Feather Satins and Orangutan Felts: A Material History of English Woolens in Qing China

For the EAS Speaker Series Spring 2025, Rachel Silberstein will introduce her book project, which focuses on the East India Company’s export of British woolens to Qing period China.

By considering the EIC’s motives and strategies alongside analysis of Chinese textile markets and consumption practices, the project forms a novel approach to the question of how far foreign goods penetrated late Qing markets. The book seeks to challenge the assumption that Chinese consumers were fundamentally uninterested in foreign materials, provide important new data and analysis on Qing textile markets and consumption, and bring humanistic perspectives to ongoing debates around the role of textiles in the Qing economy.

Rachel Silberstein is an independent scholar affiliated with the China Studies program of the University of Washington, currently a fellow in the School of Historical Studies at the Institute of Advanced Studies, Princeton.