Ten Thousand Nations Coming to Pay Tribute (萬國來朝圖, 1761) is a monumental (299x207cm) Qing dynasty painting depicting foreign delegations visiting the Qianlong Emperor in the Forbidden city in Beijing during the late 1750s.
The painting was intended to show the cosmopolitanism and the centrality of the Qing Empire, since most countries of Asia and Europe are shown paying their respects to the Chinese Emperor. China already had a long tradition of such paintings (designated as “Portraits of Periodical Offering”), starting from around the 6th century CE, but such paintings ended around the time of the Opium War, which shattered the ideal of the Great Chinese Empire in the middle of the world, and gave way to the awareness of China as simply one country among others. The principle was one of more-or-less voluntary submission, with presents being periodically brought to the Chinese Emperor as a symbolic gesture of acknowledgement of Chinese overlordship. According to Ming period writings “The Emperor resides in the center and holds the reins of all other nations and all things under the sun”.
The title literally refers to ten thousand countries (“萬國”), but this simply has the meaning of an uncountable multitude.
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