China’s Hidden Century, 1796–1912, is many things at once: a memento of an exhibition that took place at the British Museum from May to October 2023, a collection of color illustrations of its riches, and a jumping off point for a wide-ranging scholarly investigation of nineteenth-century China based on extant material remains. The project curator was Wenyuan Xin. Jessica Harrison-Hall and Julia Lovell edited and contributed to this catalog, a gorgeous book originally published by the British Museum and now available in the United States through the good offices of the University of Washington Press. The efforts of the organizers also germinated two other fantastic edited volumes: the collection of biographies Creators of Modern China: 100 Lives from Empire to Republic, 1796–1912 and the conference volume China’s 1800s: Material and Visual Culture, each already reviewed in the Journal of Chinese History. Footnote ¹ The exhibition thus spurred a larger scholarly enterprise, one only partially documented in the catalog, that afforded varied interpretations of the nineteenth century as a whole and of particular objects and movements that took place in the period.

Julia Lovell’s introduction to the exhibition catalog explains that the project showcased China’s “long nineteenth century,” 1796 to 1912: a political periodization spanning from the Qianlong emperor stepping aside in favor of his son, the Jiaqing emperor, to the abdication of the Xuantong emperor Puyi, which ended the imperial system. Lovell claims that the periodization helped organizers rectify the image of the era as one of “political, military, and economic catastrophe and humiliation, and of cultural stagnation.” She sees (as do others throughout the companion volumes) systematic scholarly neglect of nineteenth-century art resulting from this misapprehension, hence the “Hidden Century” of the exhibition’s title. Lovell argues that emphasizing catastrophe “has been didactic in intent,” in effect justifying the power of the Communist Party as a remedy for the ills of what party leaders (but not Lovell) call “the century of humiliation” (bainian guochi 百年国耻) (10). By contrast, the organizers seek to highlight “cultural creativity and resilience” (331) through the more than 300 objects in the exhibition. Whether or not one agrees with the organizers’ sense of history, one can only praise the effort to collect these objects and to invite a high level of scholarly engagement with such a carefully curated corpus. The essays in the catalog model different ways of interpreting the assembled artworks and propose various forms of change over time. It is challenging to sum up the changing availability of colors, craft skills, materials, managerial techniques, decorative motifs, and technologies over the course of the nineteenth century, but this work certainly demonstrates the complexity of the period.

Historians Stephen Platt and Jeffrey Wasserstrom write about “The Military” and “Reform to Revolution,” respectively. Platt discusses the Eight Banners and Green Standard forces that comprised the Qing’s dual military system, then narrates major conflicts, including the Three Provinces White Lotus Rebellion (1796–1804), the piracy outbreaks of the early nineteenth century, the opium wars, the Taiping War (1850–1864), the self strengthening movement, and the first Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895). Platt emphasizes how Western military technology became decisive by the middle of the century and how provincial leaders then equipped new armies with this technology, initially strengthening the Qing, but ultimately contributing to its downfall. Wasserstrom’s account is similarly international in its focus. He describes how larger processes of globalization reshaped the Qing in the last decades of its rule, illustrating how events in China became news stories worldwide, how different Qing figures travelled abroad, and how the court attempted to respond to shifting international conditions. He locates the radical imaginings of Kang Youwei (康有為, 1858–1927) and Qiu Jin (秋瑾,1875–1907) in the context of globalization. Unlike Platt, Wasserstrom includes a brief discussion of material culture, listing objects, including globes, travel records, diplomat credentials, and most interestingly, a rubbing of an Egyptian sarcophagus in the collection of the Qing official and art collector Duanfang (端方, 1861–1911), highlighting a growing interest in the world at large (rather than merely “the West”). Each essay could work as a way to engage undergraduates with an interest in visual sources. For both authors, the objects tend to serve as illustrations of a narrative rather than focal points of investigation.

Objects take center stage in Mei Mei Rado’s essay on “The Court.” Rado opens by sketching the nature of the imperial institution, briefly describing the workings of various institutions for the production of paintings, textiles, and porcelain for the court, and outlining the succession of Qing rulers, including Empress Dowager Cixi. She then discusses imperial portraiture; paintings and objects related to court ceremony; robes, shoes, and jewelry worn by emperors, consorts, and courtiers; objects and furnishings of the court; and court entertainment. The section on court dress is particularly useful. Rado observes that clothing “was essential to constructing Manchu identity and imperial authority” (59). She goes into detail about fabrics and furs supplied to Beijing and the kinds of decorations on robes for different occasions. In this analysis, objects play a role in constructing power and monarchy, so the quality of workmanship, the choice of cloth, the colors, and other visual elements produce outcomes in the world. These insights help readers understand, for example, how Cixi deployed fabrics, photographs, porcelain, painting, and even palace architecture to project an image of female rulership both within the empire and abroad. Cixi’s use of power through materials extended even after her death with the construction, and then burning, of a 56 meter long dharma boat (fachuan 法船) to carry her soul to the underworld (59).

Social and cultural historians will find great interest in Chia-ling Yang’s essay on “Elite Art” and Jessica Harrison-Hall’s on “Vernacular Culture.” These chapters include some of the most beautiful and interesting works in the book: gobsmacking calligraphy by Deng Shiru (鄧石如, 1743–1805) (135) and Yi Bingshou (伊秉綬,1754–1815) (137); playful combinations of calligraphy, rubbings, and ink drawing by Liuzhou (六舟,1791–1858) (145); brilliantly colorful paintings by Zhao Zhiqian (趙之謙, 1829–1844) (158–59) and Ren Xiong (任熊, 1823–1857) (170–71); sumptuous robes (220–22); and wall hangings (231). “Vernacular Culture” incorporates many elite objects as well: portraits, wood furniture, headdresses, Yixing teapots, and various robes and prints. Glimpses of more pedestrian lives can be found in a waterproof palm- and rice-fiber coat, a baker’s shop sign, a mahjong set, and a handprint on a contract from Taiwan. From these objects the authors tell stories of commercialization, the destruction of war, and technological change. Yang recounts various forms of scholarly and artistic antiquarianism, then turns to the newly opened treaty ports and the effects of the Taiping War, showing how access to new ideas and technologies in turn produced interest in sciences like botany and medicine, resulting in new ways of depicting nature. The rise of Shanghai and revival of Canton offered new markets for elite art and new means of publicizing artists, studios, and artworks in treaty port newspapers. Harrison-Hall offers sketches of rural and urban life before turning to specific kinds of objects. Photography was important as a medium in itself, as a record of different kinds of activity, and as an influence on other media, notably portraiture. Furnishings and dress saw increased use of imported materials and decorative styles. Food mores changed as well, notably in the proliferation of restaurants serving foreign cuisines.

In “Global Qing,” Anne Gerritsen argues that “the intensifying flows of people, objects, and ideas that characterize the nineteenth century globally also brought transformation on all fronts in China” (242). She examines the material artifacts of those transformations. Many of her examples are portraits, fans, parasols, and maps that testify to the vibrancy of exchange in Canton prior to the first Opium War (1839–1842). After briefly examining Qing exports to Southeast Asia, Gerritsen turns to trade with Russia. She sees the objects that result as entirely new and innovative products of “contact zones.” Although she does not engage with the problem of the uneven survival of objects, the argument implies that instead of viewing existing collections as imperfect reflections of a larger whole, one can instead focus on the particular worlds they do represent. Moreover, her understanding of such contact zones is not limited to treaty ports, but extends to overseas Chinese communities around the world.

By putting so many excellent scholars in dialog with such engrossing artworks (and, in the companion volumes, by introducing us to so much new research), the organizers more than justify the framing device of “the long nineteenth century.” They may, however, have exhausted the usefulness of this periodization. The essays make clear that the destruction of imperial porcelain and silk manufactures during the Taiping War, the rise of Shanghai as a center of art, and the advent of photography and lithography each held greater significance for late Qing material culture than the Qianlong emperor’s purely nominal abdication in 1796. Although the project as a whole does shed light on artistic centers like Guangzhou, Jingdezhen, and Shanghai, it largely elides regional differences.Footnote ² To take but one of many possible examples, Japan’s seizure of Taiwan in 1895 gave the island a distinct political chronology. Future scholarship will need to take into greater consideration areas for which a “long nineteenth century” makes little sense.

The themes of technological change, foreign contacts with China, and increasing access to global markets recur in all the essays. One wonders to what extent this emphasis reflects the nature of the available sources. The herculean efforts of the organizers have brought together works from the palace museums in Beijing and Taiwan and from collections in China (particularly Hangzhou and Shanghai). However, most of the objects stem from European and American institutions, for the collections of the Anglophone world are bursting with artifacts of nineteenth-century China. “China hands” of various descriptions furnished their fashionable dwellings with artisanal manufactures: the Forbes family’s Cantonese marble, Penrhyn Castle’s Chinese wallpaper, the Kenneth Roy Thompson snuffbox bequest.Footnote ³ It makes sense that a perhaps disproportionate number of objects in the exhibit reflected exchange with these Western places. Furthermore, the incredibly destructive mid-century conflicts meant not only that fewer things survive from the early 1800s, but also that the items that have been preserved likely reflect the tastes of those people in the second half of the century who managed to rescue them. The examples of foreign influence—for example the development of reverse glass painting, chemical dyes, and the decorative arts of the treaty ports—are striking, and I appreciate Anne Gerritsen’s insights about the stories such objects can tell. Still, historians of the nineteenth century will eventually need to piece together a fuller picture of Qing material culture than the one on display here.

Granting that even so large an exhibition requires curators to reject far more than they can possibly include, two choices seem particularly discordant with current scholarship. First, Qing historians may be disappointed to find that China proper, and not the full dominions of the dynasty, is the unit of analysis. Inner Asian topics receive relatively little attention except in the context of the Qing court. The section on “Vernacular Culture,” for example, documents Manchu and Han cultural exchange, but includes no examples from Tibet, Xinjiang, Mongolia, or minority peoples on the outskirts of the empire. Second, the object descriptions seldom explain provenance, so although the catalog documents various forms of turmoil in nineteenth-century China, it does not explain how war helped bring certain objects into Western collections in the first place. The phenomenon of looting appears only in the portrait of a cute dog, “Looty,” apparently seized during the sack of the Summer Palace in 1860, a dissonant image given the extent of destruction (114). One wonders if there were not better ways to convey Chinese reactions to the destruction of war.Footnote ⁴

The claim that historians have either ignored the nineteenth century or characterized it with the loaded language of “stagnation” or “humiliation” appears in the introduction and acknowledgements of China’s Hidden Century (not in the essays), and also repeatedly in the companion volumes. Is it a straw man argument? Lovell cites only Xi Jinping as an example of this view of history (308). I think the broad-brush summary of historiography inaccurately treats historical scholarship on the nineteenth century, particularly scholarship within China, as monolithic. Even Mao-era historians recognized “creativity and resilience” in, for example, the Taiping movement.Footnote ⁵ Specialists in art may have more sympathy with the editors’ claims of systematic neglect. Various contributors to the project cite histories of art that ignore or disparage the nineteenth century. For example, Margaret Medley, then curator of the Percival David Foundation of Chinese art, described the nineteenth century as a period of “long slow decline in both production and quality” of Chinese ceramics.Footnote ⁶ It is little wonder that Jessica Harrison-Hall, the current curator of the Foundation (now held at the British Museum) would want to issue a corrective.Footnote ⁷ Even the relative neglect of this period on the art-historical side invites the question: if nineteenth-century Chinese art was regarded with such disdain, why do European and American institutions have so much of it? Surely both appreciation and scorn have a longer and more interesting history.

It is the encyclopedic nature of the exhibition and this catalog that make such questions of representation possible, and the project as a whole demonstrates that much work is already underway that may well address the concerns expressed in this review. Whatever periodizing schemes art historians eventually settle on, and however historians incorporate material artifacts into their analysis, scholars will need to grapple with the images and issues presented in China’s Hidden Century and its companion volumes.