Artwork of the Huang Qing Zhigong Tu

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The Huang Qing Zhigong Tu is an 18th century Qing Dynasty work that details the various ethnic minorities and foreign tributaries. The Qing Dynasty extracted internal and external tributes, and this work documents the various groups they dealt with. As well as East Asian groups, Europeans were portrayed as also providing tribute and being in effect vassal states. Century of Humiliation, here we come.

The ethnography of the Huang Qing Zhigong Tu was probably influenced by Western ethnographies of the time. Prior to the advent of photography, painted or engraved images were the only way of portraying foreign people and dress. In fact, I wonder how much of a part photography played in modern art's turning away from representation to its more abstract and symbolic nature today.