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This thesis investigates ceramic figures portraying religious images made at the kilns of Longquan in Zhejiang province, China between the Song and the Ming periods. Through a thorough examination of the images' iconography alongside further related sources drawn from diverse areas of study, the thesis offers a new understanding of the cultural and religious importance of the figures and examines how they became prevalent in Longquan and how they were used and valued within and beyond the Chinese mainland. The range of figures examined, including Buddhas, bodhisattvas, deified monks, Daoist deities, immortals and popular gods, allows an exploration of religious beliefs and practices in Zhejiang at that time and demonstrates in particular the significance of the medium of ceramic in the development of popular devotion and its visual imagery in late imperial China. Small ceramic religious figures have so far gone unnoticed, in both the fields of Chinese ceramics and Chinese religious sculpture. Notwithstanding, they are an important part of the long, rich history of Chinese ceramic sculpture. By adopting an interdisciplinary approach, this exploration of Longquan figures demonstrates that small ceramic religious figures are illustrative of the rich visual and material culture of Chinese religion and provides a glimpse into the spiritual lives and religious customs of the Chinese in the pre-modern period.

This dissertation examines the stylistic evolution of one specific brand of film realism in contemporary Chinese cinema: the so-called jishizhuyi style ('on-the-spot' realism). In particular, the project focuses on the process of progressive aestheticisation that has affected this style since the turn of the twenty-first century, and the resulting development of a number of transgressive aesthetic features. In the first place, this study rethinks the assumptions of objectivity and spontaneity that conventionally characterise the practice and understanding of jishizhuyi. Hence, through the analysis of relevant case studies, the dissertation discusses the evolution of two main tendencies that show an increasingly subjective approach to the jishizhuyi style: the adoption of hyperrealist and supernatural visual elements - in films such as Suzhou River, Shanghai Panic, Welcome to Destination Shanghai, The World, and Still Life - and the purposeful interplay of fiction and non-fiction - in works such as Disorder, Oxhide, Oxhide II, 24 City, and The Ditch. The dissertation contends that, albeit challenging to conventional understandings of realism, these aesthetics do not invalidate, but rather redefine the meaning and practice of film realism in relation to the specificities of China's contemporary historical framework. To investigate this topic, the project applies the 'cinema of transvergence' paradigm to Chinese film studies for the first time. This is understood as a transformative theoretical model that accounts for the evolution of film styles in a flexible manner. The discussion further combines a variety of interdisciplinary theories, ranging from magical realism to documentary performativity, in order to fulfil a formal and critical analysis of a stylistic phenomenon that has hitherto lacked a comprehensive systematisation in academic scholarship.

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This thesis addresses the development of the pictorial genre known as the 'victory picture' in 19th century China. Largely associated with production under the patronage of the Qianlong emperor (r. 1736-95), victory pictures were thought to have been confined to the imperial milieu. However, my research has revealed that such pictures found expression in late Qing popular culture through the medium of sheet-prints (often erroneously referred to as 'New Year Pictures'). An analytical framework has been established by bringing together hitherto isolated bodies of material in different institutions in several countries. The woodblock prints that form the primary basis of this thesis have mostly come from the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris; the British Library, the British Museum and SOAS in London, and the Shanghai Library and Shanghai History Museum. This thesis focuses on popular prints depicting scenes from the Sino-French War (1884-85), the Sino-Japanese War (1895) and the Boxer Rebellion (1899-1901), in particular, those from the urbanized Jiangnan-Shanghai region and its publishing and distribution networks in South China. This locates them vis-à-vis the contexts of modernity, the development of news reportage and mass media and the treaty-port environment. It examines why the victory picture was so prevalent at a time when the Qing armies faced constant defeat. With the rise of naval power, and the theatre of war shifting to the sea, I also examine how a new iconography for war was developed through these popular prints, as maritime art was largely unfamiliar in China. As the prints were widely circulated and copied, the phenomenon of their seriality over time and space is also examined. The victory print is thus not only understood as a picture but as an object, specific to its period and medium. Finally, the print itself serves as a primary source: its rubric yields valuable information for a new understanding of the popular print market.

Between 1850 and 1937, Fuzhou was a dynamic centre of international exchange, profoundly shaped by global and imperial circulations of people, goods and ideas. What made these circulations possible was the city's status as a treaty port. This was a site of unequal Sino-foreign power relations where a predominantly British and American community used their legal privileges to establish a bridgehead in China and then built it into a sophisticated conduit for commercial and cultural change. In 1850, Fuzhou was one of five treaty ports in China. By 1917 there were 92 such sites. This thesis provides the first in-depth study of treaty port Fuzhou revealing its main structural, spatial and social characteristics, as well as how its communities and institutions changed over time. It argues that the treaty port was above all a gateway for global empires, a point of access for new practices and knowledge into China, but also for the distribution of Chinese commodities abroad. This thesis enriches our understanding of the treaty ports, and in the process, broadens our understanding of colonialism in China. In particular, it reveals the wide repertoire of colonial practices that brought different empires to China and enabled them to stay. This thesis therefore pushes forward our comprehension of the multiple and particular manifestations of imperial expansion in China, and elsewhere in the world.

This thesis focuses on Sir Robert Hart's relationship with the Qing bureaucracy in the late Qing period. Hart's relationship with Chinese officials was essential to his work as Inspector General of the Chinese Imperial Maritime Customs. The thesis argues that as Inspector General, Hart took on a role as a ‘man in the middle’ between China and the West. Hart’s service in the Chinese government (1859-1908) covered almost the entire period from China's humiliating 1860 defeat in the Second Opium War until the collapse of the imperial state in 1911 Throughout this period Harts role in the Customs Service put him at the centre of China’s foreign relations, attempting to balance European pressure and China's interests. Hart's achievements in establishing an efficient Customs Service benefiting both China and Europe represented one approach to the problem of how China should respond to increased European influence in East Asia Hart did not simply stick obstinately to British blueprints for reform in China Instead he also fused the ideas of Qing intellectuals and the Self-Strengthening movement into the British model to develop his own approach to modernisation in China Meanwhile, Chinese reformers were developing other approaches to resolving the key problem of China's growing weakness relative to the West When Hart attempted to promote reform of the Chinese Navy with himself as a new national naval Inspector-General. Chinese officials ensured that Hart did not succeed in securing a position of such far-reaching influence Primary sources used include Hart s diaries and letters, and Chinese official documents and memoranda