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Abstract
This dissertation examines the role of nature in the textile production of the Qing Empire (1644–1911) through the lens of animal-derived materials, including fish skin, peacock feathers, and swansdown. By tracing the entangled histories of textile fabrics designed with natural motifs, made of unique animal-derived materials, and imitating creatures from the natural world, it explores how the empire’s socio-political agenda and the transregional exchange affected knowledge production and transmission regarding both nature and human activities. More importantly, this study also aims to pursue a larger argument that reveals how crafting objects was also the process and a means of crafting identities in a multi-ethnic cosmopolitan empire. Nature, craft, and empire are three intertwined themes in my dissertation. Utilizing an interdisciplinary approach to illustrate distinctive ways in which nature was woven into the fabric of power in Qing China, I show how the Manchu rulers, local elites, and craftspeople perceived and forged their identities through material (natural as well as manmade), and artisanal practices. Tracing the movement of materials, technologies, and knowledge across geopolitical regions, I demonstrated that people’s understanding of nature and their connections with the empire were contested or reinforced during this process. As a whole, I propose a more nuanced way of understanding the various ways in which material and artisanal practices upon “natural things” can be means of (re)presenting, contesting, negotiating, and integrating politics, ethnicities, and cultural productions. In line with recent scholarship on how the Qing made the palace machine work, I argue, more specifically, the significance of “making nature work” for the Qing Empire in an increasingly connected early modern world.