The significance of the book Creators of Modern China: 100 Lives from Empire to Republic is best understood in the context of its genesis in the exhibition “China’s Hidden Century.” This remarkable and paradigm-shifting exhibition, on display at the British Museum in London in 2023, was designed to offer the numerous visitors a different perspective on Chinese history between 1796 and 1912.Footnote ¹ Contrary to common perceptions of the nineteenth century as an era of decline—a “century of humiliation”—the exhibition portrays an epoch in which, against the backdrop of violence, war, and disintegration as well as political, cultural, and technological changes, an extraordinary creativity developed within society. That creativity found vital expression in many different media. The exhibition featured, for the first time, specific exquisite objects from Chinese court life and politics that did not fit the traditional narrative. These included cloisonné vases that were sent to London as gifts from the Chinese imperial court on the occasion of the coronation of King George and Queen Mary in 1911, as well as a silk robe belonging to Empress Cixi, and an original version of the 1842 Treaty of Nanjing. However, it was the exhibits from everyday life, furniture, fashion, and art that made the exhibition truly spectacular. These objects from a rapidly changing living environment, along with representations of new technology like the telegraph, electricity, and the railroad, recorded in new media like photography and lithographs, were presented in darkened rooms, dramatically conveying to viewers the transformation of society.

A central concern of the exhibition was to make hidden voices literally audible: murmurs in Chinese, English, and even the Manchu language played in the galleries. The immediacy of encountering well-chosen and impressive objects and the experience of hearing the Chinese language gave visitors the feeling of becoming participatory witnesses to life in nineteenth-century China. Hence the paradigmatic shift: curators Jessica Harrison-Hall and Julia Lovell, both also editors of the catalog China’s Hidden Century: 1796–1912, offered an alternative to the narrative of a “century of humiliation” (bainian guochi 百年国耻), which is particularly prevalent in China. Instead of a civilization and society in inexorable decline, a century hidden by more dramatic narratives before and after it (the high Qing “golden age” of the eighteenth century and the revolutionary twentieth century), the exhibition showed people facing the violence, wars, and other challenges of their era with remarkable creative resilience. “Reenacting” scenes from different spheres of life of the late Qing period—the court, military, artists—the exhibition (for which more than one hundred scholars from fourteen countries provided their knowledge) proved that in the shadow of violence and crisis, among internal uprisings and foreign wars, remarkable personalities emerged.

A diverse and interesting selection of these personalities is introduced in Creators of Modern China: 100 Lives from Empire to Republic 1796 to 1912. Edited by the exhibition’s curators, it offers an innovative historiographical intervention and continues the exhibition’s conceptual strategy of revising the common denigration of the nineteenth century. Structured in eight thematic chapters, the book highlights the world of the imperial court (Chapter 1); religious mediators and innovators (2); military figures including pirates (3); artists (4); what the editors label “Observers” (5); business people (6); statesmen, including philosophers (7); and finally the “Makers” of this modern world, including scientists, folklorists, and artisans (8).

Presenting individuals who have been underrepresented in Western and, to some extent, Chinese historiography, the one hundred vignettes have been strategically selected to illustrate specific facets of the era, thus documenting networks and social interrelationships among different spheres of life in the late Qing period. The life stories and actions are described in a way that modern readers can comprehend, making the people portrayed surprisingly accessible as objects of identification, and giving concrete form to abstract historical processes. This is true not only for the emperors, who come alive as human beings with specific character traits, but also especially for figures who usually remain marginal in or completely absent from conventional historical narratives. Striking examples include the court eunuch Li Liangying (1848–1911; p. 39); the Manchu diplomat’s daughter Yu Rongling (1882–1973; p. 42), who learned modern dance forms in Paris and acted as a cultural mediator; and the female pirate Shi Yang (1775–1844; p. 77), who was more powerful than the British pirate Blackbeard and commanded a fleet twice the size of the Spanish Armada. Gloriously obvious is the appreciation of hitherto hidden female actors across all social classes: from the Empress Dowager Cixi to unknown merchants, intellectuals, poets, businesswomen, and artists.

In the late Qing, “traditional” social categories were already being supplemented by innovative modern counterparts: for example, the category “artists” here includes intellectuals, scholars, and polymaths, but also the photographer Lai Fong (1839–1890; p. 163). Chapter 5, titled “Observers,” clearly illustrates the difficulty of fitting the diverse new fields of activity into rigid categories in this period of upheaval. It presents writers, poets, and translators, including Yun Zhu (1771–1833; p. 168) as a collector of poems by female authors (“Poetry by Women of our Dynasty”); and Gu Taiqing (1799–1877p. 171) as the most important Manchu poet, who founded the “Autumn Red Poetry Club” with her friend Shan Shanbao (1808–1862). The case of Jakdan (p. 180, 1780 to after 1848), who was re-discovered as an important poet and translator long after his death, shows that Manchu language still mattered.

The picture emerges of a society that was neither culturally closed nor stagnant nor globally isolated. Ma Dexin, for example (1794–1874; p. 64), an Islamic scholar from Dali traveled via Burma to the Arabian Peninsula long before China’s so-called “opening,” returned to China in 1849, and wrote a pilgrim’s guide that demystified the Islamic haj. He built a bridge between an Islamic cosmopolitan modernity and China. Some individuals, at least, were aware of China’s own long-established mechanisms of exchange with global processes, which, again, contradicts the stereotype of a closed society.

The transformation of nineteenth-century society, according to this narrative, happened through the actions of many heterogeneous actors in various social fields. They included also businessmen such as the immensely wealthy Wu Bingjian (1769–1843; p. 222). Foreigners contributed significantly to changes, and have a place in the book: for example the British men Sir Robert Hart (1835–1911; p. 238) and Charles Gordon (1833–1885; p. 85), and the Parsi Sir Jansetjee Jejeebhoy (1783–1859; p. 224). The “Makers”– potters, textile producers, musicians such as Abing (1893–1950), and medical missionaries such as Ida Kahn (1873–1931)—contributed to social change, too. The book portrays all these businessmen, foreigners, and makers as active mediators between different communities and identities; between China and the West; and between revolutionary politics and civil society. The volume reveals the active participation of heterogenous people within China in the shaping of a cosmopolitan modernity.

Despite its innovative approaches, the book has methodological limitations.Footnote ² The lack of footnotes makes it difficult to verify source references, and the bibliographies are limited to secondary literature, although individual articles do mention primary sources. In general, the individual entries do not provide in-depth analysis—they are entry points, not complete historical accounts. However, the authors of the individual essays are established Sinologists and specialists who have contributed their expertise, lending the work scholarly legitimacy and depth, especially in the contextualizing introductions to the chapters. Interesting additional information comes from a selection of previously little-noticed photographs and illustrations of artifacts. The 150 images vividly illustrate the articles and at the same time encourage readers to conduct their own research.

Creators of Modern China is suitable for undergraduate students at the university level, but also for interested lay readers. It convincingly shows that Western modernity did not act as an exogenous force in China, but rather as a catalyst for social upheavals that were already underway: the dissolution of traditional society, the emergence of a modern public sphere, and the formation of new groups of actors. The volume is not an academic monograph but a reference work and source of inspiration for further research. Its greatest strength lies in its presentation of a wide variety of individuals in all their complexity. It paints a picture of the late Qing period that is closer to reality—an era of simultaneous crisis and creativity—than traditional accounts. In so doing, it opens up new perspectives on nineteenth-century China and challenges researchers to look beyond the trope of the “century of humiliation.”