In the beginning of 19th century, the English looted the Acropolis of Athens. The so-called “Elgin Marbles” (the marble frieze of the Parthenon) migrated to the British Museum in London and shaped England’s prevailing aesthetic taste (as you can see from the Wedgwood stoneware). Half a century later, during the Second Opium War, the son of Lord Elgin would order the storming and plundering of the imperial Summer Palace in Beijing.