western preoccupation with “possessing” specimens of other cultures as a means of demonstrating one’s
own enlightened modernity. Chinese goods also led to a reassessment of the role of women in establishing
aesthetic value systems. Women were now able, through the extended social discourses associated with
Chinesestyle drawing rooms and tea drinking, to become agents in reformulating taste and in the
consumption of luxury objects. It has been suggested that Hogarth’s suspicions concerning the vogue for
chinoiserie had much to do with his distrust of this enhanced, yet potentially corrupting role for women in
the aesthetic domain (Ray, 2007, 208–210, 213–217; Porter, 2013, 4–8, 83–91). The Chinese taste may
be seen as a catalyst for transforming social, and even national identities, given the central role
subsequently attributed in British culture to the social practice of tea drinking (Porter, 2013, 133–134,
149). Material objects may acquire new meanings and agency as they move to “other” functions and
contexts (Porter, 2013, 95–96).
Japan’s trade with Europe was greatly restricted. Contact with the rest of the world was strictly regulated
and the nation had limited contact with China. Christianity was outlawed and western books were
frequently banned. Trade was restricted to the island of Deshima at Nagasaki and limited to China and the
Netherlands, the latter through the Dutch East India Company, which had a trading base at Nagasaki.
Japanese porcelain, for example, Arita ware, made using several layers of enamel glazes, was in demand
from western buyers, although peaks in the production and sale of Chinese porcelain affected the market
adversely. All but the most discriminating western buyers often failed to distinguish between Japanese
and Chinese goods, so strong was the influence of the latter on Japanese art. Due to restricted trading
conditions, however, the west did not really discover until the nineteenth century one of Japan’s most
innovative eighteenthcentury art forms, ukiyoe or “floating world” colored woodblock prints
depicting the pleasure district, courtesans, Kabuki theatre and actors of contemporary Edo (presentday
Tokyo) (Tinios, 2010, 12–21).
The British East India Company exported many goods to Europe from its “capital,” Calcutta. Indian chintz
and calico became very fashionable in Europe (Mitter, 2001, 165). It was, however, common for
Europeans to confuse goods from India with those from China or Japan, as goods from these countries
were often shipped through the same, intermediate ports (Jourdain and Jenyns, 1950, 22–23).
Zoffany and Hodges traveled to India due to the presence of the East India Company there, mainly to
Calcutta and to Lucknow, capital of the Mughal province of Awadh, where the local ruler or Nawab,
Inawab AsafudDaula (in power 1775–1797) asserted his status through his commissioning of works
of art (Eaton, 2007, 190–202). The Company’s own officers commissioned commemorative portraits of
themselves, “exotic” mementoes for their return home, images of their current lives (intended perhaps to
reassure them in a context of unpredictable powerplay), portraits for use in diplomatic exchanges of
gifts, scenes featuring Mughal architecture and, increasingly, scenes representing local events and
customs, flora, fauna and ethnographic representations of local peoples (Eaton, 2007). The commercial
and cultural power of East India Company officers had been garnered initially through the transactions of
“nabobs,” a term referring both to Provincial governors in the Mughal Empire but also to servants of the
Company who gained great wealth, often through corrupt trade practices. Trade was particularly lively in
opium and attar of roses, the latter essential to the perfume trade. “Nabobery” itself acquired an
association with a morally corrupt and effete Asiatic lifestyle seen as a threat to the masculine “virtues”
of Britain (Solkin, 2007). Corruption was indeed rife in the Company until 1784, when it was regularized
through the India Act. The ruling elite of Calcutta and other Company bases such as Sumatra represented a
transposition of the London ruling elite, keen to preserve their cultural prestige (Greig, 2011, 141–166).
They desired the same kinds of individual portraits, group portraits or conversation pieces as Zoffany had
been accustomed to produce in Britain. Group or family portraits increasingly represented an inter
ethnic sociability, in which British and Indian elites mingled, especially in Lucknow where the British