HUMSS - Lianming Wang

Transoceanic Trade Repictured:
Coromandel Screen and the Mobile Image in Global Exchange

This talk highlights the function of the Coromandel lacquer screen as a mobile vehicle and its rise as a global medium in the early modern period. Through examining a wide array of portrayals of the Sino-Dutch encounters, it argues that the recurrence of this theme and its migration process on lacquer screens can be comprehended as part of Intra-Asian competition in a global market. Behind the entangled histories of the Coromandel screens was the rise of Chinese officials who used this particular mobile and monumental medium to assert their growing claim to power and access to the outside world, equal to Japanese warlords, European kings and nobility, and later the Qing emperors.