important role for they wrote missionary reports that provide key informa-
tion about life then and, more importantly for the issue under discussion,
started the learning of the local languages. Also, theWrst expeditions were
organized and theWrst maps of the area were drawn. An early map of China
was sent by the governor of the Philippines to the king of Spain in 1555
(Alfonso Mola & Martı ́nez Shaw 2003; Checa Cremades 1998).
The Iberian monopoly would be broken in the seventeenth century with
the East India Companies that were founded in 1600, starting with the British
(1600) and the Dutch (1602). These were followed in the second half of the
century by the French (1664), Danish (1670) and in the eighteenth century by
the Swedish (1731) companies. They obtained the monopoly of trading with
Asia in each of their respective countries (Chapter 8). These corporations
continued with the introduction of Oriental objects into Europe. One of those
most in demand was porcelain, a type of pottery produced exclusively in
China (a technique that was not discovered by Europeans until the early
1700s). From the early seventeenth century, tin-glazed Ming pottery with blue
decorations on a white background was mainly imitated at Delft—where the
headquarters of the Dutch East India Company were located and where
the process had been learned from the Italians—and at other Dutch towns.
In the royal and aristocratic palaces of Europe whole rooms were decorated
with tile panels, and mahogany furniture inspired by Oriental—particularly
Chinese—taste. This popularity of Rococo Chinoiserie peaked between 1740
and 1770. The style imposed by the new ruling dynasty in China from 1644,
the Qing of Manchu origin, was also emulated. Increasingly, Japanese
inXuences were added and chinoiserie included ‘japanned’ ware, imitations
of lacquer and painted tin (toˆle) ware that imitated japanning and ceramic
Wgurines and table ornaments. This fashion, as well as everything with
OrientalXavour, was eventually overshadowed by the sober neo-classicism
movement and its obsession towards the classical in the later part of the
eighteenth century.
In the eighteenth century, during the reign of Chien-lung (1736–95), China
expanded into Xinjiang (then called East Turkestan) and imposed the pay-
ment of tribute on Burma, Tibet and Nepal (which had only acknowledged
Chinese sovereignty in a formal way). One of China’s key imports from
Turkey and India was opium. From its initial use to stop diarrhoea, in the
seventeenth century opium became used as a recreational stimulant. In 1800
the economic problems caused by opium led the Chinese authorities to forbid
this trade. This, however, only led to illegal trading in which many Western
countries became involved. China was also aVected by the nineteenth-century
‘Great Game’, a competition mainly between the British Empire and Tsarist
Russia over control of Afghanistan and Central Asia, which led to the British
186 Archaeology of Informal Imperialism