Conflict Heritage, Preservation Diplomacy, and Future Corridors of Smuggling

Abstract:War and the cessation of conflict have long been triggers for preservation diplomacy; the desire for heritage protection, peace, and recovery creates a political environment within which collaborations around preservation burst into existence. This essay takes up the political and diplomatic dimensions of such preservation aid in relation to China's strategy for integrating the infrastructures and economies of Eurasia via its One Belt One Road initiative. Responding to the heritage destruction and looting of Silk Road sites in Iraq and Syria by the Islamic State, the article looks to One Belt One Road as an emergent political economy upon which new forms of preservation diplomacy and heritage aid can be built. It also raises the specter of vast new markets for illicitly trafficked antiquities by looking at the surge in museums and likely boom in private collections of Silk Road antiquities in China.