The British Museum has brought together 300 objects from China’s ‘long 19th century’
In 1796, when the sixth emperor acceded, the Qing presided over a third of the world’s population and one of the most prosperous empires in history. In 1912, the 11th and last emperor abdicated, aged 12, ending 2,000 years of dynastic rule, and paving the way for the modern Chinese republic. The period in between is China’s “long 19th century”, said Laura Cumming in The Observer. Marked by famines, foreign invasions and savage wars, in which tens of millions of people died, it has also been dubbed the “hidden century”, because the period was considered so dark and violent that cultural histories have “skated right over it”.
