Great books of Hue lost to free market

Anonymous Patron writes “Interesting One Out of Vietnam where The imperial and public libraries built up during the Nguyen dynasty (1700-1850) were either cleaned out by French colonists or destroyed by war and natural disasters.
These days, the city’s libraries do not have the budgets to acquire rare books, leaving scholars and history buffs at the mercy of private collectors who passionately maintain their collections.”

May 21, 2004 by Uncategorized 2

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2 Responses

  1. pchuck says:
    May 22, 2004 at 12:56 am

    Lost……
    I don’t know if they are lost. It is not like the individuals involved are going to destroy the works. There are some instances when private ownership is just as good or better than public ownership of works of arts. There are lots of private collections that are shared with the public.

    In this situation, it sounds like Vietnamese people in Vietnam have these works rather than Chinese, British, American or French outside of Vietnam.

    I am also aware that works of art are sometimes plundered and then resurface on the market in later years. This is a problem. I recall there was a case argued this term of the US Supreme Court that dealt with art stolen by the Nazis.

    Reply
  2. conservator says:
    May 22, 2004 at 2:03 am

    Re: Great books of Hue lost to free market
    Let us exercise some caution before accepting the offerings of a communist-controlled state news agency (VNS)–particularly where it concerns alleged misdeeds of French colonists and things being “lost to the free market”!

    The Vietnamese communists are in NO position to talk about free access to information!

    Reply

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