The first photo is The Chinese Type by Jones Lamprey in 1870 The Orient - Where is it and who a

The first photo is The Chinese Type by Jones Lamprey in 1870 The Orient - Where is it and who are Orientals?  Is the Orient a reality? Is it constructed knowledge or just imagination? The second photo is Types and Development of Man from the St. Louis World Fair in 1904.  It is clearly showing the ordering of man. World Fairs/Expositions served to display modernity and the progress of a nation amongst other things.  It is largely devoted to order and organization.  Like in the image - order of man -  nations among nations etc.   The Third picture is a Japanese woodcut print of the Treaty of Shimonoseki between Japan and Qing China in 1895.  In the past the Japanese had revered the Chinese for all their society had contributed to the Japanese.  Here we see the savage Chinese paying respect to the “enlightened” and “civilized” Japanese. The fourth photo is, China – the cake of kings… and emperors,  A pie represents Qing China and is being divided between caricatures of Queen Victoria, William II of Germany, Nicholas II of Russia, the French Marianne, and the Meiji Emperor of Japan, carefully contemplating which pieces to take. A stereotypical Qing official throws up his hands to try and stop them, but is powerless. It is meant to be a figurative representation of the Imperialist tendencies of these nations towards China during the decade. The fifth photo is Boxer Rebellion Reparations. Japan, Russia, Germany and England demand their pounds of flesh from the boxer rebellion.   The Boxer Rebellion, also known as Boxer Uprising or Yihetuan Movement, was a proto-nationalist movement by the Righteous Harmony Society in China between 1898 and 1901, opposing foreign imperialism and Christianity. The uprising took place in response to foreign “spheres of influence” in China, with grievances ranging from opium traders, political invasion, economic manipulation, to missionary evangelism. In China, popular sentiment remained resistant to foreign influences, and anger rose over the “unequal treaties”, which the weak Qing state could not resist. Concerns grew that missionaries and Chinese Christians could use this decline to their advantage, appropriating lands and property of unwilling Chinese peasants to give to the church. This sentiment resulted in violent revolts against foreign interests. The sixth photo is The Korean Type.  It is titled An Old Man of Korea and was created by the British.  He is a composite of Chinese and Japanese characteristics not at all white cotton that Koreans wore at the time. The poem readsThere was an old man of KoreaWho for Russians and Japs had no fearBut when the shells of those nationsCaused big loud !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!When they dropped, too unpleasingly ears [sic] The Last image, Jappy “rushing” him everywhere is Britsh comment on the defeat of Russia to the hands of the Japanese in the Russo-Japanese war which grew out of rival imperial ambitions of the Russian Empire and Japanese Empire over Manchuria and Korea. Again like the Korean Type, the Japanese are not portrayed as the actually were at the time which was exactly like the British in fashion. What do we make of these images and the questions at the beginning of the post. Where is it and who are Orientals?  Is the Orient a reality? Is it constructed knowledge or just imagination? -- source link

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