Illustration Gallery

The engravings shown are attributed to a "Seymour SC," whose name can be found in the lower portion of the images, and are likely based on the drawings of the Macartney Embassy’s artists, William Alexander and Thomas Hickey. It is important to note that more than half of these illustrations depict Chinese technologies. This emphasis is reflective of societal notions surrounding the Industrial Revolution, where Western cultures began to quantify civility and modernity by the measure of a culture's machines. Given that China was largely an agrarian society, such illustrations are therefore focused on agricultural technology.