Q1.
Before you read further, have a good look at the painting on the first page of this chapter. It was specially ordered for the London headquarters of the East India Company and is over three metres long. Observe every aspect of it — the people in it, the objects, the symbols and the attitudes. Form groups of four or five students and let each group present its conclusions as regards the messages the painting conveys. (You will find our answers a few pages down, when we return to the painting, but avoid looking at them right now!)
Answer
Method first. With a painting like this, ask four questions in order: who commissioned it and for what room? — who is placed higher and who lower? — who is giving and who is receiving? — what is left out? The answers are the message.
Who ordered it. This is Spiridione Roma’s ‘The East offering its riches to Britannia’, painted in 1778, over three metres long, made specially for the East India Company’s London headquarters. So it is not a neutral picture of trade — it is a company’s advertisement for itself, hung where its own directors would see it.
| What you see | Where it sits in the picture | The message |
|---|---|---|
| Britannia, a fair-skinned woman with a lion beside her, cherubs with a shield and the Union flag behind | Highest of all, seated on a rock, receiving | Britain rules; the lion is power; she does not stand up or reach out — the wealth comes to her |
| India, a dark-skinned woman holding out a casket of pearls and jewels | Lower, leaning forward, offering | India is shown as a willing giver, and as a woman kneeling before a seated one |
| China, in a long robe, bent over a large porcelain jar | Lower still, bowed | The Company traded with China too; the East as a whole is arranged below Britain |
| Two dark figures carrying bales of cotton | At the right edge, backs bent under the load | The labour that produced the wealth is present, but nameless and at the margin |
| God Mercury with his winged staff | Standing at the right, gesturing | Commerce and travel — the transaction is presented as trade, blessed by a god |
| Ships of the Company | In the middle distance, behind the figures | The naval power that actually made all this possible, placed quietly in the background |
| ‘Old Father Thames’, a bearded old man with water pouring from an urn | Lowest left, at the water’s edge | London is the destination: everything in the picture is flowing towards this river |
| Animals from India (a camel, an elephant) | Behind Mercury | The East as an exotic storehouse of natural riches |
What the painting hides: the whole picture rests on one word in its title — offering. Nobody in it is being taxed, taken to court, or starved. There are no soldiers, no revenue collectors, no famine. Yet within a dozen years of this painting, the same Company had collected revenue through the Bengal famine of 1770–1772 in which roughly 10 million people died. Reading the picture against the chapter is the point of the exercise.
Try this in your group: divide the four questions above between the members, then present in this order — the commission, the hierarchy, the direction of the giving, the silence. Finish with one sentence answering: if an Indian weaver of 1778 had painted this scene, what would be different?