Anne Gerritsen

Global China: Material Culture and Connections in World History

The multidisciplinary articles in this special issue were developed in conjunction with a research project on the cultures of porcelain in global history, hosted by the Global History and Culture Centre at the University of Warwick. These articles all situate porcelain within wider contexts of material and visual culture. This approach reveals the complexities of the processes involved in the appropriation of Chinese ceramics in England and Iran and in the diffusion of Chinese-style ceramics in the western Indian Ocean, and explores the ways in which ideas about Chineseness were formed, and a global visual culture on the theme of porcelain production emerged.

Fragments of a Global Past: Ceramics Manufacture in Song-Yuan-Ming Jingdezhen

This essay explores textual genres related to the production of ceramics in Jingdezhen, including maps, literati collections, the literature of connoisseurship, local gazetteers, and merchant manuals. An analysis of these genres brings the Chinese textual record of ceramics into sharper focus and reveals what has remained unwritten. Whereas European writings on Chinese ceramics from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries dwell on modes of manufacture in a global context, Chinese writers generally ignore matters of technology and commerce beyond the confines of the Chinese realm. These omissions emerge in part from the peculiarities of the genres within which these writings have been transmitted.

From Demon to Deity: Kang Wang in Thirteenth-Century Jizhou and Beyond

This essay discusses the cult of a deity known as Kang Wang, worshipped throughout Jizhou in thirteenth-century Jiangxi. The identity of this deity remains to some extent mysterious; many different identifying stories for Kang Wang coexist. Underneath these guises, however, his origins as a fearsome and unnamed demon shine through. I argue that the various representations of Kang Wang must be understood as resulting from the very different agendas of the authors who created those identities, but they all share one aim: covering up the demonic roots of the deity. Providing a name and place of origin for the deity should be seen as attempts to exert authority over this demonic force.

Transcultural Objects, Movements, and Bodies

When the Polish Jesuit Michal Boym traveled to China in 1643, he brought with him a strong interest in botanics and medical science. The book he published on his return, Flora Sinensis (Vienna 1656), offered observations on flowers and fruits, spices and medicinal plants, and animals particular to China, with thirty beautiful colored illustrations.

Micro-Spatial Histories of Labour: Towards a New Global History

Is it possible to bring global- and micro-history into a productive engagement? If so, which streams in these sub-disciplines might be relevant or open to such an interaction? What might be the theoretical and methodological implications of such an engagement? These questions present the central concern of this introductory essay: to identify the significant opportunities that arise from bringing together global history and micro-history. This chapter begins by (re-)defining ‘global’ and ‘micro’ from the perspective of their interaction. It then moves to an exploration of how the perspective of micro-spatial history relates to periodisation and conceptualisations of time. The final section addresses the potential of micro-spatial history for labour studies in particular. We close by framing this approach as an alternative perspective on global history.

Making the Place Work: Managing Labour in Early Modern China

Gerritsen explores the management of labour in the porcelain manufactures of early modern China. She focuses on the manufactures of Jingdezhen, where the majority of blue-and-white ceramics for export from China to the wider world were made. The production of porcelain for global markets required a large labour force locally, especially because at the same time these kilns manufactured for the imperial court and for consumers throughout the Chinese empire. The imperial kilns worked in close collaboration with the private kilns that manufactured for domestic use as well as for export. Through an exploration of sixteenth-century gazetteers, this chapter shows the challenges of managing that labour force.

Global Gifts: The Material Culture of Diplomacy in Early Modern Eurasia

This anthology explores the role that art and material goods played in diplomatic relations and political exchanges between Asia, Africa, and Europe in the early modern world. The authors challenge the idea that there was a European primacy in the practice of gift giving through a wide panoramic review of imperial encounters between Europeans (including the Portuguese, French, Dutch, and English) and Asian empires (including Ottoman, Persian, Mughal, Sri Lankan, Chinese, and Japanese cases). They examine how those exchanges influenced the global production and circulation of art and material culture, and explore the types of gifts exchanged, the chosen materials, and the manner of their presentation. Global Gifts establishes new parameters for the study of the material and aesthetic culture of Eurasian relations before 1800, exploring the meaning of artistic objects in global diplomacy and the existence of economic and aesthetic values mutually intelligible across cultural boundaries.

Patricia Buckley Ebrey, Emperor Huizong. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2014. xxix, 661 pp. Bibliography, Index, Plates. US

For many years now, Patricia Ebrey has had a relationship with Emperor Huizong; not a physical relationship, although the many piles of notes Ebrey accumulated over the years must have felt like a ...

47.50 (HB). ISBN 978-0-674-72525-6

HTZ: I see myself in the first place as a social historian, and if you want to understand the development of Chinese society as a whole, then the Ming dynasty is crucial. When I started my studies at Berkeley under Fred Wakeman, my plan was to focus on the Song dynasty, on a project I provisionally entitled ‘Song manors and Song manners’. The Naito Konan thesis was still very influential, and scholars wanted to investigate the Song dynasty as it was considered to be the start of the ‘modern era’ in China. Wakeman suggested I spend time in Cambridge, England, to work with Denis Twitchett, and from there I went to Japan to study with Shiba Yoshinobu. At that time, Braudel’s publications and the Annales school were very influential. At Berkeley, as in Japan, scholars were approaching China’s past by looking at the longue durée. Instead of working within what was then considered the older dynastic model, scholars were beginning to regard historical change over the long period from 1500 to the present. Shiba was already examining the longue durée in Huizhou, and so I left behind the idea of concentrating on the Song dynasty, and started to contemplate broader patterns of historical change that included the Ming dynasty. In that context, working within a single dynasty did not seem to offer the opportunities that the long-term perspective could bring. At the same time, scholars were gradually moving away from the Marxist approach. Of course, studies continued to appear with an emphasis on Marxist analysis; Mi Chu Wiens, for example, used a Marxist model for her analysis of landholding in the Jiangnan region. But gradually, other approaches, other social science models, and thus other periodizations started to appear. Shiba Yoshinobu showed the importance of having a more open approach to studying the past. I should also add that at that time, in the mid-1970s, I fell under the spell of the idea of l’histoire immobile and the work of the French scholar Le Roy Ladurie, who was helping to crush Marxist reverence in the academy.

A Conversation With Harriet Zurndorfer

From September 2014 to January 2015, over 140,000 visitors saw the exhibition devoted to Ming China at the British Museum. Seven years earlier, from September 2007 to April 2008, the Museum had als...