In the mid-19th century, France colonized a chuck of southeast Asia that now comprises Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. In Cambodia, the French tried to protect the ornately-carved ancient temples built a thousand years earlier that were being reclaimed by the rainforest. In 1923, a young French couple, André and Clara Malraux, arrived with a plan to loot a few of those carvings to sell and sustain a lifestyle they would like to grow accustomed to. André Malraux was a poet and author, but mainly a bookseller, who hung out with the literati of Paris he admired and wanted to be a part of. The couple passed themselves off as archaeologists and identified a more recently-discovered Hindu temple predating the Buddhist temples of Cambodia that lay deep in the jungle and wouldn't be well guarded. They hired a team of guides and porters and set off to Banteay Srei, where they cut reliefs from the temple and loaded them into seven large crates.
Of course, they were caught. Malraux suffered from the hubris of youth, privilege, and a colonial mindset. Neither the Cambodians nor the French who lived there wanted the nation's cultural treasures looted. Malraux was forced to stay in Cambodia to face his crimes. It wasn't as long as some thought he deserved, but it was long enough to change his outlook completely, and launch him on a completely different lifetime path. Read about the looting of Banteay Srei at Smithsonian. -via Strange Company
(Image credit: Gary Todd)
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