Yuanming Yuan's Demise: An attack on Chinese Civilization or the Vengeance Against Chinese Barbarism?

The article explores the different perspectives the French and English had towards the looting and burning of Yuanming Yuan. It will also explore how the media portrayed the events that occurred at Yuanming Yuan, during the Second Opium War, and how it fits in the scope of how China was perceived as a civilized or barbaric nation. The idea of civilization and barbarism through the Europeans was challenged with the event of Yuanming Yuan’s ultimate controversial destruction. European supremacy called for justifications on race, religion, and the idea of being civilized. Alongside European global supremacy was the pacification of barbaric people who once within history set out to destroy Western civilizations; this was a recent occurrence, which came about in the study of Asian history and using enlightenment ideas to justify European supremacy in Asia.