Imperial Stewards: Chinese Art and the Making of America's Pacific Century

by K. Ian Shin

Overview

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 Oceans, K. Ian Shin uncovers a diverse cast of historical actors that both contributed to US imperial stewardship and also challenged it, including Protestant missionaries, German diplomats, Chinese-Hawaiian merchants, and Chinese overseas students, among others. By examining the development of Chinese art collecting and scholarship in the United States around the turn of the twentieth century, Imperial Stewards reveals both the cultural impetus behind Americans' long-standing aspirations for a Pacific Century and a way to understand—and critique—the duality of US imperial power around the globe.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781503643178
Publisher:	Stanford University Press
Publication date:	07/22/2025
Series:	Asian America
Pages:	358
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.00(d)

About the Author

K. Ian Shin is Assistant Professor of History and American Culture at the University of Michigan.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Note on Translations and Names
Introduction
1. "Working in the Dark": Chinese Porcelains and the Gilded Age Roots of U.S. Imperial Stewardship
2. "Chinese Art of the Right Kind": From Collecting to Stewardship in the New Century
3. A Repository and Arsenal of Information: Imperializing U.S. Stewardship from the China Monuments Society to the Asiatic Institute, 1908–1915
4. "A Wonder of Another Breed": Chinese Exempt Classes and the Limits of U.S. Imperial Stewardship
5. "We Must Be Resigned to America Getting All the Fine Things": U.S. Imperial Stewardship in an Age of Global War
6. "Art Knows Neither Frontiers Nor Irregular Verbs": Consolidating U.S. Imperial Stewardship before World War II
Conclusion
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

"After reading this book, you will never walk through an Asian art collection in a museum and merely see isolated objects in glass cases. Imperial Stewards tells a dynamic history of nations, institutions, and individuals across the Pacific that brought the Chinese artifacts to the United States, shaped our knowledge about them, and charted a path to the 'Pacific Century.'" —Mari Yoshihara, University of Hawai'i at Mānoa

"This marvelously researched account of the study and collection of Chinese art helps us understand the U.S. turn to the Pacific as a matter of transimperial collaboration and rivalry, dependence on Chinese expertise and labor, and multivalent claims to stewardship. From the procurement of scroll paintings and porcelains to the creation of collections, catalogs, galleries, and exhibits, Imperial Stewards makes a compelling case for the relation between art and power at a time when both were up for grabs." —Kristin Hoganson, University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign

From the Publisher