All language subtitles for BBC.Civilisations.6of9.First.Contact.1080p.HDTV.x264.AAC.MVGroup.org.eng

When civilisations meet one
another for the first time,

there is always
the danger of conflict.

A global era of many first
encounters began 500 years ago.

It was the dawn of
a new age of discovery.

Some encounters were peaceful.

Others incredibly destructive.

But time and again, these
momentous meetings sparked

great artistic energy

and the clashing and the jostling
of cultures impacted both sides.

As a historian,
I believe that in art

we find profound truths
about these encounters.

In the masterpieces
of 17th-century Holland...

..in great works from Japan,

in the paintings of
late Mughal India

and other artistic treasures...

..we discover the destruction
and creation combined

to forge new art and culture...

..in the first age of globalisation.

In the last years
of the 19th century,

thousands of people came to London
to see an intriguing new exhibit.

They came to marvel at
the art of an alien culture,

produced by a supposedly
savage people.

The very existence of these
works of art represented

a challenge to the dominant
ideas of the time.

Ideas that underpinned an empire.

The public were fascinated,
but also troubled by what they saw.

What bothered them was that this was
the work of an African society

and almost everybody in the
19th century believed that

Africans lacked the technical skills
needed to produce great art

and the cultural sophistication
needed to appreciate it.

It was, in fact, widely
believed that the people

of the Dark Continent had
no history and no culture

and were incapable of generating
this thing called civilisation.

These reliefs that so
disturbed the Victorians

are the Benin Bronzes.

They're now regarded as one
of Africa's greatest treasures.

Created from the 16th century
onwards in the ancient

West African kingdom,
they record Benin's great kings,

her wealth, her military power

and the history that Africans
were supposed to lack.

I've been coming to see these
works of art my whole life.

I was first brought to see them

when I was just a little boy
by my family.

I've spent hours and hours over
the years standing here

looking at them and,
as someone born in Africa,

feeling a strong sense of
connection to them.

But despite all their beauty,

they are to me tragic works of art,

because they are loaded
with a sense of loss.

And that's because today they're not
in Nigeria among the people whose

ancestors made them, they're here
in London, in the British Museum.

The Benin Bronzes came to Britain
as the spoils of an act of plunder.

In 1897, British colonial
forces attacked Benin City.

It was an act of revenge
for the ambush of an earlier

British expedition.

They deposed the King, the Oba
Ovonramwen, sent him into exile

and burned his palace to the ground.

They looted the brass plaques

and statues that once
decorated the palace walls,

took them back to London
and sold them off.

Some were put on display
in the British Museum.

Yet many of the Victorians who
puzzled over the existence

of the bronzes had forgotten
that they were not the first

outsiders to see the art of Benin.

Centuries earlier,

Portuguese explorers had encountered
the bronzes in their original home

on the walls of
Benin's Royal Palace.

It stood at the heart of a vast
city, ringed by one of the largest

earthwork walls in the world.

These early European travellers came
not to conquer, but to trade.

Before the prejudices of later
centuries, they had no trouble

recognising Benin as a powerful,
sophisticated civilisation,

one that was capable of
producing great art.

And it's in the art that we find
evidence of these first

relationships between
West Africans and Europeans...

..evidence that shows the faces
of early Portuguese traders,

complete with beards
and long European noses.

This is art that reveals a very
different civilisation

to the one the Victorians imagined -

not an isolated kingdom,

but one shaped by centuries
of contact with the wider world.

Today the kingdom of Benin
is part of Nigeria.

Yet its ancient culture has
not vanished, but adapted

and survived its many
encounters with others.

The people of Benin still
pay homage to an Oba.

Ewuare II is the 39th ruler
in a line that stretches

back to the 12th century.

Oba.

And the artworks that we call Benin
Bronzes, in fact made of brass

alloys, are still created
by the people of Benin,

using the same ancient
metal-casting technique.

Mr Ine is part of a long
artistic tradition.

He learnt his skills
from his father,

who learnt them from his father,

so this artistic form has been
passed down over the centuries,

family by family,
generation by generation,

and today the bronze-casters
of Benin, like their predecessors,

are members of an exclusive guild,

and they still use the same
methods to produce their art -

the lost wax method -
and almost every

stage in that process is performed
today as it was centuries ago.

Yet despite their ancient heritage,

Benin's craftsmen were not the first
West Africans to use the technique.

In the 13th century, the people
of Ife cast lifelike heads

in metal that are thought to
represent now long-forgotten rulers.

They achieved such a sophisticated
level of realism that

Europeans would later
suggest the heads

were evidence of the lost
civilisation of Atlantis.

This was the indigenous
artistic tradition

inherited by the Benin Empire,

who used it to honour their obas.

In the hands of Benin's craftsmen,

the style became more abstract,

imbued with magical, symbolic power.

Benin's art would
continue to evolve after

the arrival in the late
1400s of Portuguese traders,

the first Europeans to
reach West Africa.

Within Benin's art is evidence
that the Portuguese were more than

just trading partners.

This brass statue, made by
Africans for Africans,

is of a Portuguese soldier.

He is quite possibly
one of the mercenaries who

fought in the Oba's army.

A statue like this could well have
adorned the Oba's palace.

And one of the greatest of all
Benin's art treasures gives us

an insight into the way
Benin saw the Portuguese.

Made not of metal, but carved ivory,

it's believed to show the face of

a 16th-century queen mother - Idia.

It's an expression
of elegance and power.

But most intriguing is her crown.

It's a row of tiny bearded faces,

symbolising the
seafaring Portuguese.

They were said to be messengers
of Benin's water god Olokun,

so their images reinforced
the authority of the Queen.

Trade with the Portuguese meant
that the kingdom of Benin,

like a number of African societies,

was drawn into a new Atlantic world.

African traders loaded locally
produced goods onto European

ships that sailed up African rivers.

They traded in cloth and
in pepper, in gold and ivory,

and also in slaves, though at this
point, in very small numbers.

But Africans also exported
the work of African artists,

who found new customers in Europe.

The craftsmen of Benin carved
elaborate salt cellars from ivory,

in the process creating a new
Afro-Portuguese style.

With their Christian crosses
and distinctive clothes,

these figures are unmistakably
16th-century Europeans.

The lid is crowned with a tiny
Portuguese sailing ship,

topped with a crow's nest.

As a witty flourish,
we see a sailor peeping out.

These luxury items were all
destined for Portugal's

great port city - Lisbon.

By the late 1400s, contact with
the world beyond Europe was

transforming the way the
Portuguese saw themselves...

..as more inquisitive
and more outward-looking.

The fortified tower of Belem,
built to protect Lisbon harbour,

boasted ornate braided details

thought by some to be influenced
by African carvings,

like the ivory salt-cellar ship.

On one corner of the tower

is a celebrated trophy
of Portuguese globalism.

It's a rhinoceros, modelled
on a real animal sent by an Indian

prince as a gift
to the King of Portugal.

Brought by ship around Africa
and paraded through the docks

of Lisbon, it was the first rhino
seen in Europe since the Romans.

The same animal was famously
immortalised by the German

artist Albrecht Durer.

He never saw the beast himself,

but transformed someone else's
sketch into an engraved masterpiece,

which he reproduced and sold
in thousands of woodcut prints.

This is the image that
helped establish

Durer as a master of the
new medium of mass communication...

..the printing press.

By the 16th century,

Lisbon had become perhaps
Europe's most cosmopolitan city.

A reality that was captured
in a uniquely revealing painting...

..the King's Fountain.

It's believed that
the artist who produced this,

whose name has been lost,
was from the Netherlands,

but this is not a picture of Delft
or Amsterdam, this is Lisbon.

This is Lisbon in the 16th century,

at the very height of Portugal's
global trading empire.

It's a part of the city
called the king's fountain

and the fountain is shown here.

What's striking about this
picture is the people.

Lisbon in this painting looks more
like a 21st-century capital,

because as Portugal's
trading empire expanded

around the world, people from across
that empire came to Lisbon.

Incredibly, it's believed that 10%,

one in 10, of Lisbon's
population were Africans.

The Africans in this painting
are existing at every

level of the social strata.

There are the aguaderos,
these are water carriers.

They are almost certainly slaves.

But there were white slaves
as well as black slaves.

There's a criminal who has
been arrested here.

There are the boatmen, who are
ferrying people across the river,

but there's also figures like this,
this is a black knight,

a man of the Order of Santiago,

on his horse, with his sword
and his cloak and all his finery.

And it's a snapshot of a world
that we've forgotten about -

Lisbon at the centre
of a global empire,

Lisbon at the centre of
the first age of globalisation.

This is art that captures a moment
when the balance of military

and economic power meant
that Europeans

and Africans encountered one another
on terms of relative equality.

Yet other art plundered from
Central America just decades

later tells of a very
different encounter.

An encounter that would prove to
be one of the most cataclysmic

events in all human history.

On the eve of Spain's arrival,

Central America was
dominated by the Aztecs.

They had their own writing system

and a sophisticated
cyclical calendar.

Their complex beliefs demanded
sacrificial victims in vast

numbers to appease the gods
and ensure the continuation of life.

The Aztecs also honoured their gods

and their rulers in exquisite
artefacts fashioned from gold.

Gold that would prove
an irresistible temptation

to the first European arrivals.

On 8 November 1519, one of
the most momentous meetings in all

of history took place in
the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlan.

And this meeting between two worlds,

the old and the new,

came down to a meeting
between two men,

Hernan Cortes and
the Aztec emperor Montezuma.

And these were two men who
occupied positions of radically

different status in
their respective societies.

It's difficult to know what
Montezuma, the god emperor,

made of Cortes, the ruthless,
ambitious conquistador.

Was Cortes the embodiment
of the Aztec god Quetzalcoatl,

whose imminent return had
been prophesied?

Or was he a dangerous enemy to
be treated with caution?

Either way, Montezuma decided
to lavish upon the Spaniard

some of the most beautiful artefacts
Aztec society could produce.

It's believed that this spectacular
object was one of them.

It is known today as the
Double-Headed Serpent.

It's a piece of carved wood that's
been covered in a mosaic made

up of hundreds and hundreds
of tiny pieces of turquoise,

each of them very precisely
fitted into place.

And it's believed that it's
a representation of the Aztec

god Quetzalcoatl, who was
sometimes shown as a snake

covered in the shimmering
feathers of the quetzal bird.

What we don't know is why.

Why did Montezuma perhaps
give this to Cortes?

It could've been as an act of
tribute or perhaps Montezuma

believed that he could, with this

and other gifts, appease the Spanish

and save the Aztec Empire.

But the conquistadors
weren't interested

in the aesthetic value
of Montezuma's gifts.

They wanted only gold.

So with horses, weapons

and a great deal of help from
Montezuma's enemies, they attacked.

Yet the truth is it was
the unexpected, devastating

power of European diseases that
finally broke Aztec resistance

and wiped out perhaps as much
as 90% of the population.

When Spain displayed the spoils
of its conquest back in Europe,

it took an artist's eye to
really appreciate their beauty -

none other than Durer,

the engraver
of Lisbon's Indian rhino.

He saw the Aztec works and wrote,

"All the days of my life I have seen
nothing that rejoiced my heart

"so much as these
wonderful works of art."

But that didn't stop the Spanish
from melting down almost

every gold object
for its commercial value.

In Mexico, the Aztecs who survived
faced a new onslaught.

Catholic missionaries came,

determined to eradicate
Aztec beliefs.

Especially the bloody, despised
practice of human sacrifice.

To break the bond between
the people and the gods,

they set about the wholesale
obliteration of the Aztec religion.

Hundreds of temples were destroyed,

and on their ruins churches

were raised - sometimes they were
built from the same stones -

and thousands of statues to the
Aztec gods were toppled and burnt.

The conversion of hundreds
of thousands of Aztec people to

Catholicism was surprisingly
swift and thorough.

The Spanish unquestionably used

force, but crucial, too, were
similarities between the faiths.

Aztec ideas about blood sacrifice

and resurrection chimed with
the story of Christ's

crucifixion, enabling
the fusion of the two faiths.

And even this encounter,
one of the most violent

destructions of one
civilisation by another,

would produce great art.

In a monumental work known
today as the Florentine Codex,

one Franciscan missionary,

Father Bernardino de Sahagun,
employed the skills of Aztec artists

to help him create a detailed
record of their civilisation.

Sahagun believed that in order
to convert people, you first

had to understand them,
their gods, their way of life,

even their rituals of sacrifice.

The text is written in both Spanish
and the Aztec language Nahuatl.

But it's the images, painted
by Aztecs, that most vividly

portray a conquered
people, immortalising

their own culture at the very
moment it was being destroyed.

And it wasn't only on the page.

Through the fusion of the two
faiths, aspects of Aztec

culture survived into the modern
world in the form of a festival.

MARIACHI BAND PLAYS

The annual Day of the Dead
is actually a synthesis

of the Catholic All Saints' Day

and rituals inherited from
the Aztec religion.

It's a day when families gather
together to remember those

who have passed away.

Dona Josefina lost her husband
Don Abram three months ago.

But until midnight, surrounded
by family and friends,

she is here to welcome her husband
as she did when he was alive.

To guide Don Abram home,

Dona Josefina has built an altar,

laden with offerings
of bread and fruit.

There are layers to represent
heaven, earth and the underworld.

And alongside them, the Aztec
symbol of death...

the calavera,

the human skull.

I've come here, bringing with me
all my western presumptions

and I'm imposing my western view
of death as something tragic,

to be lamented and mourned,

onto what's happening here.

That's not at all how these
people are regarding

this celebration of the passing
of one of their number.

It's my problem, not their problem,

that I see death
as macabre and tragic.

They see it quite differently.

There is a striking irony
in the fact that 500 years after

Cortes and the conquistadors
arrived, the element of Aztec

culture that is most alive is their
festival to the goddess of death.

There was no society,
whether victim or victor,

that emerged from the Age of
Exploration unchanged.

Spain, too, was transformed.

Vast amounts of silver and gold

seized from the New World made
her the richest nation in Europe.

The church justified Spain's

conquests on the grounds that they
helped spread the Christian message.

But while the Inquisition ruthlessly
defended the purity of the Catholic

faith, the exchange of ideas
and influences was unstoppable.

Spain's aggressive
exporting of her culture

and her faith to other parts
of the world didn't render

her immune to the inflow of
cultural influences from abroad.

Here in Toledo, the spiritual
heart of the Spanish church,

cultures met and mixed
and, in doing so,

some of the very greatest European
art of all time was created.

It was the work of a visionary,

a man whose style and intensity was
centuries ahead of its time.

He'd been born in Crete as
Domenikos Theotokopoulos,

but he was known here in Spain
as El Greco - the Greek.

El Greco brought to Spain
the traditions of Greek Orthodox

art as well as the strange
distortions of Italian Mannerism.

But his great achievement
was combining those

influences in a way that
expressed the fanatical

intensity of the religious
culture of 16th-century Toledo.

In 1596, he began work on

a dramatic view of the city.

It's starkly lit, beneath a stormy
sky, a vision of a holy citadel

where God's authority was made
manifest through the Spanish church.

Rising up from the skyline is
the spire of Toledo Cathedral.

It was for this Cathedral
that El Greco painted

one of his greatest masterpieces.

El Greco's painting still hangs in
the space for which it was created.

This is the sacristy,
where the priests

put on their robes
before performing mass.

So it's fitting that El Greco
chose as his subject

the disrobing of Christ.

What we see is the moment
just before Christ's

clothes are ripped from his
body, before the crucifixion.

No other artist more vividly
captured Catholic Spain's

intense fascination with the brutal
horror of Christ's sacrifice.

Now, there's no blood
in this painting,

but we are symbolically reminded
of the violence that's to be done

to the body of Christ through
the deep, intense red of the robe.

It reminds us that the crucifixion
was a blood sacrifice.

A strange echo of the human
sacrifices that were at

the heart of the religion of the
people who Spain had conquered,

the Aztecs.

El Greco made Christ's

blood sacrifice explicit

when he painted his battered,

distorted body hanging on the cross.

The bloodstains trailing down

towards a view not of the

Holy Land, but of Toledo, the

beating heart of the Spanish empire.

But Spain's conquests
in the New World were not

the norm in the 16th century.

They were, in a sense,
the exception.

When European explorers first
reached the shores of more

powerful empires,
like India and China,

they initially found
themselves marginal players.

In Japan, they encountered

a feudal society too robust

to be conquered.

Although the details are vague,
it's believed that the very first

Europeans to reach Japan
arrived by accident.

They were a group of Portuguese
merchants on board a Chinese ship

that was driven ashore by
a storm around the year 1543.

The Japanese were fascinated
by these new arrivals,

who they regarded as little
more than exotic novelties.

But within just a few years,

the Portuguese began to arrive in
these waters in their own ships,

and from the very beginning it was
obvious to them that the Japanese

were not a people who they could
treat the way the Spanish

had treated the Aztecs.

Japan was extremely wealthy, she had
an enormous population, a highly

sophisticated culture and
militarily,

she was a formidable power.

This was not a country
in which Europeans could even

dream of being conquistadors,

so the Portuguese instead became
Japan's trading partners.

Portuguese traders brought new goods

and technologies from every
corner of their trading empire.

Though Japan believed firmly in
the superiority of her own ancient

culture, to begin with at least,
she opened her doors to the traders

and a whole new art form emerged
to depict their arrival.

Folding screens like these were
one of the innovations of Japanese

art in the 16th century.

They're called Nanban screens

because Nanban was the Japanese
word for Europeans.

And what it means,
rather unflatteringly,

is southern barbarians.

Southern because the
Portuguese always seemed

to arrive in Japan from the south,

and that's because they were coming
up from their trading bases in India

and China, and barbarians because
the Japanese were not at all

impressed by European standards of
hygiene or European table manners.

What these screens tend to show
are the great black oceangoing ships

of the Portuguese empire,
loaded with exotic trading goods.

All of these goods are
being lowered onto boats

and ferried ashore, and then
they're being taken on almost

a ceremonial procession
through the town.

Now, the Japanese artists who
produced these screens were very

careful to pick out the most exotic

and the most valuable products.

Here is a folding Chinese chair
of huge value.

There's exotic animals,

rare or unknown to the Japanese,

being brought ashore in cages.

But just as exotic and just
as exciting as any of these

goods are the people coming off
these Portuguese ships.

Africans, both free and enslaved,
but there's also Indians,

there's Malays, there's Arabs.

Almost like a mirror image
of the Aztec Florentine Codex,

these Nanban screens show us
how a host nation recorded

the arrival of visitors.

Except here it's very firmly
on the terms of that host nation.

But there's also a hint here
that Japan's perception

of the newcomers
as relatively harmless

was about to change radically.

New arrivals are greeted
by Jesuit missionaries,

who had come to Japan not
to trade, but to save souls.

By 1600, European missionaries

had won nearly a quarter
of a million local converts.

So when a powerful new dynasty took
control of Japan, the Tokugawas,

they decided to make a stand against
this threat to their culture.

They executed converts,

exiled the missionaries

and banned the Christian faith.

Their change of policy
was undoubtedly

influenced by reports
from the New World,

where Christian missionaries
had tried to obliterate

the local religions.

But the Tokugawa warlords,
the shoguns, went much further.

They sealed Japan off
from the outside world,

attempting to turn it
into a closed society.

Almost all foreigners, not just
the missionaries, were ejected,

and Japanese people themselves were
prevented from travelling abroad.

The shoguns then promoted a sort
of Japanese cultural renaissance,

one that looked not outwards
to other civilisations,

but inwards, to Japan's
own cultural traditions.

And they used Japan's
artistic traditions as a way

of tightening their grip on power

and creating a new sense of what
it meant to be Japanese.

The shoguns promoted
Japan's older religions,

in particular the Zen
school of Buddhism,

which emphasised self-discipline.

In Buddhist temples, the
samurai, the warrior nobles,

now studied refined arts...

..the controlled rituals of the tea
ceremony,

as well as poetry,

calligraphy and the business
of serving the shogun state.

It is tempting today to look
at Japan's long age of isolation

and conclude that this country's
distinctive culture must have

developed in something of a vacuum,

but the idea that the Japanese were
ever completely isolated is a myth.

It was official policy that
Japan should be a closed country,

but the Japanese were never
completely cut off from the outside

world or from the influences and
the ideas of other civilisations.

The Japanese became instead
the masters of controlled contact,

permitting only modest exchanges
with a few favoured nations.

Tiny Dejima island in
the middle of Nagasaki harbour

was home to Dutch merchants,

the only Europeans permitted
to trade with Japan.

The Dutch were tolerated partly

because they were far more
interested in trade

than religious conversion,

but also because they willingly
bowed the knee to the Shogun,

acknowledging him as their master.

This relationship allowed
the Dutch to import European

innovations in art and science

into mainland Japan.

One popular scientific curiosity
would have an unexpected

impact upon Japanese art.

An optical device which the
Japanese called Dutch glasses

was at first considered
a frivolous western plaything.

When viewed through its convex lens,

specially painted landscapes,

using European rules of perspective,
would appear more three-dimensional.

Especially when compared with
the flat, decorative

style of Japan's dominant,
state-sanctioned school of art.

One painter of Dutch
glass landscapes called

Maruyama Okyo shrewdly focused
on revered Japanese subjects,

like the medieval Hollyhock
Festival, infusing them

with a new sense of depth.

Soon his reputation grew.

Okyo began to win more
serious commissions.

On a pair of temple screens,
he painted bamboo with more

delicately observed naturalism than
anything yet seen in Japanese art.

On one side, buffeted by the wind...

..on the other, in the rain,

heavily laden and still.

But it was for his masterpiece that
Okyo combined everything he knew

from both eastern
and western traditions

in one of the most breathtakingly
beautiful of all Japanese works.

It's so subtle,

so minimal a work of art

that it almost feels

like it isn't there,

and everything about it
feels ephemeral and frail.

It's painted on paper,
not canvas as in the west,

and great expanses of it
are just white,

blank areas that seem almost
untouched by the artist,

and yet all of that
belies the fact

that this is one of
the most sophisticated

works of cultural
synthesis that I know.

It shows a sheet of ice,

presumably on a lake,

and these broken, jagged cracks
in the ice disappear into the mist.

The effect is
three-dimensional space.

Now, that is European
vanishing-point perspective,

and yet this, one of Okyo's
masterworks, just could not

be more Japanese,

because it's a philosophical
contemplation of two

concepts fundamental
to Buddhism -

imperfection
and impermanence.

Imperfection because
these lines are uncontrolled

and irregular,
and impermanence because,

of course,
the ice will melt.

And those two concepts
are just as fundamental

to Japanese art as the
classical Greek-Roman

ideas of beauty
and perfection are

to European art, so this
is Okyo incorporating

European ideas
into his art,

but in ways that
are in keeping with

Japanese philosophy
and Japanese tastes.

This synthesis of east and west
was only possible because of

the tiny trading bottleneck
between Japan and Holland.

Yet from the Dutch point of view,

it was just one of many global
trading partnerships.

It gave the tiny Dutch Republic
an influence

that was way
out of proportion with its size.

Dutch merchants grew rich
supplying their clients abroad

and back home with the goods
they wanted, as well as with

new and exotic goods they hadn't
even known they wanted.

At the very centre of this vast,
intercontinental network

of trading bases and this web of
shipping routes

lay the city of Amsterdam.

In the Dutch golden age of
the 17th century,

Amsterdam was one enormous market -

everything and anything
was being bought and sold here.

When the French philosopher
Descartes arrived in the 1630s,

he described it as a city where all
of the commodities

and all of the curiosities that one
could wish for could be bought.

So, whereas the Japanese had tried
to block out the wider world,

their Dutch trading partners
couldn't get enough of it.

In Amsterdam, the Republic's wealthy
merchants built their grand,

canalside villas and filled them
with the fruits of global trade.

Blue and white Chinese pottery.

Japanese lacquerware,
shipped from Nagasaki.

Their fine clothes were
made of silk from Persia.

Their exquisite tableware, crafted
from New World gold and silver...

..or exotic shells and coconuts.

And to serve the Dutch their fine
wines, enslaved African boys,

who became one of the great
fashions of the age among the rich.

Amsterdam was the testing
ground for modern capitalism.

Through its stock exchange,

the Dutch East India Company became
the world's first

publicly traded company.

Now anyone could own shares
in Holland's global enterprise.

And in this frenzy of moneymaking,
Dutch art too was commodified.

The modern art market was born,

supplying whatever subjects the new,

aspirational merchant class wanted.

And what they wanted in their art

was not the pomp of monarchy or the
flamboyance of the Catholic faith.

Instead, they wanted to see
a reflection of themselves.

Proud republicans,
who had worked hard

for the new wealth they enjoyed.

As ordinary Dutch citizens went
about their ordinary lives,

it's difficult to know how connected
they felt to their overseas empire.

While thousands of men and women
set sail

with the Dutch trading companies to
seek their fortunes abroad,

most never left their native soil.

As far as we know, the artist
Jan Vermeer hardly ventured further

than the small, Dutch city of Delft.

Vermeer is not an artist known
for wide horizons.

Most of his paintings are
famously intimate.

They're set within the neat,
ordered,

almost claustrophobic
world of the Dutch home.

What Jan Vermeer specialised
in was the art of everyday life.

And his world was an interior world.

What he captured on canvas was
simple, fleeting moments.

A young girl laughing
when an officer leans towards her.

A woman reading
a letter by an open window.

Another woman in the middle
of a music lesson.

And each of those scenes is
bathed in a delicate light

that pours in from a side window.

But that only serves
to emphasise the fact that

we're in an enclosed room,
and that the rest of the world is

hidden from sight,
that it's somewhere out there.

But if you look a little
more closely at the details,

at the objects that have been
placed on the tables,

at the maps that hang on the walls,

what you realise is that Vermeer's
seemingly interior,

domestic space is infused with the
globalism of the Dutch golden age.

You see it in the Chinese pottery

that the artisans of Delft
learned to copy.

And on the rugs from the Orient
that were highly regarded.

A hat made from North American
beaver fur.

A geographer, wearing a fashionable
Japanese robe,

pores over his charts.

There's a globe
perched on his cupboard.

Though Vermeer never shows us
the view out of the window,

he constantly hints at the rich,
complex universe that lies beyond.

While Vermeer's window offers us
glimpses of the wider world,

another artist takes us through that
window on a journey of discovery.

The name Maria Sibylla Merian is
now largely forgotten.

Yet she was one of the greatest
biologists of her time.

As a German immigrant to Amsterdam,

she benefited from its freedoms,

in particular its freedoms
for women.

In Amsterdam, she
was able to promote

her ground-breaking studies
of insects and their life cycles,

illustrated with exquisite
works of art.

At the time, many people believe
that insects emerged

fully formed, spontaneously,
from the Earth.

That somehow
they were born out of the mud.

But Maria explained
and painted their life cycle.

Their metamorphosis from caterpillar
to chrysalis to butterfly.

She not only explained that process,
she showed which plant species

each butterfly species
was dependent upon.

This book revolutionised
the study of insects in Europe.

But it also helped Maria raise
the funds to embark upon

a journey to study the more exotic
creatures that she knew

she would find in the tropical
regions of the Dutch empire.

Seduced, like so many others,

by the Dutch Republic's connections
to faraway lands...

..in 1699, Maria Sibylla set
sail for South America

and the Dutch colony of Suriname,

on the tropical Caribbean coast.

Maria Sibylla spent two years
exploring Suriname,

sketching and painting
local plants and animals.

Many of them were previously
unknown to Europeans.

Her work encapsulates the spirit
of curiosity

that helped fuel
the scientific revolution.

Just like the Dutch in Japan,
the story of the British in India

began with their merchants operating
very much on the margins...

..obliged to flatter the local
princes

and the Mughal emperors who
ruled then.

But this story would mark
a profound shift

from the age of discovery
to a new, 19th-century age,

where Europe's imperial ambitions
came to dominate the globe.

That shift from trade to rule was
captured in the work

of two artists from different
sides of the encounter.

Ghulam Ali Khan,

resident painter in the royal
court of India's Mughal dynasty...

..and Johan Zoffany, who came to
India after making his name

painting for the British
royal court.

For German-born Zoffany,
India was an escape

and a chance for a fresh start.

In Britain, he'd wrecked his
glittering career

by offending the royal family

with his cavalier approach
to a royal commission.

In 1783, he arrived in Kolkata,

the main trading post
of the British East India Company.

Zoffany's come here to rebuild his
career and to make some money.

He's not exactly
fallen on hard times,

but he's alienated
a swathe of London society.

So this is a place where
he can make a lot of money.

That's what he's here to do.

He's described by a contemporary
of setting out to come to India

to roll in gold dust.

Fortunes are being made,
everybody in London knows that

huge amounts of money are being
made here.

And that this is a place
where you can start again.

You can rewrite your story.

Within a year of his arrival,

Zoffany produced one of the most
astonishing insights into the early

relationship between the British
traders and their Indian clients.

This is a painting that depicts
an event that actually took place.

A cockfight organised by
Colonel John Mordaunt

of the East India Company,
in 1784,

in the city of Lucknow
for his client, the Nawab of Oudh -

two men who were almost
living metaphors

for what was happening in India
in the late 18th century.

Colonel John Mordaunt was
the illegitimate son

of a British aristocrat.

He was a man on the make,
trying to build his fortune.

The Nawab of Oudh was a playboy.

He'd already signed away
much of his authority

and some of his wealth
to the East India Company.

And Zoffany hints
at the direction that he thinks

the relationship between the British
and the Nawab is heading,

by the fact that he has the
British cockerel on the verge

of killing the Indian bird.

The painting is full of little,
subversive details.

There's gambling.

The men are trying
to seduce the women.

There is a British redcoat,
right on the edge of frame,

slinking off into the distance
with his Indian mistress.

This is the British and the Indians,
enjoying one another's company.

Socialising, interacting
together in easy informality.

What there is no hint of whatsoever,
in this painting,

is the sort of deeply distrustful

and highly racialised relationship
that was going to develop

between the British and the Indians
later on in the 19th century.

By 1800,
India was a land in transition.

As dissent and poor leadership had
eroded the Mughal dynasty's power,

the British East India Company
had wasted no time

in increasing its influence.

On the throne in Delhi sat the
blind puppet emperor Shah Alam,

described by one poet as merely
a chessboard king.

Yet he was heir to a lavish court,
and a centuries-old tradition

of Mughal art, painted in vivid,
jewel-like colours.

To this court came William Fraser,

a young, Scottish representative
of the East India Company.

Fraser was not himself a painter,
but a patron of art.

And though he was surrounded
by the decaying remains

of a royal city in decline,
he was also dazzled by the art,

the poetry and, above all,
the people of Delhi.

The more Fraser learned
about the culture around him,

the more he himself changed.

He began to wear Indian clothes.

He grew his beard in an Indian style

and he fathered children
with Indian women.

He had, in the parlance of the day,
gone native.

Fraser was one of several
company men who commissioned

Indian artists to document the
country's rich, complex culture.

Known as company paintings,

they depict scenes and characters
from every level of Indian society.

It is not quite clear how we
should view this art.

Because we often see it
through a very British

and rather colonial point of view.

The fact that we call these works
company paintings

gives the impression that it was
an entirely new genre

that was invented by company men,
like William Fraser.

But the real inventors were
the Indian artists themselves.

And the greatest of them all was
the celebrated Ghulam Ali Khan.

Ghulam Ali Khan was not just
a master painter,

he was part of a long
tradition of Mughal artists.

And he was one of the few who
signed his own work.

He was the patriarch of a school
of painters.

But he was also the member of a
family that, for centuries,

had proudly served as painters
to the Mughal court.

The impoverished Mughals could
no longer afford

the services of Ghulam Ali Khan.

So he offered his skills not
only to the British, but others too.

He combined Mughal and European
painting traditions to depict

an astonishing range of subjects.

A portrait of the eminent Colonel
James Skinner - a mixed-race,

Anglo-Indian offspring of
the two cultures.

Commissions from regional rulers,

like the Nawab of Jhajjar,

who now answered not to the Emperor,
but to the British.

And he painted many of India's great
architectural treasures,

capturing the life of the country
at that last moment,

just before British rule
changed it for ever.

The signs of Britain's shifting
relationship with India

were already emerging.

A new choice of architecture made it
clear that company men

were no longer content simply
to pursue profit.

When the company's Governor general
commissioned

his new Kolkata headquarters,

it was obvious he saw himself as
an empire builder.

Government House was
completed in 1803,

designed with no regard whatsoever
for the spectacular architecture

of the Indian traditions.

Instead, its creators turned to the
reference books

which they had brought with them
from their mother country.

These are published plans
and architectural drawings

of the finest stately homes
in Britain.

And what you get
from books like this is

a picture of Britain at the height
of the neoclassical revival -

the age when Greek and Roman designs

were the height of taste
and fashion.

Government House was based on an
aristocratic English mansion -

Kedleston Hall in Derbyshire.

Its wings, corridors,
columns and porticos

were transplanted
onto the subcontinent.

To build stately homes like this
in the British countryside

merely said that the families
that lived there were

people of education and taste
and respectability.

To build an enormous,
neoclassical palace on Indian soil

said something completely different.

What this building was intended to
say was that European reason

and rationality was superior
and had triumphed over what the

British increasingly regarded as
Oriental superstition and despotism.

This building is political theatre.

It is shock and awe
in marble and stucco.

Other British neoclassical
buildings soon followed,

changing the face of Kolkata.

From church to town hall,

bank to Post Office.

These were not just the buildings,

they were evidence that one age had
passed and another had begun.

The age of
European global domination.

The Open University has produced
a free poster that explores

the history of different
civilisations through artefacts.

To order your free copy,
please call...

..or go to the address on screen

and follow the links
for the Open University.