A new exhibition opening at Manchester’s Portico Library will showcase some of their key historic books on voyages to China as well as objects from the Silk Museum Macclesfield and Bolton Library and Museum Services illustrating the trade in silk, opium and tea.
From descriptions of botany, the stealing of plant samples and trade secrets in silk manufacture to descriptions of China and people in East Asia, Infamous explores a key and difficult period in the relationship between the two nations.
This exhibition considers the influence of the industrial revolution and the trading power of Manchester in the often violent struggle to access the markets in China.
Infamous considers why tea, opium and silk were so lucrative and important to the expansion of the British Empire and the factories in Manchester, Cheshire and Lancashire.
The exhibition will also display a curated selection of lantern slides of missionary activity in China that we know little about.
This gives a visual window into the role of missionaries, many of whom worked against the opium trade.
