The Theft Case of Yongle Encyclopedia

During the late Qing Dynasty, the original copies of the Yongle Encyclopedia, housed in the Hanlin Academy, were systematically plundered. The losses peaked during the Boxer Rebellion in 1900 when the academy was set ablaze, and nearby foreign legations seized volumes. However, massive internal theft had been ongoing for decades. Hanlin Academy officials, exploiting lax supervision, smuggled volumes out by concealing them in clothing or using them to replace personal items. Scholars like Lu Xinyuan were known to have acquired dozens of volumes through such corrupted channels. Countless volumes were sold to foreign diplomats, missionaries, and antique dealers, resulting in the encyclopedia being scattered across libraries and private collections in England, Japan, the United States, and other countries, with the vast majority of the work being irretrievably lost.

No formal judicial trial or sentencing occurred for the thefts. The internal embezzlement by officials was never systematically investigated or prosecuted by the Qing government. The loss was treated as a fait accompli of historical catastrophe and institutional decay rather than a justiciable crime, with no individuals formally convicted for the large-scale theft.

The central dispute lies in attributing responsibility for the loss. While the 1900 fire and foreign looting during the Boxer Rebellion are cited as direct causes, the primary and prolonged mechanism of loss was the systematic embezzlement and sale by Qing officials and scholars entrusted with its safekeeping. The controversy focuses on the failure of institutional custody versus the narrative of pure foreign plunder.

The case represents one of the greatest cultural losses in Chinese history, symbolizing the decline of imperial authority and the vulnerability of national treasures. The scattering of the Yongle Encyclopedia across global institutions galvanized modern Chinese academic and governmental efforts to repatriate cultural relics. It instilled a deep-seated public consciousness about the protection of cultural heritage, directly influencing stricter modern laws against artifact smuggling and serving as a perpetual academic wound in the study of Chinese classical texts.