Although jade is historically the most precious stone in Chinese culture, after the Qing empire conquered inner Asia from 1755-1759, the Qing empire gained access to new jade forms from across the Islamic world. This included Central Asia, such as Xinjiang, Ottoman Turkey and Mughal India. Our project focuses on what Qianlong uniformly praised as the “Hindustan jades,” regardless of their actual origins. He praised them in numerous poems inspired by the objects that were incised directly onto those objects in typical Qianlong emperor fashion.
Historical and Contemporary Significance
The circulation of the jades that the Qianlong emperor possessed, and the later conceptualizations of what he believed to be the Islamic world through his poetry and collections, have significant impacts on Chinese history and geopolitical relations that remain salient in contemporary times. The Hindustan Jades also portray how art actively served as a form of relations between the Qing Empire and countries such as Mughal India, despite not having formal diplomatic relationships at the time.
Project Principles
Object-centered Digital Art History. Bilingual. Data Mapping and Visualization. Open Everything. Minimal Computing.