JINGDEZHEN: WHEN THE WEST COPIED CHINA (3)

This is the last instalment in a three-part series of posts about how Europe came to desire Chinese porcelain, and the ability to make it. Here are parts one and two.

--------------------

A BURNING TOWN OF MAN-MACHINES



"A burning town, or seeming so,-

Three thousand furnaces that glow

Incessantly, and fill the air

With smoke uprising, gyre on gyre,

And painted by the lurid glare,

Of jets and flashes of red fire."

~ Henry Longfellow, imagining "King-ke-tching" in 'Keramos'.



For centuries, the Imperial Porcelain Factory at Jingdezhen - and the many private workshops, large and small, subcontracted to it - had made it the "Porcelain City" of the world by means of an extraordinarily sophisticated and elaborate division of labour.




 

The production process was broken down into many highly specific stages, and each stage was assigned to a different labourer or department. This specialisation had two principal benefits: first, it kept insider knowledge relatively concentrated and thus the manufacture of imperial wares secure, and second, it allowed for pre-industrial mass production without compromising on quality. Jessica Rawson observes:

"China's most remarkable contribution was the creation of the first large-scale factories in which bronzes, lacquers, textiles, and ceramics were mass-produced, not using machines as in modern factories, but using workers among whom the required processes were subdivided."

One side-effect of this highly efficient system was that individual pieces were not generally regarded as being the work of any one particular individual. Even in the case of small family-run kilns, makers of porcelain were traditionally seen by the Chinese literati as artisans, not artists, even though the production process relied on human labour long after rival producers in the West had begun adopting substitute technologies.

Ceramics that were rarely attributed to their individual producer make for easier reproductions. The restrictive apprenticeship and guild system in Jingdezhen meant that producers honed their skills by learning to painstakingly reproduce the forms and designs of their master elders. This was described in 1743 by Tang Ying, an imperial supervisor at Jingdezhen who was ordered by the Qianlong Emperor to travel to Beijing and provide an account of his work:

"In copies from antiquity artistic models must be followed; in novelty of invention there is a deep spring to draw from. In the decoration of porcelain correct canons of art should be followed; the design should be taken from the patterns of old brocades and embroidery. . . and the artistic skill of the color-brush perpetuates on porcelain clever works of genius."

Successive Emperors promoted imitation from a desire to emulate - and surpass - their predecessors. Some of the finest "Ming"-style wares were made in the later Yongzheng period, whilst some of the best "Yongzheng" porcelain was actually made in the 1920s; this tradition of learning by mimesis has continued up to the present.

It has also been a boon for fraudsters selling fake porcelain 'antiques' - but before we get to that, we need to understand how a system that ensured Chinese pre-eminence at one time consigned it to relative decline in later years. 

 

LA CHINOIS, C'EST MOI

The eighteenth-century is of critical importance to the story of the porcelain trade, because it saw European producers finally catch-up with, and eclipse, their Chinese counterparts. This shift occurred because important changes in European thought, related to the Enlightenment, were reflected in dramatic changes in European aesthetic tastes, and European factories - which utilised machines instead of people - could more quickly adapt to these trends than the Chinese production system previously described.

One such trend was the move in the early eighteenth-century away from the rigidity and proportionality of the Baroque style towards 'rococo', which, with its greater emphasis on free creativity, was in some sense more attuned to an age in which the boundaries of thought and expression were being challenged from new directions. To some extent, the rococo style drew on traditional features of Chinese art including its naturalism and asymmetry, and in doing so it fostered a kind of sub-genre of design known as "chinoiserie."

Chinoiserie, a European genre that borrowed Chinese designs and motifs and "re-interpreted" them according to European concepts and standards, reached its high-point as a style of porcelain produced in Europe. Here is a definition from the Seattle Art Museum:

"An eighteenth-century style that was a wholly European concept of exoticism. Innovative decorative motifs depicting imaginary and whimsical interpretations of life in Asia, they were inspired by a blend of factual accounts and fantasy. Chinoiseries typically present exotic figures clothed in flowing robes and elaborate headdresses, and situated in fanciful landscape settings. Whether these figures represent people of China, India, the Middle East, or Japan is often difficult to determine; they are a mélange of Asian and Middle Eastern peoples referring not to geographical boundaries so much as to a general concept of Asia."

To illustrate, here is a chinoiserie frescoe (ca. 1757) in a "Chinese room" of the Villa Valmarana: 
 

And the 'porcelain salon' in the Portici Palace of the King and Queen of Naples: 
 

A defining characteristic of chinoiserie is its use of exotic motifs that combine Eastern costumes and accoutrements with European faces. European artists used Chinese symbols in specifically European allegories (such as the seven liberal arts, the five senses and the cardinal virtues). Put another way, European producers utilised especially salient Chinese icons - the revered scholar, the attempt to live in rational harmony with nature - to make porcelain that spoke to European curiosities and concerns.

Although designs would sometimes travel from Europe to China and back again - such as Thomas Minton's famous 'Willow Tree' pattern, which was designed in Staffordshire, manufactured in Jingdezhen, and then exported -  once the Industrial Revolution was underway, Europe acquired a leading edge in porcelain manufacturing that was hard to beat. In addition to mechanised production, European producers faced a greater degree of commercial competition, which stimulated diversity and experimentation.

Therefore, European producers were in a more advantageous position to continue adapting to changing fashions, such as the rise of Neoclassicism in the first half of the nineteenth-century, and Art Nouveau at the turn of the twentieth. The famous porcelain factory at Sevres was more flexible than the Jingdezhen system; it could afford to expand overall production in response to consumer tastes without having to halt old product lines first.

Here is an example of gilded Sevres porcelain embodying Renaissance harmony and proportion:

One symptom of the change of attitudes towards Chinese society in the West was an accusation that the Chinese were deliberately producing shoddier porcelain for export because of their alleged hostility towards foreign "barbarians." But the facts do not bear this out - experts now believe the quality of export porcelain was at least equal to that of domestically consumed wares, and was sometimes even comparable to the porcelain produced exclusively for the imperial court. If there was a slip in standards, it was more likely the result of technology and production methods not keeping pace with surging demand.

CUT-AND-COPY

In 'To Steal a Book is an Elegant Offense', William P. Alford traces the differences between the history of IP law in China and in the West. The Chinese imperial state exercised its authority through a hierarchy of administrative means with public, positive law reserved for use as a last resort; the overall structure was designed to decentralise the enforcement of rules and edicts as far as possible. The most important intermediary between the imperial court and the village was the district magistrate, who would actually be penalised by administrative regulations if his active intervention was required to resolve more than a few different disputes further down the system. 

 

Qing Dynasty Mandarins

Thus the system incentivised officials at each level to prevent conflicts of interest occurring under their jurisdiction. There was a detailed penal code, but it tended to function by relatively informal bargaining, mediation and compromise rather than by the automatic and impartial application of legal rules. For certain items, the system could be effective at protecting copyright and trademark , but these were limited to a relatively narrow set of objects deemed important by the state.

The laws of the Sung dynasty (960-1279) punished the unauthorised reproduction of the "classics", but they turned a blind eye to the pirating of "mundane" works - protection also extended to the five-clawed dragon mark that signified porcelain made exclusively for imperial use. Under the pressures of commercialisation in the Qing dynasty (1644-1911), this traditional system of light-touch and selectively-enforced IP law began to malfunction - it encouraged people to pursue lucrative profits through illicit dealing in "exclusive" objects rather than investing in building up commercial brands that anyone could then steal and use for themselves. This was increasingly the case as civil unrest in the late Qing publicly revealed imperial treasures for the first time, such as the burning and looting of the Summer Palace in 1860.

The weakening authority of the court had predictable effects on the porcelain industry, so closely had the fates of the two been linked from the start. Although the imperial kilns at Jingdezhen were kept active by royal patronage through this period,  quality control was inevitably weakened, widening the growing gap between the industry at home and overseas. Increasingly, producers went from acknowledging that they were copying painted designs from older works - which was simply the way the trade functioned - to copying ancient works and selling them on as originals.

PORCELAIN FOR THE MASSES


 In 1910 the Imperial Factory at Jingdezhen was closed down and replaced with the trimmed-down Jiangxi Porcelain Company (Jiangxi ciye gongsi). Five years later, Gen. Yuan Shikai, the President of the infant Republic, abandoned the Presidency and proclaimed himself a new Emperor. One of his first decisions upon assuming the purple robes was to place a large order of Jingdezhen porcelain to mark his ascension, modelled on the Yongzheng period (he chose 'Hongxian', or 'Constitutional Abundance', to signify his reign - a curious choice for a man who suspended the constitution and abolished limits on his term in office).

The new dynasty was very short-lived, but the porcelain remains. Below are some specimens of Honxian-reign porcelain: 
 

Hongxian reign mark

Yuan's reflex action shows how Jingdezhen porcelain was still indelibly associated with claims to national power, even as export porcelain was being squeezed. In The Penguin History of Modern China, Jonathan Fenby tells us the need for new imperial porcelain was duly noted: "He [Yuan] received visitors in a reception room of the Forbidden City, oil cloth on the floor, a gaudy Western chandelier hanging from the ceiling - an American described the vases as 'straight from a give-and-ten cent store.'"
 



And porcelain was still being used as a political simile. Fenby quotes the imperial general Zhang Xun: "He compared the republic to a new porcelain shop selling bright, cheap ware. 'In time', he went on, 'it is all broken, and the people go back to the old shop.'"

But the industry's deep ties to politics came at a price. In 1920 a correspondent for National Geographic visited Jingdezhen. In his report, Frank B. Lentz describes a city trapped inside a bubble, scarcely affected by the epochal changes going on around it.

Change is happening elsewhere, in other places and industries, but in Jingdezhen too much commodification could spell death as much as too little modernisation. Modernisation was shaking things up throughout China, and destabilising political institutions and structures, old and new. In a world of more volatile political power relations, there was always a niche market for historical reference-points as means of asserting authority and re-imposing order - and that included the exclusive, traditional imperial kilns.

This is how Lentz opens his dispatch:

"It is the country made famous by the printing-press, mariners' compass, gunpowder, the Great Wall, tea, silk, jade, paper, and ancient porcelain; it is the home of plague, famine, intrigue, flood, graft and corruption. Conservative of the conservatives, it is also a radical amongst radicals... Change, change; nothing is permanent in China but change."

Below is a photograph of Jingdezhen from the time. From a distance, it could easily be mistaken for any of the "dark Satanic mills" of Blake's England. It also reminds me of how Mao said his goal was to replace religious temples with smokestacks as the first thing you would see on the horizon when approaching a city in China. 
 

He goes on to lament the backward state of industrialisation:

"In cities like Canton, Shanghai, Hankow, Changsha and Tientsin the most modern machinery of the twentieth-century is seen in operation in everyday. This is not China. The real China has yet to learn the value of the machine." 
 

There was another chronic weakness in the Jingdezhen model - the distribution of skills throughout the workforce was regulated by organising producers into numerous guilds according to their trade or subdivision and place of origin. But the guilds were sanctioned by longstanding tradition and customary law in lieu of official recognition (in keeping with the 'subsidiarity state' previously described). And by the 1930s they inhabited a precarious semi-legal position, permanently at risk of being labeled as subversive "secret societies" by the organs of the equally precarious young Republic.

Having long enjoyed a state-backed monopoly, the workers at Jingdezhen organised their guilds in order to secure their share of the labour market against rival common-origin groups of migrants, rather than prioritising the maximisation of their share of consumers. In the Republican period, state patronage declined and commercial competition increased, but there was no corresponding improvement in the enforcement of IP law, and corruption among officials became endemic.

Against this backdrop, the perverse logic of the guild system ran its course; ceramists fought one another in increasingly bitter scraps to maintain their position, and there were particularly violent conflicts between migrant workers in Jingdezhen in the 1930s. In the early twentieth-century, self-regulation of the guilds - such as limits on the number of apprentices a master could have at any one time - was only weakly enforced.

 

THE PEOPLE'S PORCELAIN

Overall, it could be said that the Republican period was a false dawn for Chinese porcelain. But the legacy of the People's Republic is every bit as complicated.


On the one hand, the industry received long-overdue government investment in upgrading machinery and equipment - indeed, it was only in the 1950s that gas-, oil-, and coal-fired kilns began to dominate production in Jingdezhen, thereby allowing us to talk about an "industry" in the modern sense, at all.


On the other hand - to state the obvious - a government that was officially Communist did not give much shrift to notions of legally-enforceable private property rights, intellectual or otherwise. Similarly, decades of nullified competition and limits on international trade did not do much to spur innovation or inculcate greater flexibility and dynamism. And that is before discussing the damage wrought by the Party's imposition of "socialist realism" on the arts. 



A strange and unintended consequence of the Communists' policies was that, by alleviating pressure on the Chinese porcelain industry to change, they helped keep alive many of the traditional skills, practices and work-relations - which they were then able to revive during the post-Mao 'reform era' to facilitate the privatisation of the state workshops.



Porcelain Mao badge, early PRC



After 1949 the old apprenticeship system had been abandoned in Jingdezhen, but in the 1980s the government began quietly re-introducing it. In imperial times, masters in the workshops took on a set number of apprentices from their same region of origin, for an average of three to four years. In 1983, master elders in the city were paid a bonus if they took on personal apprentices again inside their state factories, as a precursor to privatisation. The theory was that giving experienced producers control over the transmission of their skills - i.e. the training of their soon-to-be competitors - would reduce opposition to the politically-sensitive task of dismantling state-ownership, which was completed in the 1990s.

One consequence of privatisation was that uncompetitive porcelain factories were downsized or shut down. At the start of the twenty-first century, only two of the thirty-two state porcelain factories in Jingdezhen were still in operation. 
 

Nonetheless, the porcelain industry in Jingdezhen still employs about 80,000 workers, with four major porcelain markets, and countless smaller stores. Whilst Guangdong to the South produces cheaper mass-market wares, Jingdezhen specialises in higher-end art ceramics (retired masters of the trade are still subsidised by the government to transmit their working knowledge to the next generation)...and fakes.
It is estimated that 80% of the fake emperors' mark porcelain in circulation today originated in Jingdezhen.

Essentially, the traditional system for making Chinese porcelain has proved to be a huge boon for fraudsters dealing in fake antiques. Thanks to the traditions of mimetic learning and anonymity, there is an ample supply of convincing reproductions for fraudsters to buy and then "age" with various chemical processes before re-selling as genuine antiques. (Here is a good documentary about the techniques of the fakers, and the extraordinary successes they have achieved, thanks to unreliable scientific tests - including getting a fake put on display in the Palace Museum, in the Forbidden City.)

The market for fakes grows alongside the boom in demand for authentic porcelain antiques. In 2010, a Qianlong-era vase broke records when it was sold at auction for £43m. This is how Channel 4 News reported the sale:
 

These headline-grabbing sales relate to a fascinating fact about Jingdezhen today: its traditional method of making porcelain is only being kept alive by the thriving market for fake antiques. Reproductions of antique wares are only convincing if they are made using the same techniques that were used to make the original; absent the potential for lucrative profits from selling fakes, many of the ceramists working in the city could not eke out a decent living producing by traditional methods rather than using modern machinery.

This also relates to a recurring theme in the work of the dissident artist Ai Weiwei - that our commonsense notions of "authenticity" are not as straightforward as they might seem.

Porcelain has traditionally been categorised in China according to its style, rather than the period in which it was produced - so "Kangxi" porcelain would refer to porcelain made in the most distinctive style of the period, rather than any porcelain made during the period. In which case, the difference between a "fake" and a reproduction often lies in the intent of the seller.

But if IP rights were rigorously enforced in Jingdezhen, the supply of "authentic" imperial porcelain would likely dry up along with the vast quantities of "fake" antique wares. Which might be an indication that we need to rethink how globalisation and the free market impacts upon our shared global cultural heritage - and possibly re-evaluate our priorities.



Ai Weiwei, Coloured Vases (2006)

JINGDEZHEN: WHEN THE WEST COPIED CHINA (1)

Today, "Made in China" is often shorthand for poor-quality counterfeited goods. High up on the list of economists' prescriptions for China is the need for better enforcement of property rights, including intellectual property rights (IPR). In the public imagination, "Made in China" usually implies "Invented Elsewhere."

But there was a time when things were different. Four centuries earlier, China made something the leading powers of Europe craved but couldn't make by themselves. This translucent, vitreous material was known at the time as 'white gold' - porcelain.

I think it is worth going back and re-telling the story of the porcelain trade because it draws our attention to some interesting parallels with contemporary debates about globalisation, trade imbalances, and the nature and proper scope of IPR.

The inspiration for this post came from an exhibition Victoria & Albert Museum earlier this year, called Jingdezhen: Porcelain City. Jingdezhen is an administrative city in Jianxi province, and for many hundreds of years it has been the centre of Chinese porcelain manufacturing. Here is a scenic image of the city today, which gives some impression of its favourable surroundings.

And here is a photograph of its famous ceramic streetlight stands.

THE ROOTS OF A VERY MODERN MANIA

Chinese porcelain production matured as a craft in the Sung dynasty, with each worker supervised by a master craftsman, but the country was too divided for much of this period for the industry to achieve real growth - and the division in politics was directly reflected in the colour of porcelain produced, as in the saying, "jade-blue in the North, snow-white in the South." In the 13th-century Marco Polo informed Europeans of "porcellana" - the name of a hard, coloured shell from which porcelain derives.

A small quantity of porcelain was being exported to Europe in the early Ming dynasty. But aside from a few lucky royals, Europeans had to settle for imitation porcelain until new routes were discovered and in the 16th-century Portugal established a commercial outpost at Macao.

The evolution of 'Changnan' into 'Jingdezhen' indicates the close but subtle relationship between politics and commerce in imperial China. The city's modern name comes from suffixing "zhen" (or "town") to Jingde, the name of the Sung Emperor (968-1022). The Emperor's court sought to promote expansion of the porcelain industry and by doing so forged a lasting bond between industrial prestige and dynastic authority.

It really got going in a big way during the 17th-century. In 16th-century Europe, good-quality porcelain was confined to the ruling nobles of a few states; by the 17th-century its ownership had spread to the 'china rooms' of the well-off; and by the 18th-century porcelain could be found in the homes of the the middle- and working-classes.

The transition from the Yuan to the Ming dynasty heralded a shift in policy towards trade. The Ming were indigenous Han Chinese, whereas the Yuan rulers had been Mongol conquerors. Whilst the Mongols had always seen China as one part of their wider territorial responsibility, the priority of the Ming rulers was re-establishing domestic authority, and securing the borders.

The exclusivity of imperial porcelain was thus an indicator of the extent of the ruling dynasty's power, and its ability to exercise its authority across a vast empire. This symbolic function also played a part in the traditional Chinese tributary system of managing relations with other states. From 1405-33 the eunuch admiral Zheng He visited over thirty countries on seven voyages, on which the disbursement of gifts - including porcelain - was meant to express China's sophisticated crafts, strong government, and beneficent hegemony when it came to dealing with other countries.

But herein lies a curious paradox: the more the Ming rulers tried to regulate - and segregate - the production of porcelain for domestic and foreign consumption, by dispatching officials to control the process, the more that demand for "imperial" porcelain grew by association with the aesthetic taste of the Emperor, both at home and abroad. It was almost as if the rulers, by implicating themselves so deeply in regulating porcelain output, had made themselves into popular "brands."

And the aura of exclusivity this gave to porcelain made it ever-more sought-after by the noble families of Europe - because it increased its value for conspicuous consumption, by dividing the market into 'official' (guan yau) and 'unofficial' (min yau) porcelain, and by making the former harder to obtain. In an age of continuous power struggles amongst European monarchs, aristocrats and rising commercial classes, porcelain was not merely valued for aesthetic reasons, but also functioned as a potent symbol of personal wealth and importance.

Here is an example of this highly sought-after "armorial" porcelain, bearing the coat of arms of an influential European family - initially, most such families had connections with the British East India Company.

That is why China was dubbed the "bleeding bowl of Europe", and a scramble of all-against-all to acquire the finest porcelain got under way. The Portuguese were the first to dominate this trade, but then Dutch ships intercepted Portuguese trans-shipments of porcelain and proceeded to auction them off across Europe. By the late 17th-century, the Dutch East India Company alone were exporting 3m pieces of porcelain to Europe every year.
The traditional blue-and-white design that we associate with china today was in fact an example of the Chinese absorbing foreign influences to cater to new and growing markets. The demand for blue and white porcelain came from the Middle East especially, at a time when the Indian Ocean was under Arab control and the main land routes were via the Silk Road(s) to the East. Besides colouring, the feedback of Arab preferences inside China also fuelled demand for distinctive geometrical patterns and Islamic symbols. Over the centuries of major growth in the porcelain industry, blue and white porcelain arguably became the first example of something comparable to today's global brands.

This is a picture of a porcelain collection inside the Tokapi Museum in Istanbul, which houses over eight thousand Sung and Ming pieces.

And here is another collection inside the Ardebil Shrine in Iran.

And the Arabs in turn modified Chinese porcelain to be sold on to the Europeans. Common additions were golden frames and gilded edges. When you consider that this porcelain had usually already been encrusted with jewels by the Chinese for export to the Middle East, then perhaps the association of porcelain with Chinese "decadence" in the Western mind begins to make sense.

This is a porcelain-covered ceiling inside the Santos Palace in Lisbon.

Over the course of the Ming dynasty, porcelain exports declined in volume, whereas domestic production boomed, driven by strong demand from the imperial court (nevertheless, the majority of porcelain was made for export until the Qing period, and unofficial foreign trading tended to rise and fall). The rulers had to balance the need to increase official porcelain production for use in building alliances at home and abroad, against the imperative of upholding exclusivity. To do this, they co-opted the assistance of private kilns with imperial production by allowing private producers to sell any rejected pieces, so long as these didn't bear the mark of the reigning emperor - since only a few pieces in a hundred would receive imperial approval, this seemed like a good deal. Broken or unwanted items bearing the imperial mark were discretely buried (many such pieces were excavated at Jingdezhen in 1982).

CRACKS IN THE MOULD

As a result of this pact - increased investment and opportunities for profiteering, in return for an increasing level of bureaucratic control - the Ming era saw porcelain manufacturing in China reach new heights of scale and sophistication. Merchant investment had started to increase under the Mongols, but it was the Ming who - through the coordination of the Imperial Porcelain Factory - oversaw rapid growth in technical adaptability and outsourcing between official, domestic and export-oriented producers.  By the 16th-century, Jingdezhen had over a thousand kilns, employing seventy-thousand workers.

Here is a porcelain flask from the Ming dynasty, 1403-24.

By its end, the Ming dynasty was wracked by famine, peasant revolts, Manchu incursions, and a failed war against Japan. As these tensions came to a head, the contradictions at the heart of the collaboration between the imperial state and the porcelain industry erupted into the open. The imperial court demanded ever-increasing quantities of reproductions of ancient works, which was an especially labour-intensive process. The Ming dynasty looked to the past in matters of aesthetic preference, because being seen to revere the past was thought to be a roundabout way of patronising the 'literati' scholars who administered the state.

The multiple and conflicting goals of the Ming made for a combustible society. In his book The Search for Modern China, Prof. Jonathan D. Spence describes the scene on the production-lines at Jingdezhen in 1601:

"...thousands of workers rioted over low wages and the Ming court's demand that they meet heightened production quotas of the exquisite "dragon bowls" made for palace use. One potter threw himself into a blazing kiln and perished to underline his fellows' plight." (1999, p.15)

Imperial demand suddenly went from boom to bust, as the fading dynasty deemed further deliveries to Beijing to be too risky. Official kilns were razed in peasant revolts, and those that remained were closed in 1608. Official trade was suspended in 1647.

BETWEEN MING AND QING: COMING UP FOR AIR

Despite this destruction, the "transitional period" (ca. 1620s-1680s) between the Ming and Qing dynasties was a time of hugely important creativity, experimentation and decentralisation. Even when the war against the Manchu invaders reached Jingdezhen in the 1640s, porcelain production was sustained because royal workers shifted to producing unofficial wares in private kilns (the royal kiln at Jingdezhen was destroyed in 1675, but it was rebuilt within five years). Temporarily freed from the detailed interference imposed on them by the Ming, the workers were able to transfer their high-level knowledge and skills to creating new designs to appeal to overseas markets. These innovations included the so-called 'Dutch flower-and-leaf' pattern, and 'kraak' panels.

In 1684 the Kanxi Emperor officially re-opened access to the coast for trade. When the royal kilns reopened under the auspices of the Qing, the artists and producers struggled to reach a new settlement with the authorities. A notable characteristic of early Qing articles is that they do not bear their artist's name, a feature that would ease the way in making reproductions for sale, and that continues to this day to make Chinese ceramic art particularly susceptible to fraud (few pieces possess an ownership trail of recorded sales and attributed artists). In sum, the old imperial controls were re-asserted, but producers who had tasted the fruits of their free creativity - artistic and commercial - were more inclined to bend the rules, especially since overseas demand was still strong.

But even before the Qing dynasty confronted serious challenges to its authority, illegal trading and piracy became common occurrences in Chinese port-cities. This was increasingly so after European traders developed new technologies to overcome nautical constraints that had previously set limits on the regularity and size of trading missions. Demand was as strong as ever - arriving after the Portuguese had taken the first pick, the Dutch East India Company (VOC) complained about the undersupply of official porcelain.

The map below shows the main trading routes by which porcelain was shipped from Jingdezhen to the ports of Canton and Macao. It was a trade that involved taking enormous risks - European traders paid upfront for deliveries from trusted inland middlemen.

From subverting imperial prohibitions on maritime trade, it was just one step further for Chinese merchants to collude in the supply of reproductions to be sold in Europe as fake 'antique' wares - sometimes intentionally, but often in good faith. They also supplied a steady stream of low-quality unrefined (or 'provincial') porcelain, geared towards the mass market of low-earners, in an early example of price-discrimination, which helped to prepare the ground for mass-market porcelain production in 18th-century Europe.

Jingdezhen was industrially booming and experienced a large in-migration. But these developments also brought challenges to the political economy of the mid-Qing. According to Prof. Spence, "the area developed a population of "sojourners" with divided loyalties to their new base and their old ancestral homes, and of disaffected local minorities pushed off their former lands."

The point about adapting to niche markets (for instance, producing porcelain coffee and beer mugs long before these became popular in China), or even actively creating them, is important because all too often the history of Ming/Qing-era China's role in the emerging world economy is told in terms of "the West acts and China reacts." The story goes that China's rulers were complacent about their civilisational superiority and had no interest in what the rest of the world had to offer; consequently all the West could sell China in return for porcelain, tea, silk, etc. was silver, which they would use as currency to trade amongst themselves (though, as Kenneth Pomeranz has shown, it was actually utilised in a greater variety of ways than previously realised). The silver was mined in the Spanish Americas, sparking a transatlantic silver trade in the 1620s that lasted for two centuries.

Here is an illustration of a South American silver mine that represents the intensity of the enterprise.

But this account does not adequately recognise the ways in which the Chinese producers took the initiative in their trading relations with Europe, as they had incorporated Asian and Byzantine influences in an earlier period - for example, by pioneering the use of polychrome enamel decoration above and below the glaze in the late 17th-century, in order that the details on the European coats-of-arms were clear and precise, so as not to confuse two very similar designs.

At an even more basic level, the Eurocentric argument is a circular one: the Chinese emperors sought New World silver to facilitate an industrial-scale porcelain workforce, yet they were being driven by their state-systemic need to restrict the booming international porcelain trade - a trade which was booming because it had been proactively cultivated by both parties.

I will finish with this tantalising quote from the website of the Media Center for Art History at Columbia University:

"The manufacture of porcelain in China evolved over time into a highly specialized set of related crafts that together formed an entire industry...As demand continued to increase, porcelain production in China began to resemble a highly specialized, mass-production-style industry. A common view of the industrial revolution as it occurred in England in the 1750s is that the burgeoning textile industry was a key contributor to the complex interaction of various socioeconomic developments that led to that phenomenon; mentioned less often is the possibility that the porcelain industry, as it evolved in China, may have also contributed to this development."

-------------------

In the second instalment, I tell the story of how the Europeans used alchemy, espionage and imprisonment to access the secrets of making porcelain, and its importance in the context of the waning influence of the aristocracy.