l'école française d'extrême orient

in 1923, andré malraux - adventurer, author, resistance fighter, politician, mythomane, and subject of the first two chapters in my dissertation - landed in ha noi, all set for his "archaeological research trip" to cambodia. less forgiving critics of malraux's enigmatic trajectory claim he had actually come to asia to loot the temples and make a bundle in the american exotic art market. whatever his motivation, it was here, at the école française d'extrême orient, which is now the ha noi history museum and which i pass daily on my way to class, that he was ordered to document his finds only and leave them all on site. fully aware that most colonial officials of the day had a couple of nicked bas reliefs in their personal collections, malraux completely ignored his orders. a month or so later, on his way back to siem reap (or it could have been phnom penh - i forget), riding an elephant loaded with a couple tons of stolen stone carvings, old malraux got busted by the police - imagine a colonial roadblock in 1923 cambodia! - and landed in jail.

the parisian intelligentsia cried out in horror, and malraux eventually got off. he went on to write a loosely autobiographical account of his time in cambodia - la voie royale (or the royal way) and later became general de gaulle's minister of cultural affairs!