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Stage 1: Trade Brings the West to Asia, and Asia to Western Audiences

Suggested further reading:

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1. Clunas, Craig (1998). “China in Britain: The imperial collections.” In Tim Barringer and Tom Flynn (eds.), Colonialism and the Object: Empire, Material Culture and the Museum, pp. 41-51. London and NY: Routledge.

 

2. Conn, Steven 2000. “Where is the East? Asian objects in American museums, from Nathan Dunn to Charles Freer,” Winterthur Portfolio 35 (2/3), pp. 157-173.

 

3. Fiske, Shanyn (2011). “Orientalism reconsidered: China and the Chinese in nineteenth-century literature and Victorian studies,” Literature Compass 8 (4): 214-226. 

 

4. Haddad, John R. (2005). The Romance of China: Excursions to China in U.S. Culture, 1776–1876. New York: Columbia University Press. 

 

5. Impey, Charles (1977). Chinoiserie: The Impact of Oriental Styles on Western Art and Decoration. New York: Charles Scribner. 

 

6. Loehr, George R. (1954). A. E. van Braam Houckgeest: The First American at the Court of China. Princeton University Library Chronicle 15: 179-193. 

Stage 2: Early Private Museums Bring Asia to the West

Suggested further reading:

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1. Barnum's Chinese Museum (1850). Ten Thousand Things on China and the Chinese:  Being a Picture of the Genius, Government, History, Literature, Agriculture, Arts, Trade, Manners, Customs, and Social Life fo the People of the Celestial Empire, as Illustrated by the Chinese Collection. New York: J. S. Redfield.

 

2. Conn, Steven 2000. “Where is the East? Asian objects in American museums, from Nathan Dunn to Charles Freer,” Winterthur Portfolio 35 (2/3), pp. 157-173.

 

3. Dunn, Nathan (1839). “Ten Thousand Things Chinese”: A Descriptive Catalogue of the Chinese Collection in Philadelphia. Philadelphia.

 

4. Haddad, John (1998). “The romantic collector in China: Nathan Dunn's Ten Thousand Chinese Things,” Journal of American Culture, Spring 1998, Vol. 21 (1), pp. 7-26.

 

5. Langdon, William B. (1842). Ten Thousand Things Relating to China and the Chinese; an Epitome of the Genius, Government, History, Literature, Agriculture, Arts, Trade, Manners, Customs, and Social Life of the People of the Celestial Empire. London.

 

6. Pagani, Catherine (1998). “Chinese material culture and British perceptions of China in the mid-nineteenth century.” In Tim Barringer and Tom Flynn (eds.), Colonialism and the Object: Empire, Material Culture and the Museum, pp. 28-40. London and NY: Routledge.

 

7. Saxbee, Helen (1990). An Orient Exhibited--The Exhibition of the Chinese Collection in England in the 1840s.

PhD dissertation, Royal College of Art, London.

 

8. Zboray, Ronald J. and Mary Saracino Zboray (2004). “Between ‘Crockery-dom’ and Barnum: Boston's Chinese Museum, 1845-47,” American Quarterly 56 (2), pp 271-307. 

 

Stage 3: Asia on Display at the World's Fairs

Suggested further reading:

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1. Ferris, George Titus (1877). Gems of the Centennial Exhibition, consisting of illustrated descriptions of Objects of an Artistic Character. New York: D. Appleton and Co. 

 

2. Gaspey, William 1852. The Great Exhibition of the World’s Industry, held in London in 1851. London and New York: London Publishing Company. 

 

3. McCabe, James D. (1876). The Illustrated History of the Centennial Exhibition, held in Commemoration of the One Hundredth Anniversary of American Independence. Philadelphia: The National Publishing Company.

 

4. Parezo, Nancy J. and Don D. Fowler (2007). Anthropology Goes to the Fair: The 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition. Critical Studies in the History of Anthropology. Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press.

 

5. Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851 (1851). Official Descriptive and Illustrated Catalogue of the Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of all Nations, 1851, in Three Volumes. Volume III: Foreign States. London: Spicer Brothers.

 

6. Tenkotte, Paul A. (1987). “Kaleidoscopes of the world: International exhibitions and the concept of culture-place, 1851-1915,”American Studies 28 (1): 5-29.

 

7. Vanke, Francesca (2008). “Degrees of otherness: The Ottoman Empire and China at the Great Exhibition of 1851.” In Jeffrey A. Auerbach and Peter H. Hoffenberg (eds.), Britain, the Empire, and the World at the Great Exhibition of 1851, pp. 191-205. Aldershot, England and Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing Ltd. 

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