Ambivalent geographies: the British concession in Tianjin, China 1860-1946

[Summary of the book containing this chapter:] Examining colonial art through the lens of transculturation, the essays in this collection assess painting, sculpture, photography, illustration and architecture from 1770 to 1930 to map these art works' complex and unresolved meanings illuminated by the concept of transculturation. Authors explore works in which transculturation itself was being defined, formed, negotiated, and represented in the British Empire and in countries subject to British influence (the Congo Free State, Japan, Turkey) through cross-cultural encounters of two kinds: works created in the colonies subject over time to colonial and to postcolonial spectators' receptions, and copies or multiples of works that traveled across space located in several colonies or between a colony and the metropole, thus subject to multiple cultural interpretations. Essays in Transculturation in British Art, 1770–1930 argue that, due to art's fundamental nature as spatial, art can illuminate imperial transculturation sites of border cultures and contact zones that go far beyond hybridities of national cultural traditions or conventions. Transcultural works generate new cultural and imperial values. Authors posit that visual culture can suggest nuances and implications for transculturation, a word used in many other humanities and social science disciplines, to give this word a visual dimension.