From the Blog
“SAPERE AUDE”
VERMEER´S HAT
By Jonathan Arriola
Saturday, 25th. August 2012
Overview
«Vermeer’s hat» is a direct journey
to the very inception of globalization. By unveiling the stories behind six
paintings of the Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer, Brooks takes us back to the
world of seventeenth century, where a system of international connections rose,
driven by the power of trade and cultural exchange.
Starting from Vermeer’s hometown -the city Delft- the reader will jump
into those paintings and will find himself at the heart of the big episodes
which shrank the world four centuries ago. It is well-known that fur, silver,
tobacco, porcelain, spices, etc. were the first products with which the web of
globalization was woven and around which a common human community based on
economic, politic and social exchange was created. But Brooks offers something
more than a simple historical reconstruction of those facts.
Approaching different stories such as that of the French explorer
Champlain or that of the Italian Dominican Angelo Cocchi, who, although in a
different way, played a role in the development of the global world, Brooks
achieves to literally dismantle, thread by thread, the unfathomable web of
globalization tailored during Vermeer’s days. In doing so, Brooks achieves to
bring us a brilliant and fresh insight about the beginnings of economic
interdependence, the creation of a transnational market and even the rudiments
of primitive international marketing strategies.
Chapter 1
The View from Delf.-
In the first chapter, Brooks introduces the general dynamic of the book,
whose objective is to trace the global history of the seventeenth century. There,
the author states that the best way to draw such a history is to start from the
city of Delft in the Netherlands. The reason for that is simple: unlike other cities
that share the same historical background, Delft has still a vivid “memory” of
the rise of the global world in the seventeenth century, reflected in its
architecture, in its internationalized economy and, especially, in its art. In
that sense, Brook argues that the paintings of Johannes Vermeer, one of the
most famous artists from Delft, are a perfect channel to gain access to Delft’s
past. Because they portrayed the peculiarities of the seventeenth century’s
Delft, Brook says that his paintings are “like windows”, through which we can
proceed to revive, not only Delft, but the whole epoch. By looking hard at them,
Brooks insists, we can find clues which tell us more about Vermeer’s globalized
world. Each chapter will look into one painting and unfold the stories behind
it.
Besides this introduction to the structure of the book, Brook proceeds
to examine the first painting,
called “View of Delft” (1660).
Here, he draws our attention to two particular points:
a)
The wide bottomed vessels. The story of these vessels is according to Brooks this.
The global cool of the seventeenth century made the arctic ice move to the
south, causing freeze-ups in Norway and making the fishery move to the Baltic
Sea, where they were caught by vessels of Dutch fishermen. That increase of the
amount of fish caught, led the Netherlands to an unprecedented age of
prosperity, of which Delft was one of the most favoured city, due to its
privileged geographical location.
b) The roof of the Dutch East India Company (or VOC). The VOC is undoubtedly one of the most recognizable symbols of capitalism, as it was the first enterprise in history to achieve global economic dominance due to 1) its unique federal structure and 2) its capacity for building a worldwide network of trade. Besides, the expansion of the VOC activities around the world would not have been possible had the VOC not managed to take advantage of three of the major innovation of its time: the magnetic compass -which notoriously eased navigation-, the paper –which helped cartography- and the gunpowder –which led to achieve military dominance-. Through the web of trade, the VOC, for the very first time in history, displayed around the world huge amounts of people. As a consequence, a new phenomenon arose: «transculturation». As soon as products from distant cultures made its appearance, everyday practices began to change. With the expansion of horizons there was too an expansion of ideas: the once boundless and mysterious world now became a closed and single unit.
3 Chapter 2
Veermer’s hat.-
Veermer’s hat.-
In the second chapter Brooks addresses
the second painting: Officer and
Laughing Girl (1658).
This time, he points his attention to only one object: Vermeer’s hat. The history of that hat leads us to a place that now
is known as Crown Point on Lake Champlain on 1606, and to a man named Samuel
Champlain.
Champlain initially was part of the first incursion by Europeans into
North American in 1606, as a member of a French expedition. His mission was to establish trading alliances with
natives, in order to increase the flow of goods. At that time, four important
Indians group inhabited the vast territory of North America: Montagnais,
Iroquet, Hurons and Mohawks. One of the objectives of Champlain was to reach to
St. Lawrence River. However, in that territory the Mohawks were settled. After establishing
an alliance with the Iroquets, he deliberately decided to kill the Mohawks, since
they were seen as an obstacle in French monopoly of trade, specially of fur,
which was one of the most demanded goods in Europe due to its scarcity in and inimitable
quality. It is important to underline that his victory over the Mohawks was
possible as a result of the invention of a new a powerful weapon: the arquebus.
The arquebus was an innovation
made in 1609. It caused a big revolution in Europe as it determined that size
of an army was no longer important in war: what mattered, then on, was how
soldiers were armed. Thanks to the global network already displayed, this
revolution was rapidly spread throughout the world. Among others, it made
possible the South America conquest by the Spanish, the Japanese invasion of
Korea in 1592, and, as we said, the victory of Champlain over the Mohawks.
The monopoly of fur which Champlain got after that victory was only a
mean to finance the real ultimate end: find
a passage to China, a country, which, due to Marco Polo’s written memories,
had a reputation back in Europe of being very wealthy. Until then, there were
two known routes to China: one via South America and the other via Africa. But
they were too complicated, long, risky and, moreover, expensive. That is why
Chamberlain hoped the St. Lawrence River, or even the Lake Superior, would unveil
a cheaper and shorter way to China. However, his dream was highly frustrated by
reality. Chamberlain’s effort was not in vain: thanks to him, Vermeer was able
to wear the fashion fur hat.
4 Chapter 3
A dish fruit.-
The painting which Brooks examines in this third chapter is Young Woman Reading a Letter at an Open
(1658).
The object that,
in this opportunity, catches Brook’s attention is a Chinese dish, which is under
a heap of fruit which is lying just near the woman. That dish, as the other
objects already studied, was a sign of something else: it was painted when the
Chinese porcelain was taking place in
Dutch’s life.
The first porcelain that reached Europe amazed everyone who saw it,
because of its impressive quality and fanciness. The Portuguese were the first
Europeans to acquire Chinese porcelain in Goa, India. From there, they went
directly to the south of China to negotiate with Chinese wholesalers more of
the precious porcelain. Because the route was crucial for worldwide commerce,
the Dutch wanted to get into it. The first cargo of porcelain that arrived
Holland was due to a seizure of a Portuguese ship in 1602. But soon they
decided to get their own business near China and establish regular trade
channels. The Dutch wanted to break the Iberian monopoly, both Portuguese and
Spanish, on the Asian trade by entering directly into the competition. Although
there was a serious rivalry between Dutch and Spanish people -because, as it is
widely known, the latter occupied the Netherlands during the sixteenth century-
resentment was not the most important. The manifest objective of the Dutch was,
rather, to control the Asian trade, which was equal to control global economic order.
Claiming that freedom of trade was a declared principle of international
law, like the Dutch lawyer and philosopher Hugo Grotius did, the VOC ships were
also in the South China by the turn of the seventeenth century, doing their
first shopping list of porcelain in 1608. Although VOC’s ships delivered, in
the first half of the country, a total of three million pieces, porcelain was
still expansive in Europe and soon a market of imitations arose. The most
successful in that emerging business were the porters of Delft.
But the circulation of decorative objects did not go only one way.
Europeans objects circulated in China as well. However, European objects did
have the same impact on China as Chinese porcelain had in Europe. For Chinese,
it was difficult to discern what value should be attributed to those objects that
arrived from abroad, since for them they did not have any intelligible meaning
attached. In other words: in China, foreign objects embodied no values; they
only awoke curiosity. Conversely, in Europe, and especially for Dutch, the
porcelains objects were more than just beautiful: as Brooks points out, they
were a symbol of the Dutch positive relation to the outside world. In some
point, they represented the overcoming of the challenges of the world; the
conquest of land and ocean by means of the new science and technology. And that
can be seen perfectly in Vermeer’s painting. The letter the woman is reading was
sent by her husband, a man who ventured himself, probably on a VOC’s ship, to the
external world to get more of the precious and well-valued Chinese porcelain
for his wife.
Chapter 4
Chapter 4
Geography Lessons.-
The Geographer (1669) is the fourth
painting that Brooks studies in the book.
The terrestrial
globe, which is behind the geographer Leeumenhoek, is where we must focus our
attention this time. That globe was the new edition of a 1618 globe published
by the famous Dutch cartographer Jodocus Hondius (1563-1612). In the globe itself, the author explains why this
version differs from the original one, published in 1600: due to increasingly
frequent expeditions to different part of the world, information about
geography was being actualised all the time. Although knowledge of geography
was still far from being perfect, it was definitely improving and also getting
more accurate.
As Brooks points out, the Spanish Jesuit, Adriano de las Cortes, was a perfect
example of a victim of the “moving” geography of the epoch. His ship was driven
onto the rocks of the Chinese coast by 1625, right after departing from Manila.
As it was common in the epoch, they became discoverers by mistake, as they had
arrived to an uncharted place. To that extend were isolated, that the fishing
people who were living there had not seen any foreign people at close range never
before. As a result, they were naturally surprised to see the wide microcosm of
people they brought: Moors, Blacks, Goans, South Asian Muslims, Portuguese,
Spaniards, Japanese, etc. The rise of the global world implied not only the
internationalization of goods but also of people from all continents.
While in other parts of the world the movement of people started to
become common currency, in China, conversely, they seriously started to worry
about foreign presence, both within and outside its territory. They unenthusiastically
witnessed the huge arrival of European and Japanese traders at South and
Mongolia, and the settlement of Tunguistic warriors at North. Who the greatest
threaten was, whether Europeans or Manchus, was a common discussion held in
China in that time. Some Chinese were especially reluctant of allowing foreign
technology (Portuguese gunners) or religion (like Jesuit Mission) since they
saw them as a dangerous intrusion to China’s security and culture.
The profound distrust shown for foreigners can be perfectly appreciated
in Las Cortes’ story. Immediately after the shipwreck, a military officer
arrived. He did not even bother to ask what had happened but rather, and
suspecting the worst, he ordered the crew to “surrender”. Before the officer’s
eyes, these foreigners were “pirates”; an accusation that not only was unfair
but which ultimately came to be rejected by China’s own justice. The implicit
premise was that foreigners, for their own condition, are guilty until their
innocence is proved.
Despite these inconvenient, people were still moving around the globe,
and quite freely. People like Vermeer’s geographer took advantage of these
heydays of traveling by gathering all the information about unknown places and
even routes that travelers brought back to Europe. It was precisely due to this
feedback mechanism established among travelers and cartographers, European maps
were constantly revised and remade. Just the opposite was the case in China.
Chinese’s cartographers could not benefit from any feedback mechanism since the
government was reluctant to foreigners, who were the only people bringing
information about the outside world. On the top of that, and what is worse,
there was no desire whatsoever to alter what was already done by the ancient
thinkers and philosophers. While Europeans let the outside world enter in their
everyday life, by opening their frontiers to foreign products and by incorporating
them into their culture; Chinese, inversely, wanted the outside world to remain
outside. That is why there was no geographer like Leeumenhoek in China.
6 Chapter 5
School for smoking.-
Unlike the others, chapter number five does not address any of Vermeer’s
paintings. Rather, it deals with a Delft-manufactured Chinese plate, which
shows a Chinese smoking another
worldwide product of seventeenth century: tobacco.
1) Tobacco’s History. According to Brooks, it is very likely that tobacco arrived Europe in
the pockets of the Portuguese sailors, who shared it with soldiers and priests.
Soldiers, priests and sailors, thus, were among the first Europeans who started
smoking. Once spread, the demand
for tobacco became very high in Europe. As a result, Europeans thought that it
would be better to take over the supply. Such operation was accomplished by
pushing aside the Native producers in America and by setting up their own tobacco
plantations. As the world’s demand for tobacco rose considerably, the
plantations needed more labour. Thereby, the Dutch WIC was born; a company whose
aim was to buy slaves in Africa and to sell them to tobacco plantation’s owners
in America. From there, tobacco traveled to China mainly by three routes: from
Brazil to Macao, from Mexico to Manila, and from East Asia to Beijing.
2)
Tobacco’s transculturation. Columbus was the first European who saw the
indigenous people of the Americas smoke. For Native Americans, tobacco was a
bridge between the natural and the supernatural worlds. It also had a social
aspect: it was used with friends, neighbours and as a present. When tobacco was
introduced in other continents, the original Native American-meaning jumped to
other cultures as well; but cultures interpreted that meaning according to its
own symbolic systems. The notion that tobacco was related to a spiritual realm
remained untouched everywhere. However, whereas in Europe it was associated
with witchcraft (at least at first), in Tibet it was linked to the protector
deities. Something similar happened in China. Chinese had to come up with a way
of making sense of tobacco. Tobacco was accepted in China mainly because it was
seen as having some medicinal properties. Once accepted, tobacco spread through
China quite fast. A set of customs was developed around smoking tobacco; it soon
became a sign of social status and refinement. It became part of the new
culture but at the same time it transformed it.
Around tobacco, a global community grew. At the end of the seventeenth
century, the Dutch started bringing opium from India into Southeast Asia. From
nineteenth century on, opium would leak into all levels of society as tobacco
had done before, but this time with China’s eclipse as background.
7 Chapter 6
Weighing silver.-
In chapter number six, we have a new Vermeer’s painting: Woman Holding a Balance (1664).
The balance,
which Vermeer’s wife is holding on this picture, contains silver. Since 1570
silver was suddenly available in unheard-of volumes. But where did the silver
of Catharina come from? During the seventeenth century Japan was a major
producer of silver but almost none of its production was going back to Europe.
Probably, Catharina’s silver came from Potosí, the most productive mining city
during the first half of the seventeenth century, which also helped to enrich
Spain and to consolidate its empire in South America.
China was the great global destination for European silver. Chinese
needed to import silver to compensate for their inadequate money supply. They
needed to supplement the small bronze coins that were used for small
transactions. By the sixteenth century, prices in China were calibrated by
weight of silver, exactly what Catalina was doing in the picture. In the first
half of the seventeenth century China was importing five thousand tons of
silver from Japan and South America.
But what did all the Europeans do with all the silver in China? As
Chinese economy was thirst for silver, the purchasing power of it was twice
higher there than in Europe. A lot of profits were made then by buying Chinese
goods (like spices, textiles tea and even coffee) and selling them back in
Europe.
The Spanish enclave of Manila was the very place where the two
hemispheres joined to trade. But Spain did not plan to trade only. Many
requests to invade China were made by Spanish settled in the Philippines. The prohibition
of entering China and the risk that China fell in Muslims hand were among the
various arguments wielded to invade it. But it was clear that it was impossible
for Spain to conquer China is it had conquered South America or the
Philippines: China was simply a well organized and wealthy country. The Spanish
could not have built their colony in Manila without the labour of the
non-Christian Chinese which reside in a sort of ghetto called Parián. Not only
trader but farmers, shipbuilders, tailors, sculptors, weavers, bakers, carpenters
and apothecaries worked there. Because of the deplorable conditions there
happened several outbreaks. However, the quiet Catharina remains unaware of the
violence the silver she has on his hands provoked around the world.
8 Chapter 7
Journeys.-
“The card player” (1660) is
the name of the sixth Vermeer painting which is analysed by Brooks.
The main topic of this chapter is the movement of people across the world in the globalized seventeenth century. People, either wealthy merchants or impoverished workers, moved; but the reasons why they moved were pretty different. There were:
1) People who were forced by
others to leave their own home. Such is the case of the ten-year-old African
boy who is holding a glass of wine in the picture. Africans had been going to
Europe since the fifteenth century but since the seventeenth century the flow
of Africans to the Low Countries increased exponentially.
2) People who needed to abandon
their own home in order to survive.
That is the case of the poor Chinese people who went to the Portuguese colony
of Macao to find work. The flow of people going to Macao was high because it
was very profitable to work there instead of working in China.
3)
People who unintentionally ended
in a new place but wanted to come back.
This happened to the crew of the Nieuw Horn, a VOC ship, while testing the new
route across the Indian Ocean. The ship sank and the survivors had to deal with
the Malays, the inhabitants of the island where they stumbled onto. The
encounter was not nice. The Malays wanted to get Dutch valuable goods and the
Dutch wanted to escape as soon as possible, what they did.
4)
People who unintentionally
ended in a new place but did not want
to come back. That is Weltevree’s
story. After having his ship stolen by Chinese, these Dutch went ashore at
Cheju Island. After a while, he managed to integrate himself into Korean
society: Something similar happened to two poor Dutch mariners Jopkins and
Harmensz, who decided to stay in Sancta Lucia with the Malagasy women.
5)
People who intentionally
travel to stay abroad. Like Dominican
missionary Angelo Cocchi, whose wish was to travel to China and stayed there in
order to spread Christianity among the Chinese.
Brooks also addresses “The journey of the Three Magi to Bethlehem” (1630) painted by
Bramer. Although it is a biblical scene, the painting reflects the fact of
multiculturalism and ethnic variety; showing us a black African Blathasar, a
hopelessly Dutch Caspar and a Jewish like Melchior.
9 Chapter 8
Endings: no man is an Island
In this last chapter, Brooks approaches the outcomes of the seventeenth
century process of globalization. Those are:
1
The emergency of a common idea of humanity. No longer was the world a series of isolated
locations but a sole unit on which every singular event and place is connected
with the whole. “No man is an island”
as the English theologian Donne claim in 1623.
2
The strengthening of the State in the West. After the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, which gave
birth to the current international system based on sovereignty, states were no
longer the domains of monarchs but public entities serving the interests of
firms and populated by citizens earning private wealth. At the same time, the
States that rose to global power after Westphalia, like Great Britain, were in
position to take advantage of global trade.
The showdown of China. A shift in the relations between Great Britain and
China took place in nineteenth century, when the English East Indies Companies
undercut’s China’s economy by bringing tones of Indian opium. The silver once
entered into China now was being drained, tilting the balance of payments in
British favour.
The book closes by stating that Delf privileged position in global trade
had made possible that artist arose. But with the decline of the Netherlands
after France invasion, there was no place for painters as Vermeer anymore.
Tightly tied with Delf fate, Vermeer suddenly died in 1675.
1 Contribution
I summarised my vision of the main contribution of «Vermeer’s hat» in the next two points:
¿VOC or Coca Cola?
In first place, as citizens of the 21th century world, we
tend to believe that globalization is essentially related to high tech
innovation, to instantaneous communications, to monster-size multinationals,
etc. Brooks makes us review this
chronocentrism of our epoch by showing that the current globalization is
just an outcome of a historical process enrooted in 17th century. Before it could be global, the world
had to be known. So globalization started, no in 20th by large
companies or powerful states, but by a handful of 17th century brave
men who, whether explorers or mercenaries, religious missioners or conquerors, wealthy
merchants or impoverished workers,
first tamed the ocean and first shed light on concealed territories. They
opened up the routes for modern communications, making the once obscure
world the single unit that it is nowadays. Brooks also reminds us that it was the VOC not Coca Cola the first
global enterprise; that it was silver and not American dollars the first global
currency and that it was tobacco and not Mc Donald’s’ hamburgers the first
worldwide product.
Globalization: a whirlpool without a center.
In second place, Brooks implicitly suggests that globalization was from
the beginning an unruled process. He sees globalization as neither a 1)
vertical nor a 2) unilateral process.
1)
The dynamic Brooks chose for the book reveals that for him there is not
real verticality in a global world. The fact that Brooks approaches the stories
of individuals, clearly suggests that
for him globalization was a process on which almost everybody played an
important role. Moreover, when we consider that much of those individuals were
common people. Brooks’ idea that globalization is analogue to Indra’s web, goes
in the same direction, as it remarks that a decision of one person in one side
of the world could change the course of the whole global process. When dealing
with globalization, every actor, regardless of its size, seems to be at the
same level. And that has not changed nowadays: YouTube, Facebook and Twitter are the vivid proof of that.
There is no «master head»
for Brooks, but only a bunch of single events that somehow came together to
build the global network of 17th century.
2)
«Vermeer’s hat» also suggests
that globalization has nothing to do with a central point unilaterally
irradiating its influence to the rest. By showing simultaneously what is the
consequence in China of a slowdown in silver production in Potosí and how that
affects Dutch purchases, we realize that in globalization does not consists
of myriad points that influence each other by means of trade, politics and
especially culture. Through the concept of «transculturalization», Brooks makes
clear that Chinese porcelain transformed the Netherlands in the same way
tobacco transformed China. In its core, Brooks perspective is that if a
theoretical model were to fit globalization, that would be chaos theory.