Turned Earth: The Chinese Plowing Ritual in the Age of Enlightenment

Abstract This paper addresses the appropriation in Old Regime France, the First French Republic, and the nascent United States of the ritual wherein at the start of the agricultural season the Chinese Emperor ceremonially drove the plow. It argues that this cultural transfer insinuated Chinese ideals of political sovereignty into the highest political levels in Europe and the United States, even as it effaced references to China. Overturning traditional art historical definitions of chinoiserie, it posits instead dynamic, dialectical processes of cultural exchange whose scope of cultural transfer is not restricted to what can be identified through comparisons of style and iconography.