Focusing on the prolific trade, transport and consumption of
Chinese silk and porcelain, and Japanese lacquer abroad between
1500 and 1644, this groundbreaking book will show how the material
cultures of late Ming China and Momoyama/Early Edo Japan on one
side of the globe, and Western Europe and the New World on the
other, became linked for the first time, through an exchange of
luxury Asian manufactured goods for currency. It offers new insight
into these multi-layered long-distance commercial networks, which
resulted in an unprecedented creation of material culture that
reflected influences of both East and West. New research reveals
evidence of the trade of these three Asian manufactured goods,
first by Portugal and Spain, and later by the trading companies
formed by the Northern Netherlands/Dutch Republic and England.
Important documentary information is brought to light concerning,
for example, the use of Chinese porcelain in Western Europe, and
the objects made to order in European shapes for the Dutch and
English trading companies in Japan and China. The study also sheds
light on both the trans-Atlantic and trans-Pacific commercial
trading networks through which these Asian goods circulated, as
well as the way in which these goods were acquired, used and
appreciated by the Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch and English societies
in Western Europe and the multi-ethnic societies of the European
colonies in the New World and Asia. 400 illustrations of extant
examples of Chinese silks and porcelains, along with Japanese
lacquers of the period, complement the information gleaned from
archival and textual material. In the case of Chinese porcelain, a
large number of the examples illustrated are provided by
archaeological finds from European shipwrecks, survival campsites,
colonial settlements in Asia, the New World and the Caribbean, and
their respective mother countries in Western Europe. Breaking new
ground in its comparative study of the impact these European
trading empires or companies had on the material cultures of China
and Japan, this book shows the influence that the European
merchants and missionaries exerted on the goods made specifically
to order for them in both China and Japan. It also traces the
worldwide circulation of these luxury objects, which were intended
for secular and religious use in European settlements in Asia, and
their respective mother countries in Western Europe and colonies in
the New World. More importantly, this book shows that these
specific orders led to the creation of a wide variety of hybrid
manufactured goods in both China and Japan, which combined elements
from very different and distant cultures, reflecting the
fascinating and complex East-West cultural exchanges that occurred
in the early modern period.
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