For years a portray of ships passing one another in a international harbor hung largely unnoticed in a since-forgotten Harvard workplace. The work exhibits vessels massive and small, some with vivid crimson flags atop their masts, all set towards a blue sky. However that picturesque if unremarkable scene really captures a snapshot of a part of a darkish historical past of dependancy and imperialism, and the lasting legacy that fostering the opium commerce had on Massachusetts and the nation.

That nineteenth century portray, “Port of Shanghai,” is now a part of the Harvard Artwork Museums exhibition “Objects of Dependancy: Opium, Empire, and the Chinese language Artwork Commerce,” on show via January. It depicts Western merchants — a number of flying Massachusetts service provider flags — bringing illicit items into China.

The present examines how merchants in search of silks, tea, porcelain, and work ramped up unlawful imports of opium to China within the early nineteenth century. The ensuing widespread dependancy and makes an attempt to halt importation led to wars with European powers. All of it ended up contributing to a rising curiosity within the West in gathering Chinese language artwork, a few of which had been looted throughout armed battle.

“I used to be actually occupied with how we will use historical past to grasp the current,” mentioned Sarah Laursen, the Alan J. Dworsky Affiliate Curator of Chinese language Artwork. “I wished to consider what classes we will be taught from it and the way it impacts our lives at the moment, each when it comes to museums and what our present gathering insurance policies are, but additionally how that connects to the opioid epidemic, which has actually solely gotten worse through the years despite the efforts of plenty of politicians and public well being officers.”

The opium commerce in China started within the 18th century when the British East India firm discovered that the drug, principally produced in India, can be a aggressive commodity in commerce for tea. Outlawed by the Qing dynasty, opium was offered via a community of smugglers and corrupt Chinese language retailers.