Written Response

Week 2: Final presentation

Week 1: Intermediate presentations

Key figures

• Edward Bangs Drew
• Edward’s family caregivers, domestic workers
  • Assu
  • Sup Kim
  • Charlie’s Amah

Historic background of the collection

Treaty ports

China was forced to open itself to trade by the Western powers in the nineteenth century. Led by the British, these powers wanted to ensure they were able to import their goods (the most lucrative being opium) and waged two wars to do so.

Bracken, G. (2019). Treaty Ports in China: Their Genesis, Development, and Influence. Journal of Urban History, 45(1), 168-176. https://doi.org/10.1177/0096144218816548

The Treaty of Nanking forced China to open five ports to foreign trade: Canton (Guangzhou), Amoy (Xiamen), Foochow (Fuzhou), Ningpo (Ningbo) and Shanghai. (Bracken, G. 2019)

The Treaty of Nanking ceded Hong Kong Island to Britain in perpetuity and stipulated that five ports were to be opened to foreign trade: Canton (Guangzhou), Amoy (Xiamen), Foochow (Fuzhou), Ningpo (Ningbo), and Shanghai. These became known as Treaty Ports and were the first in an ever-increasing series of settlements that spread themselves across the country until January 11, 1943, when the Chinese and the British signed the Treaty for the Relinquishment of Extra-Territorial Rights in China, ending the system after 101 years.

Bracken, G. (2019). Treaty Ports in China: Their Genesis, Development, and Influence. Journal of Urban History, 45(1), 168-176. https://doi.org/10.1177/0096144218816548

Foochow, a disappointing, but somehow ‘attractive’ treaty port

Of the five open ports, one (Canton) remained closed, ultimately giving rise to a second war, and two (Foochow and Ningpo) were so disappointing that Britain tried and Ningpo) were so disappointing that Britain tried exchanging them for somewhere better, like unsuitable birthday gifts. (Th e Chinese refused, explaining it would make a complete mockery of the treaty.) Amoy had a slow start and Shanghai, in time becoming had a slow start and Shanghai, in time becoming bigger than all the others combined, was far smaller than many nearby cities.

Other ports remained ‘attractively provincial’, such as Swatow, Amoy and Foochow. In these places social groupings were more pronounced, with particular reference to where and how one lived. Yet other ports were so small as to be claustrophobic for the handful of foreign residents, endlessly having the same conversations with the same people.

Nield, Robert. China’s Foreign Places : The Foreign Presence in China in the Treaty Port Era, 1840-1943, Hong Kong University Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ual/detail.action?docID=4394037.

American Trade with China in the 1860s

https://lc-digital.conncoll.edu/exhibits/show/gold-journal/essays/diplomats

The British and French obtained new unequal treaties by military force, but the United States sought their own through diplomacy. The “most-favored-nation clause” (Brown 179) of the Treaty of Tientsin allowed for other nations to hold the same trade privileges the British and French had gained. These new ratifications opened ports and even the interior of China to America for trade purposes.

Tea was the most important imported commodity Americans obtained from China through the end of the 19th century. Initially, American imports from China largely consisted of cloth (nankeen and silk) as well as tea. Tea became the dominant commodity, expanding from approximately 36% of the total imports from China in 1822 to 65% in 1860 (May 18).

Although the Treaty of Tientsin in 1860 opened the door for American trade in China, America was too busy for the first part of the decade fighting in the Civil War, because of this America did not establish very good trade relations with China compared to the rest of the imperial powers of Europe. Nations like Great Britain and France were very much so ahead of America when it came to trade with China in the late 19^th century.

https://lc-digital.conncoll.edu/exhibits/show/gold-journal/essays/trade

The Opium Wars

Western colonialism – Opium Wars, China, Britain | Britannica

Perspectives

Photography, Imperialism and colonialism

Army personnel and commercial photographers portrayed foreign dignitaries, landscape, architecture, and monuments in order to show Westerners seemingly exotic cultures.

https://www.britannica.com/technology/photography/Photographys-early-evolution-c-1840-c-1900

Camera as a weapon

The invention of the daguerreotype was announced in 1839. By the 1840s, photography had spread like wildfire and become a vital aspect of European colonialism. It played a role in administrative, missionary, scientific and commercial activities. As the Zimbabwean novelist Yvonne Vera put it: “The camera has often been a dire instrument. In Africa, as in most parts of the dispossessed, the camera arrives as part of the colonial paraphernalia, together with the gun and the bible. …”

photography during colonial rule imaged the world in order to study, profit from and own it.

This was one of the repeated interactions between imperial powers and the populations that they sought to control: The dominant power decided that everything had to be seen and cataloged, a task for which photography was perfectly suited. Under the giant umbrella of colonialism, nothing would be allowed to remain hidden from the imperial authorities.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/06/magazine/when-the-camera-was-a-weapon-of-imperialism-and-when-it-still-is.html

School photographs as a tool to uniform and to create “others”

Schooling became a way to manage social differences in multicultural populations, and class photos could support that effort by emphasizing uniformity and minimizing disparities. School photos enable the creation of national and imperial subjects, but they can also create “others.”

The book reveals multiple connections between the strategies of assimilation and integration, on one side, and persecution, exclusion, even genocide, on the other. Yet, in highlighting community, solidarity and the desire for learning, these images can also allow us to imagine justice and a more democratic future.

Marianne Hirsch in an interview with Columbia News https://news.columbia.edu/news/marianne-hirsch-new-book-examines-history-school-photos

Explorations

The colonial gaze 

• Body gestures:
  • Sitting posture
• Eye contacts
  • Looking towards the camera
  • Looking away
  • Looking at someone else
• Facial expression & Emotional state

Clothing

• Decoration: flowers
• Swords
• Hats
• Handkercheif
• Cigar

Nature landscape

Ships

• Western ships
• Chinese ships

Women

Photo arrangements – western group photo

Real estate

• Western vs. Chinese architecture
• real estate catalogue – for sale > for western settlement
• Cemetery

Domestic workers

• The political, economic and cultural forces of China in the 19th century
• Gender, class, socio-economic
• Care migration
• Domestic workers in foreign families as well as Chinese families
  • Wealthy merchants family in Ningbo
• Titles for the workers
  • Female: amahs, nursemaids
  • Male: house boys, boys
• the materiality of workers’ lives
• colonial power relations with domestic workers invariably depicted in poses that emphasise devoted servility.
• Yet, rather than a medium through which servants were simply dominated, it is possible to read workers’ constrained agency in relation to pose, expression, and attire. (Source)

References:

Anderson, B. (2006) Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, Verso, London. Available from: ProQuest Ebook Central https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ual/reader.action?docID=5176951&ppg=115 (Accessed: 20 October 2023).

Bracken, G. (2019) Treaty Ports in China: Their Genesis, Development, and Influence. Journal of Urban History, 45(1), 168-176. https://doi.org/10.1177/0096144218816548 (Accessed: 20 October 2023).

Britannica (2023) Photography’s early evolution, c. 1840–c. 1900. Available at: https://www.britannica.com/technology/photography/Photographys-early-evolution-c-1840-c-1900 (Accessed: 20 October 2023).

Cole, T. (2019) ‘When the Camera Was a Weapon of Imperialism. (And When It Still Is.)’, The New York Times Magazine, 6 February. Available at: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/06/magazine/when-the-camera-was-a-weapon-of-imperialism-and-when-it-still-is.html (Accessed: 20 October 2023).

Cunningham, J and Miller, W. ‘American Trade With China In The 1860s’, Linda Lear Center Digital Collections And Exhibitions. Available at: https://lc-digital.conncoll.edu/exhibits/show/gold-journal/essays/trade (Accessed: 20 October 2023).

Foucault, M. (2001) The Order of Things, Taylor & Francis Group, London. Available from: ProQuest Ebook Central (Accessed: 20 October 2023).

Hirsch, M. (2020) ‘A New Book Looks at the History of School Photos’. Interviewed by E. Glasberg for Columbia News, February 14. Available at: https://news.columbia.edu/news/marianne-hirsch-new-book-examines-history-school-photos (Accessed: 20 October 2023).

Nield, Robert. (2015) China’s Foreign Places : The Foreign Presence in China in the Treaty Port Era, 1840-1943, Hong Kong University Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ual/detail.action?docID=4394037 (Accessed: 20 October 2023).