During the Second Opium War, The British High Commissioner to China, James Bruce, 8th Earl of Elgin, orders the complete destruction of the Old Summer Palace in retaliation for the imprisonment and torture of several Anglo-French delegation members by the Qing government, with several of them being killed.
The French and British troops had captured the palace days earlier and had looted and destroyed the imperial collections. The destruction of the Peking’s Summer Palace has been considered criminal and barbaric by many Chinese and remains a a very sensitive issue in China today. More
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