Page 71 - Made For Trade Chinese Export Paintings In Dutch Collections

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single standard of value.” 30 Another point of tedness and multilayered circuits “simulta-
view is that one can no longer even imagine that neously link different areas of the world in
there is a single standard of value for the different ways, from whichever location the
measuring of things. 31 Globalisation is, as circuit starts.” 36 By trading commodified goods
Raymond Grew states, “an ubiquitous and around the world, China was fully participating
imprecise term, its sources, direction, antiquity, in a global economy. In many cases, this
and inevitability all subject to dispute.” 32 I agree globalisation was born of its domestic
with Sandip Hazareesingh and Jonathan Curry- developments (think of the production of
Machado that we should be “realigning the lens ceramics in the Jingdezhen community and
away from teleological ideas about globalisation specific paintings and other artistic export wares
70 and the power projections of various by Cantonese artists). This contact between
imperialisms, and focus on thinking about the China and the Western world, which took place
plurality of spatial linkages, networks, and through the mediation of various agents, such as
connections, which were more than local, but emperors, sea trading merchants, priests and
less then global.” 33 In doing so, we can converts, government-administrative workers,
incorporate the recognition of the agency of all explorers, ‘things-Chinese’-collectors, was also
actants involved in a study of Chinese export conducted in, for instance, Batavia as the main
painting, a phenomenon with global dimensions, trading spot of the Dutch colony. This generated
grounded in local practices. Certainly, Chinese an important new pattern of connection in the
export paintings, as commodities, are primarily Dutch-Chinese sea trade.
spread around the world detached from the When we investigate the term ‘glocalisation’
temporally and spatially specific from the within the framework of Chinese export
moment they left the painter’s studio in Canton. painting we observe the same difficulty in
Thus, they immediately entered the world of coming to an explicit definition. Is glocalisation
globalisation and merged into different marked by the development of diverse,
economic and sociocultural systems. overlapping fields of global-local linkages,
If we accept that, historically, globalisation is creating a condition of globalised (virtual) pan-
not a story of cultural homogenisation, then we locality, which anthropologist Appadurai
can approach commodities as cultural describes in his chapter on disjuncture and
phenomena that have multiple ‘social lives’. The difference in the global cultural economy, as
varied movements embarked upon in the course deterritorialised global spatial scapes? 37 As
of these life cycles – local, regional, across Wayne Gabardi writes, and I partly agree with
oceans and continents – make the commodity him, this broad definition represents a shift from
perspective a particularly apt mode of exploring a more territorialised learning process bound up
global history and the global lives of things. As with the nation-state society, to one more fluid
Hazareesingh and Curry-Machado write in the and translocal. 38 Chinese export paintings, yet,
Journal of Global History, “this is particularly will always be connected with a sense of space,
the case because their transformations were also however diverse and fluid the place – China or
connected with social changes over vast Dutch East Indies – is. Or, can glocalisation be
geographical areas, in infrastructures, explained more simply as the process by which
technologies, economies [...], and patterns of local communities respond differently to global
consumption.” 34 They state, and this is evident, changes? I tend to follow another definition,
that the commodity perspective offers an given to us by Robert Lamb. In his clear online
approach to connections and comparisons – the article ‘What is glocalisation?’, Lamb defines
two styles of modern global history as identified glocalisation as, “the ability of a culture, when it
by Patrick O’Brien. 35 encounters other strong cultures, to absorb
Construction of new patterns of interconnec- influences that naturally fit into and can enrich

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30 Graeber 2001, xi.
31 Ibid.
32 Grew 1999, 22.
33 Hazareesingh & Curry-Machado 2009, 5.
34 Ibid.
35 O’Brien 2006, 4-7.
36 Wang 2014-b, 391.
37 Appadurai 1996, 27-48.
38 Gabardi 2000, 33-34.