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Andreas Everardus van Braam Houckgeest (1 November 1739 - 8 July 1801) was a
Dutch-American merchant who is mostly known for his participation in the last Dutch embassy to China under the
tributary system. In 1757, van Braam joined the Dutch Navy as a midshipman, but soon left the navy for
China in order to work for the Dutch East India Company (VOC). In 1758, van Braam arrived in China, and
for the remaining eight years he was engage in trade in Canton (Guangzhou) and Macau. During his sojourn
in China, he left for Europe twice and married Catharina Cornelia Geertruida van Reede van Oudthoorn on his last visit.
Due to a lack of money, van Braam was forced to end his last stay prematurely in 1773 and left China. The
following year, he settled in a county-seat near Zutphen in the province of Gelderland. Inspired by the
American Revolution, he decided to immigrate to the United States and settled in Charleston to work as a merchant
and rice planter in 1783. He became a U.S. citizen the following year. As a consequence of a family tragedy, van Braam decided to leave the U.S. and take up a position as chief of the Dutch factory in Guangzhou. After a long journey, with stops in the Netherlands, Malacca and Batavia, he arrived in Guangzhou in 1790. His contemporaries were surprised that, despite arriving almost destitute, he achieved a very comfortable standard of living within a short time. Apparently he was able to combine trading for the VOC very nicely with his own activities. He was fascinated by China and its inhabitants and began collecting all sorts of items made in China based on European examples. Having learned about the British Macartney Embassy to the Qing court in 1793, he requested that the commissioners-general in Batavia send a VOC embassy to the court of the Qianlong Emperor for the celebration of his sixtieth year on the throne. Batavia accepted the suggestion, but appointed the chief of the Dutch trading mission in Dejima, Isaac Titsingh (1745-1812) as head of the Dutch embassy instead of van Braam. In November 1794, the embassy, which included van Braam and Chrétien-Louis-Joseph de Guignes (son of Joseph de Guignes) left Guangzhou and it arrived in Beijing in January 1795, just in time for the Chinese new year. On account of his extensive knowledge of China, he was sent to Peking in 1794 by the Republic of the Seven United Netherlands. As vice ambassador, he accompanied the delegation whose mission it was to congratulate the Chinese Emperor on his sixtieth birthday. In those days, the political climate in Europe was not particularly stable, to put it mildly, which led to Van Braam's decision after the Peking trip to settle in America instead of returning to the Netherlands. He stayed in Canton for another six months, buying everything he needed to furnish the house he had built in Philadelphia in the Chinese style, called 'China Retreat.' He set sail on a ship that was completely laden with household goods and the collection that he had acquired, owing to his great interest in Chinese culture. As the story goes, a second ship loaded with his belongings was lost en route. Van Braam's account of the Titsingh mission was initially written in French and published in Philadelphia. In Beijing, the embassy was received together with representatives of other tributary countries and the members of the embassy performed the kowtow in front of the emperor according to Chinese custom. Unlike British diplomats, the members of the Dutch embassy did not refuse to perform the kowtow. Van Braam had retained his US citizenship and thus became the first American to meet a Chinese emperor. The embassy was lavishly entertained for the remainder of their stay and they were allowed to have additional audiences with the Qianlong emperor at his palace outside Beijing. The members of the Titsingh mission, including van Braam, were the last European diplomats to savour the mid-winter splendor of the vast Summer Palace (the Yuangmingyuan, now known as the Old Summer Palace) before its destruction by Lord Elgin's troops during the punitive Second Opium War in 1860. Upon the embassy's return to Guangzhou in March 1795, van Braam was unable to find a ship bound for the Netherlands and chose to board a ship to Philadelphia, where he arrived in 1796. Van Braam's arrival in the city attracted a lot of attention and he published an account of his journey, which he dedicated to George Washington. Van Braam decided to stay in the area and settled in Bristol outside the city. Due to financial difficulties, Van Braam was forced to sell his American house and his collection in 1799. Everything he owned was auctioned at Christie's in London. This resulted in the collection being scattered. He was only able to hold on to a small part of his goods. He bequeathed the remainder to his daughter, Everarda Catharina Sophia. After short stays in Germany and England, he bought a small property in Amsterdam, where he died in the summer of 1801. 1 An Authentic Account of the Embassy of the Dutch East-India Company, to the Court of the Emperor of China in the Years 1794 and 1795 (1798):
...two thousand paintings ... eventually comprised [van Braam] Houckgeest's burgeoning portfolio.
They were clearly its centerpiece, although he also gathered numerous other objects, both manmade artifacts and natural
specimens, to represent China's culture and wildlife. And since the Chinese landscape had often entranced him during
the long trek to Peking, he also purchased a physical model of a Chinese landscape that contained rocks, pagodas, human
figures, flowers, insects, streams, and fruit trees. With dimensions measuring 3 feet high, 22 inches wide, and
26 inches long, the model could rest on a large display table.2
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1
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andreas_Everardus_van_Braam_Houckgeest; 2 Haddad, John Rogerts The Romance of China: Excursions to China in U.S. Culture: 1776-1876, Chapter 1, Xanadu: An Envoy at the Throne of a Monarch, pg. 4. Note 23: Edward R. Barnsely, History of China's Retreat: Paper Read by Edward R. Barnsley before the Bucks County Historical Society at Doylestown, Pa., May 6, 1933 (Bristol, PA: Bristol Printing Company, 1933), pg. 7. Moreau de Saint-Mery, M.L.E. An Authentic Account of the Embassy of the Dutch East-India Company, to the Court of the Emperor of China in the Years 1794 and 1795; (Subsequent to that of the Earl of MaCartney.) Containing a Description of Several Parts of the Chinese Empire, Unknown to Europeans; Taken from the Journal of André Everard Van Braam, Chief of the Direction of that Company, and Second in the Embassy (London: Lee and Hurst, 1798), 2:320-22. Translated from the Original by M.L.E. Moreau De Saint-Mery. Although there isn't any direct evidence provided by this passage, it would be safe to speculate that this landscape model was at least partially constructed out of natural rock and sand and twigs/branches. Living plants would have been impractical to maintain, however we can assume that this Chinese miniature was a philosophical cousin of our other magical miniature landscapes. What became of this model? Was it eventually a part of Dunn's collection(s)? |