Cultural creativity and China’s last great empire
Research examines how violence, political and social turmoil catalysed innovation in material culture during the final century of the Qing empire.
The Qing was the last great empire to rule over China, between 1644 and 1912, claiming authority over 5 million square miles of territory. In 1912, the last emperor, Puyi, abdicated after the revolution of 1911, bringing some 2000 years of dynastic rule to an end and making way for the republic. The Last Emperor, Bertolucci’s 1987 Oscar-winning film, famously depicted Puyi’s early life as a child ruler and the fall of the dynasty.
For many years, scholarship inside and outside China predominantly defined the late Qing era as an era of cultural stagnation and 'national humiliation'. This project will build on recent scholarly insights to establish a new understanding of the innovations of 19th-century China and create a detailed visual account of late Qing responses to war, technology, urbanisation, political identities and external influences. This understanding matters because China’s ‘long 19th century’ forms a crucial bridge to the modern, post-imperial era. Interpretations of the 19th century remain fundamental to governance, culture and political legitimacy in China today.
“The scope of the project’s impact will extend beyond domestic and international museum visitors, to include schools, journalists, museum curators and beyond. The project will also promote relationships between UK government and industry, and China...”
What we’re researching:
The research will:
1) Analyse the role of violence in China in the era 1796-1912, examining the ways in which different conflicts saturated daily life and culture, and how groups and individuals responded to the incidence and scale of war.
2) Explore how 19th-century material culture highlights changes to imperial and court culture, in the face of prolonged international and domestic challenges.
3) Examine how new urban communities and consumers interacted with and challenged older political and cultural identities.
4) Identify how China's global interactions (especially with the Americas, Asia and Europe) shaped Chinese art and material culture.
What will the impact be?
The project underpins a major exhibition at the British Museum, which is scheduled to run for four months in 2023, integrating academic outcomes with public impact. There are clear benefits to engaging diverse domestic and international audiences with Chinese history. The last two decades have witnessed China's rise to global economic and political superpower status. But with disagreements between China and Western countries on the rise, the need for general, as well as specialist, audiences to understand in greater depth Chinese history, and the ways that its recent past informs its present, is urgent.
The scope of the project’s impact will extend beyond domestic and international museum visitors, to include schools, journalists, museum curators and beyond. The project will also promote relationships between the UK and China, with opportunities to build partnerships with cultural organisations and strengthen connections though formal visits and informal tours.
Project Fact File
Title: Cultural Creativity in Qing China 1796-1912
Funding: £719,000
Funder: Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC)
Funded period: 12 January 2020-10 July 2023
People: Principal investigator, Jessica Harrison-Hall, Curator of the Chinese ceramic collections and the Sir Percival David collection, British Museum; Co-investigator, Dr Julia Lovell, Professor of Modern Chinese History and Literature, Birkbeck, University of London.