37 pages • 1 hour read
Timothy BrookVermeer's Hat
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2005A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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Transculturation
Brook uses the definition of transculturation offered by early 20th-century Cuban anthropologist Fernando Ortiz, who saw it as the way that aspects of one cultural group move to and become adopted by another—so much so that the adoptive culture no longer considers the element as foreign. The primary example Brook considers is the process by which smoking tobacco moved through the world, from one culture to another.
One feature of transculturation is the loss of the meanings placed on the cultural feature by its originators. Europeans first encountered the use of tobacco when they observed the Indigenous peoples of the Americas. While for Indigenous tribes, tobacco was often a part of spiritual practice, smoking mostly lost this association when it was taken up by Europe, and later, by China. There were however a few exceptions: For instance, in Tibet, smoking made its way back into religious association, as a formidable Tibetan deity began to be depicted smoking from a human femur. Instead of a religious practice, smoking became an aesthetic one: Europeans displayed wealth through increasingly elaborate storage vessels for tobacco; in China, smoking became almost an art form, with complex rituals that were markers of social standing.
Brook notes that in the case of tobacco, transculturation was partnered with commercialization. The substance’s addictive nature ensured a steady and growing demand. Since Europeans did not view tobacco as sacred, they rejected Indigenous ideas about its production in favor of massive plantations to supply the world’s markets. This development had mostly negative aspects. The plantation system led Spanish colonists to disenfranchise Indigenous growers and coerce them into forced labor. Eventually, the system created markets for the slave trade. Conversely, tobacco’s widespread adoption in China changed the cultural understanding of the nature of addiction, which began to be seen as a noble obsession. This shift paved the way for the use of opium, which became Britain’s wedge into the otherwise closed Chinese market, leading to the economic and military devastation of the Opium Wars.
Impetus Toward Globalization
Vermeer’s Hat details the 17th century’s global interconnectedness, from Europe to Asia to the Americas. For Brook, globalization means the drive of nations or private enterprise to expand their reach to operate internationally. Brook’s approaches the topic from a European lens, as he begins his study of globalization with the paintings of Johannes Vermeer, a Dutch artist who realistically depicted the Netherlands. Brook argues that the Dutch in particular, and Europeans in general, saw a need to explore the larger world for greater knowledge about other continents. With greater connection and access came the chance to trade, expanding Europe’s approach to commerce. Continuing the cycle, trade and exploration could even better inform and fuel the growth of new or formerly closed markets.
Brook also highlights the pitfalls of globalization, which were often violence, conflict, and devastation. Shipping goods across oceans was costly and dangerous in several ways, making investment in import/export enterprise risky, and destabilizing economies: Shipwrecks lost cargo, and ships laden with valuable goods attracted piracy. Wherever European travelers went, they brought diseases that Indigenous populations had little immunity to, decimating populations, especially in the Americas. The desire for wealth often meant military intervention: European countries fought each other for control of trade routes, fought Indigenous populations to conquer territory for colonial expansion, and supplied arms to friendly regimes to markets in Asia and Africa. In the wake of these disasters, many people were displaced—either forcibly moved elsewhere through coercion and enslavement, or unwillingly traveling to survive. Finally, globalization was inexorable: Even China, a large and powerful country committed to remaining autonomous and separate from the ever-encroaching world, was unable to resist.
Despite these drawbacks, Brook is optimistic about the drive to learn more about the world that merchants, navigators, and scholars displayed. For him, the desire to connect and curiosity about others lie at the heart of the beginnings of globalization.
The Movement of People
Brook depicts many scenes of people moving from one destination to another, including some, like enslaved individuals, who were moved against their will. This movement shifted lines of trade and communication that had beginnings in the 17th century. There are several mentions of ship manifests in Vermeer’s Hat that point to diversity aboard ship. As Brook himself notes, Europeans owned the ships that traveled the sea lanes in the 17th century, but they were almost always a minority aboard. Even though nations were at war with one another, and had different agendas concerning trade and conquest, ships often carried a host of people from different places coming together in the interest of movement, of travel. This comingling of people naturally resulted in a comingling of cultures, leading to a greater understanding of the world at large. The movement of people also meant that different cultures encountered different commodities and cultural artifacts, which, in time, made their way into new cultures and countries through import, transculturation, and curiosity.
The negative side of the movement of people involves enslaved labor and trade, as well as Indigenous peoples’ dispossession of their lands. When Europeans encountered Indigenous people in North and South America, tragedy ensued. Brook recounts how the Hurons and other Great Lakes tribes were decimated by disease and war. These nations were forced to relocate due to famine, disease, and the desire to keep their heritage and culture alive. For some tribes, such as the Huron, nowhere they could move to would prevent them from being wiped out by Europeans or other native tribes. Indigenous people in South America fared no better, especially with the discovery of gold and silver, and the drive for exploration and colonization. Africa was also hit with the need for forced labor, resulting in the slave trade and the displacement of people from Africa all over the world. As with many concepts in the 17th century, the movement of people changed the world for better and for worse.
Paintings as Gateways
Brook uses several of Vermeer’s paintings, as well as other pieces of art, to show an increasingly interconnected world during the 17th century. Brook takes a unique approach to these paintings, examining them both for what they do not reveal and/or for meanings hinted at by the placement of key markers. Brook cites art critic James Elkins to bolster his approach to the paintings. Elkins argues, “Paintings are puzzles that we feel compelled to solve to ease our perplexities about the world in which we find ourselves, as well as our uncertainties as to just how it is that we found ourselves here.” By looking at paintings as puzzles, the viewer understands that there are things that need to be solved in the painting. By solving these clues, gateways are opened to wider worlds.
Brook effectively makes a case for 17th-century globalization by looking at specific aspects in paintings, including a silver ducat in one painting that speaks to the overwhelming effect the silver trade had on 17th-century nations. He also looks at ships in paintings, or the placement of light, to trace movement and trade in the larger world, showing that paintings hold worlds within worlds, and that, just as mapmakers and navigators sought information to better understand the world, so too did artists and historians use knowledge of the world to better understand it and show this newfound wonderment to others.
