Free
- Meeting
Armouries Interest Group
First Wednesday of every month, 7:30pm to 9pm
Plunder, pillage and spoils of war in history and law
Book Tickets for the Royal Armouries Conference 2025
A two-day conference at the Royal Armouries Museum, Leeds.
The appropriation of material goods as the outcome of conflict has been a recurrent phenomenon throughout history and across the globe. This conference brings to bear a wide range of thematic, geographical and temporal perspectives on the topic. It seeks to understand the fundamental motivations behind plunder through specific case studies, and the way that its manifestation in different societies sheds light on historical, social, legal and cultural factors.
Accepted papers
Keynote speaker: Dr Steve Tibble
Crusader criminals - Plunder, pillage and the usual suspects
Accepted papers include:
- The Sikh Empire: The plunder of Sikh artefacts after the Anglo-Sikh Wars
- From lost crowns to sacred bones: Extraordinary spoils of war in medieval warfare and their legacies
- War in the old way: Coup-counting culture in the Northwestern Great Plains
- Accipe nunc teutonicum ferrum: The different forms of violence against the unarmed population in the historiography of Otto von Freising
- Ghanimah: History, legal basis and distribution of war spoils in Islam
- Looting and the protection of artworks and national cultural heritage: Brazil and the 1970 UNESCO and 1995 UNIDROIT Conventions
- Re-looting. Patriotic repatriation of Burgundian war booty in Napoleonic France
- Re-producing Swiss identity: Staging local distinction and national unity through looted flags and their afterlives
- From re-production to re-stitution: Cannons between Flanders, Benin, London and Berlin
- Cultures of looting in the French and Austrian army and the importance of the theatre of war during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars (1792-1815)
- Different British cultures of plundering? The Duke of Wellington, Pax Europeana, and Pax Britannica in South Asia
- A soldier’s view of plunder: testimonies from the British Army in the Peninsular War
- Sacking the church: Revisiting ecclesiastical vacancies
- Monks, peasants and the looting of the capital in a borderland kingdom: Micro history of a rebellion in the Kingdom of Assam, 1769-1804
- Who plunders whom under which circumstances? Booty in the Sicilian war of succession 1189–1208
- Plundering to survive: Uskoks and port city of Senj in the 16th century
- To the invader go the spoils? William of Newburgh, bribery, and plunder in 12th-century Ireland
- "Leaving their riches to none but you": plundering in Portuguese context in Northwestern Africa (1415-1521)
- One man’s treasure: The Count of Borba’s prized and plundered hauberk
- Violent objects, victorious army: British trophy taking after D-Day
- 'To lose one Excalibur may be regarded as a misfortune…': The supposed looting of two heroic weapons.
Conference Information
Monday 28 April and Tuesday 29 April 2025.
Day 1: 10am to 5:40pm - Registration: 9:15am to 10am.
Day 2: 9am to 5:25pm.
Conference Dinner There will be an optional self-funded conference meal on the evening of Monday 28 April.
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Tickets: Full £55 / Concession £22.
Tickets include lunch and refreshments. We will send you a dietary requirements questionnaire in due course.
Concessionary rate: Available for early career researchers (within five years of doctoral award, not counting career breaks) and those enrolled on postgraduate research programmes of study.
To demonstrate eligibility and access the concessionary rate booking code please contact mark.bennett@armouries.org.uk.
Please contact mark.bennett@armouries.org.uk
- For a full programme of the day with abstracts
- To register for the self-funded post-conference meal
- For any other questions related to the conference
Bookings close 22 April 2025.
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