Imperial stewards

by K. Ian Shin

ISBN: 9781503643178

Published: 2025-07-22

From the Gilded Age to World War II, elite collectors and museums in the United States transformed from owning a smattering of Chinese porcelain as curios, to possessing some of the world's largest and most sophisticated collections of Chinese art. Imperial Stewards argues that, beyond aesthetic taste and economics, geopolitics were critical to this transformation. Collecting and studying Chinese art and antiquities honed Americans' belief that they should dominate Asia and the Pacific Ocean through the ideology of imperial stewardship: a view that encompassed both genuine curiosity and care for Chinese art, and the enduring structures of domination and othering that underpinned the burgeoning transpacific art market. Tracing networks across both the Pacific and the Atlantic, K. Ian Shin uncovers a diverse cast of historical actors that both contributed to U.S. imperial stewardship and also challenged it, including Protestant missionaries, German diplomats, Chinese-Hawaiian...