Wonder and Pleasure in the Oude Doolhof of Amsterdam

Especially intriguing is how the Doolhof’s exhibits presented the strangeness of the android, which appears both as a lively person and lifeless thing. The use of non-European costumes sets up a dynamic in which European viewers are in command of the exoticized machine, presented as a subservient thing that exists for their pleasure. Indeed, according to the Doolhof publicity, there was not much difference between the stranger and the strange machine. “The Chinese”, claims one booklet, “were struck with wonder at the mechanisms of the clockwork here, and could not even understand it, but only gazed in wonder.” This slight against the Chinese was a particularly pointed insult, considering that the guidebook text also recognized China as “the subtlest nation in the whole world”. The backhanded compliment alludes to the fact that China had exceeded Europe in technological innovation for centuries. By the seventeenth century, however, European craftspeople had become accomplished automata makers, and the diplomatic gifting of mechanical devices became a widespread practice, a means to impress and influence foreign rulers with wonders of Western ingenuity.