Vermeer's Hat (32 page)

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This was not an obvious book for a specialist in Chinese history to write, but world history has to be written from some promontory of expertise, and China is as good a place as any, perhaps better, to track the global changes of the seventeenth century. The idea for writing this history grew out of my experience teaching a world history course at Stanford University and the University of Toronto. As the ideas for the book developed, I was invited to present some of them at the Center for Chinese Studies at the University of California, Berkeley; the Center for Early Modern History at the University of Minnesota; the Department of History at the University of Manitoba (the Henry A. Jackson Memorial Lecture); the Center for Historical Studies at the University of Maryland; and at the China Studies Group at the University of British Columbia.

Among those who have helped me shape the ideas and logic of this book, often without knowing they were doing so, I would like to thank Gregory Blue, Jim Chaplin, Tim Cheek, Craig Clunas, Paul Eprile, Shin Imai, Ken Mills, Ken Pomeranz, Richard Unger, Danny Vickers, and Bin Wong. For answering queries from me on topics far from my own expertise, I am grateful to Greg Bankoff, Liam Brockey, Patricia Bruckmann, Jim Cahill, Timothy Francis, Geoffrey Parker, Jane Stevenson, Maggie Tchir, and Hsing-yuan Tsao. Susan Galassi hosted my visit to the Frick Collection in New York to view
Officer and Laughing Girl
at close quarters, and Ilse Boks of the Gemeente Musea Delft kindly supplied me with the photograph of the Van Meerten plate, the subject of chapter five. Eric Leinberger drew the maps.

APPENDIX: CHINESE AND
JAPANESE PUBLICATIONS

Advantages and Disadvantages of the Various Regions of the Realm (
Tianxia junguo libing shu
)

A Brief Account of Macao (
Aomen jilüe
)

Case Summaries from Mengshui Studio (
Mengshui zhai cundu
)

Collected Writings from Jade Hall (
Yutang wenji
)

Compendium of Archives and Documents on the Macao Question in the Ming-Qing Period (
Ming-Qing shiqi Aomen wenti dang’an wen-xian huibian
)

Compendium of Pictures and Writings (
Tushu bian
)

Comprehensive Gazetteer of Guangdong (
Guangdong tongzhi
)

Comprehensive Gazetteer of Guizhou (
Guizhou tongzhi
)

The Complete Works of Master Jingyue (
Jingyue quanshu
)

The Condolence Collection (
Zhuai ji
)

Continuation of My Record of Extensive Travels (
Guangzhi Yi
) Dew Book (
Lu shu
)

Diary from the Water-Tasting Studio (
Weishui xuan riji
)

Further Deliberations on My Record of Extensive Travels (
Guangzhi yi
)

Gazetteer of Jining Subprefecture (
Jining zhouzhi
)

Gazetteer of Songjiang Prefecture (
Songjiang fuzhi
)

Illustrated Account of the Eastern Foreigners (
Dongyi tushuo
)

Investigations of the Eastern and Western Oceans (
Dongxi yangkao
)

Jottings from the Hall of Benevolence (
Renshu tang biji)

Miscellaneous Notes from Zai Garden (
Zaiyuan zazhi
)

Miscellaneous Records from the Wanping County Office (
Wanshu zaji
)

New Standard History of the Tang Dynasty (
Xin Tang shu
)

Notes on Rare Historical Sources from the Ming-Qing Period (
Ming Qing xijian shiji xulu
)

Pharmacopoeia of Edible Wild Plants (
Shiwu bencao huizuan
)

A Popular History of Smoking in China (
Zhongguo xiyan shihua
)

Provisional Gazetteer of Shouning County (
Shouning daizhi
)

Questions and Answers on First Meeting (
Chuhui Wenda
)

Sights of the Imperial Capital (
Dijing jingwu lüe
)

Smoking Manual (
Yanpu
)

Standard History of the Ming Dynasty (
Ming shi
)

Studies in the Early History of the Opening of the Port of Macao (
Aomen kaipu chuqi shi yanjiu
)

Supplement to the Agricultural Treatise, annotated edition (
Bu nong-shu jiaozhu
)

A Survey of the Age (
Yueshi bian
)

The Swords of Canton (
Yuejian pian
)

Tobacco Manual (
Yancao pu
)

Toward a History of the National Language: A Festschrift in Honour of Professor Doi Tadao (
Kokugoshie no michi: Doi sensei shōju kinen ronbunshū
)

Treatise on Superfluous Things, annotated (
Zhangwu lun jiaozhu
)

Twilight Tales of Nagasaki (
Nagasaki yawagusa
)

Unedited Records of the Chongzhen Reign (
Chongzhen changbian
)

Veritable Records of the Tianqi Reign of the Ming Dynasty (
Ming Xizong shilu
)

The Woof of the Earth (
Di wei
)

RECOMMENDED READING AND SOURCES

This bibliography provides a record of the sources on which I have drawn to write
Vermeer’s Hat
, both original sources from the seventeenth century and later studies by twentieth-century scholars. Sources in Asian languages are cited first by an English translation of the title, followed parenthetically by the original title in Chinese or Japanese. For those who wish to read further in some of the subjects on which this book touches without having to burrow into the detailed references that follow, I recommend these eight books:

Anthony Bailey’s
Vermeer: A View of Delft
(New York: Henry Holt, 2001) is a thoughtful and thoroughly engaging biography of Johannes Vermeer. John Michael Montias’s more scholarly
Vermeer and His Milieu: A Web of Social History
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989) exhaustively examines every piece of evidence the author, an economic historian, could discover relating to Vermeer in the Delft archives. This book is a historian’s dream.

For delightful short essays on the histories of major commodities and global markets over the past half millennium, see Kenneth Pomeranz and Steven Topik,
The World That Trade Created: Society, Culture, and the World Economy, 1400 to the Present
(Armonk, NY: M. E.

On Ming China, the author’s
The Confusions of Pleasure: Commerce and Culture in Ming Society
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998) provides a broad social and cultural history. Craig Clunas relies on Wen Zhenheng’s guide for connoisseurs,
The Treatise on Superfluous Things
, to analyze Ming culture in his
Superfluous Things: Material Culture and Social Status in Early Modern China
(Cambridge, MA: Polity, 1991). Still the most engaging account of a Jesuit missionary in Ming China is Jonathan Spence,
The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci
(Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985).

Marc and Muriel Vigié’s
L'Herbe à Nicot: amateurs de tabac, fermiers généraux et contrebandiers sous l’Ancien Régime
(Paris: Fayard, 1989) is a delightful cultural history of smoking in the seventeenth century. For a survey of the topic in English, I recommend V. G. Kiernan,
Tobacco: A History
(London: Hutchinson Radius, 1991).

THE EPIGRAPH IS FROM GARY Tomlinson,
Music in Renaissance Magic: Toward a Historiography of Others
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), p. 20.

CHAPTER 1. THE VIEW FROM DELFT

I began my acquaintance with Vermeer through Ludwig Goldscheider,
Vermeer
(London: Phaidon, 1958,1967). On Vermeer’s life and work, in addition to John Montias’s
Vermeer and His Milieu
and Anthony Bailey’s
Vermeer
, I have benefited from reading Gille Aillaud, Albert Blankert, and John Montias, eds.,
Vermeer
(Paris: Hazan, 1986);Arthur Wheelock,
Vermeer and the Art of Painting
(New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995), and his edited volume,
Johannes Vermeer
(Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 1995); Ivan Gaskell,
Vermeer’s Wager: Speculations on Art History, Theory and Art Museums
(London: Reaktion Books, 2000); Wayne Franits,
The Cambridge Companion to Vermeer
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001); and Bryan Jay Wolf,
Vermeer and the Invention of Seeing
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001); also the Web site
http://www.essentialvermeer.com.

On the Netherlands during Vermeer’s lifetime, see Jonathan Israel,
The Dutch Republic: Its Rise, Greatness, and Fall, 1477
–
1806
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995); see p. 621 for population figures. On the history of seventeenth-century Dutch art and culture, see E. de Jongh,
Questions of Meaning: Theme and Motif in Dutch Seventeenth-Century Painting
, trans. Michael Hoyle (Leiden: Primavera, 2000); and David Kunzle,
From Criminal to Courtier: The Soldier in Netherlandish Art 1550
–
1672
(Leiden: Brill, 2002). On Delft’s history, see Ellinor Bergrelt, Michiel Jonker, and Agnes Wiechmann, eds.,
Schatten in Delft: burgers verzamelen 1600
–
1750
[Appraising in Delft: Burghers’ Collections, 1600–1750] (Zwolle: Waanders, 2002); and John Montias,
Artists and Artisans in Delft: A Socio-Economic Study of the Seventeenth Century
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1982).

On Yuyuan garden in Shanghai, see
Gazetteer of Songjiang Prefecture
[
Songjiang fuzhi
], (1630), 46.59b.

“Paintings as puzzles” is taken from James Elkins,
Why Are Our Pictures Puzzles? On the Modern Origins of Pictorial Complexity
(New York: Routledge, 1999).

View of Delft
is presented in Epco Runia and Peter van der Ploeg,
In the Mauritshuis: Vermeer
(Zwolle: Waanders, 2005), pp. 42–59; their discussion of boat types on pp. 48–49 is particularly instructive. For a bird’s-eye view of the Oost-Indisch Huis on a seventeenth-century map, see H. L. Loutzager et al.,
De Kaart Figuratief van Delft
[A Pictorial Map of Delft] (Rijswijk: Elmar, 1997), pp. 177,197.

On Delft’s connections to the wider world, see Kees van der Wiel, “Delft in the Golden Age: Wealth and Poverty in the Age of Johannes Vermeer,” in
Dutch Society in the Age of Vermeer
, ed. Donald Haks and Marie Christine van der Sman (The Hague: Haags Historisch Museum, 1996), pp. 52–54.

On the Little Ice Age, the shift in the herring fishery, Pieter Bruegel’s winter scenes, and the frost killing of orange trees in China, see H. H. Lamb,
Climate, History and the Modern World
(London: Methuen, 1982), pp. 218–23,227–30. Data on canal freezing in the Netherlands, compiled by Jan de Vries, appear in H. H. Lamb,
Climatic History and the Future
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985), p. 476, n. 1.

On the plague, see William McNeill,
Plagues and Peoples
(New York: Doubleday, 1976). Plague episodes in Amsterdam (after 1578) are noted in N.W. Posthumus,
Inquiry into the History of Prices in Holland
(Leiden: Brill, 1946), vol. 1, p. 641. For Venice, see Carlo Cipolla,
Fighting the Plague in Seventeenth-Century Italy
(Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1981), p. 100.

The estimates of the numbers of Dutch leaving the Netherlands come from Jaap Bruijn, Femme Gaastra, and I. Schöffer,
Dutch-Asiatic Shipping in the 17th and 18th Centuries
(The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1987), vol. 1, pp. 143–44. Vermeer’s cousins being in the Far East is noted in Montias,
Vermeer and His Milieu
, p. 312.

The quote from Francis Bacon is featured in Joseph Needham,
Science and Civilisation in China
, vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1954), p. 19. On the effect of guns on the changes of the seventeenth century, see Jack Goody,
Capitalism and Modernity: The Great Debate
(Cambridge: Polity, 2004), pp. 77–78.

On transculturation, see Fernando Ortiz,
Cuban Counterpoint: Tobacco and Sugar
(1940; repr. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1995), pp. 98, 103.

European influence on late Ming art has been suggested by James Cahill,
The Compelling Image: Nature and Style in Seventeenth-Century Chinese Painting
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982), pp. 82–86; and Richard Barnhart, “Dong Qichang and Western Learning—a Hypothesis,”
Archives of Asian Art
50 (1997–98), pp. 7–16. On possible Chinese influences on Vermeer, see Bailey,
Vermeer
, p. 177.

Pearls in Vermeer’s paintings are examined in Runia and van der Ploeg,
In the Mauritshuis: Vermeer
, pp. 66–67. On Chinese taste in pearls, see Gu Yanwu,
Advantages and Disadvantages of the Various Regions of the Realm
[
Tianxia junguo libing shu
] (
1662
) (Kyoto: Ch
bun shuppansha, 1975), 29.126a; see also Sung Ying-hsing,
Chinese Technology in the Seventeenth Century
, trans. E-tu Zen Sun and Shiouchuan Sun (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1966), p. 296.

Song Yingxing’s comments come from his preface to Sung Ying-hsing,
Chinese Technology in the Seventeenth Century
, p. xi. The epitaph to Willem Schouten appears in Willem Ysbrantsz Bontekoe,
Memorable Description of the East Indian Voyage, 1618
–
25
, trans. Mrs. C. B. Bodde-Hodgkinson and Pieter Geyl (New York: Robert M. McBride, 1929), p. 157. The Chinese comment of 1609 is quoted in my
Confusions of Pleasure: Commerce and Culture in Ming China
, p. 153.

CHAPTER 2. VERMEER’S HAT

On the officer’s hat, see Wheelock,
Vermeer and the Art of Painting
, p. 58. On Vermeer’s use of maps, see James Welu, “Vermeer: His Cartography,”
The Art Bulletin
57:4 (Dec. 1975), pp. 529–47; Evangelos Livieratos and Alexandra Koussoulakou, “Vermeer’s Maps: A New Digital Look in an Old Master’s Mirror,”
e-Perimetron
1:2 (Spring 2006), pp. 138–54. For an early look at the Balthasar/van Bercken-rode family of cartographers, see Edward Lynam, “Floris Balthasar, Dutch Map-Maker and His Sons,”
Geographical Journal
67:2 (Feb.1926), pp. 148–161.

The primary source for the battle is Samuel Champlain’s own account, first published in 1613 and again, with slight alterations, in 1632. The first appears in bilingual text in
The Works of Samuel de Champlain
, ed. H. P. Biggar (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1922), vol. 2, pp. 65–107; the second is in vol. 4, pp. 80–105. With the exception of the opening passage, which can be found on pp. 97–99 of vol. 4, all direct quotes from Champlain in this chapter are taken from vol. 2, with minor alterations to remove euphemisms. The 1609 conflict is fully described in Bruce Trigger,
The Children of Aataensic: A History of the Huron People to 1660
(Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1976), ch. 4. For more recent scholarship on Champlain, see
Champlain: The Birth of French America
, ed. Raymonde Litalien and Denis Vaugeois, trans. Käthe Ross (Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2004). As I was finishing this book, I was pleased to discover that Christian Morissonneau in “Champlain’s Dream” in that volume came independently to the same conclusion regarding China’s place in Champlain’s calculations.

For Olive Dickason’s view of 1609 as a decisive moment in Native-white history, see her
Canada’s First Nations: A History of Founding Peoples from Earliest Times
(Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1992), p. 122. For a view skeptical of its significance, see W. J. Eccles,
The Canadian Frontier, 1534
–
1780
(rev. ed., Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1983), p. 25.

For Indian words and names, I generally follow the usages in
The Cambridge History of the Native Peoples of the Americas
, ed. Bruce Trigger and Wilcomb E. Washburn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), vol. 1. Etymologies of tribal names have been taken from John Steckley,
Beyond Their Years: Five Native Women’s Stories
(Toronto: Canadian Scholars’ Press, 1999), pp. 15–16, 63, 243–45.

On the history of the arquebus, see Carl Russell,
Guns on the Early Frontiers: A History of Firearms from Colonial Times Through the Years of the Western Fur Trade
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1957; Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1980), pp. 1–18. The early history of guns in Japan is treated in Noel Perrin,
Giving Up the Gun: Japan’s Reversion to the Sword, 1543
–
1879
(Boston: David Godine, 1979), pp. 5–31. The demand for Dutch firearms is noted in C. R. Boxer,
Jan Compagnie in Japan, 1600
–
1850
(The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1950), p. 26.

On torture in Native culture, see Georg Friederici, Gabriel Nadeau, and Nathaniel Knowles,
Scalping and Torture: Warfare Practices Among North American Indians
(Ohsweken, Ont.: Iroqrafts, 1985). Georges Sioui’s observation is from his
For an Amerindian Autohistory: An Essay on the Foundations of a Social Ethic
(Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1992), p. 52.

On the history of beaver hats, see Hilda Amphlett,
Hats: A History of Fashion in Headgear
(1974), pp. 106–109; Bernard Allaire,
Pelleteries, manchons et chapeaux de castor: les fourrures nord-américaines à Paris
[The Fur Trade, Muffs and Bearer Hats: North American Furs in Paris] (Québec: Septentrion, 1999). On the fur trade, see Harold Innis,
The Fur Trade in Canada
(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1956); Paul Phillips,
The Fur Trade
(Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1961); Raymond Fisher,
The Russian Fur Trade, 1550
–
1700
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1943).