towards looting and plundering stuff from other countries. Nowadays, there is widespread consensus that doing that is a bad thing. In Queen Victoria’s day, it was just par for the course.
In the Second Opium War (1856 – 1860) between Britain and France against China’s Qing Dynasty, British and French forces plundered, then destroyed and burned to the ground, the imperial Summer Palace complex near Beijing. The loot seized included a small Pekinese dog – a breed previously unknown in Britain – that had belonged to the Chinese empress or one of the imperial ladies. It was presented to Queen Victoria who, unlike the British Museum today, neither pretended not to know, nor acted dumb about how she got it. Indeed, Her Majesty was quite amused that her new cute little pooch was looted, so she named it “Looty”. Queen Victoria was many things, but politically correct she was not.
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Some Sources & Further Reading
DW – British Museum Confirms Talks Over Parthenon Marbles
