Twentieth-Century Colonialism and China ─ Localities, the Everyday and the World

Colonialism in China was a piecemeal agglomeration that achieved its greatest extent in the first half of the twentieth century, the last edifices falling at the close of the century. The diversity of these colonial arrangements across China’s landscape defies systematic characterization.

This book investigates the complexities and subtleties of colonialism in China during the first half of the twentieth century. In particular, the contributors examine the interaction between localities and forces of globalization that shaped the particular colonial experiences characterizing much of China’s experience at this time. In the process it is clear that an emphasis on interaction, synergy and hybridity can add much to an understanding of colonialism in Twentieth Century China based on the simple binaries of colonizer and colonized, of aggressor and victim, and of a one-way transfer of knowledge and social understanding. To provide some kind of order to the analysis, the chapters in this volume deal in separate sections with colonial institutions of hybridity, colonialism in specific settings, the social biopolitics of colonialism, colonial governance, and Chinese networks in colonial environments.

Bringing together an international team of experts, Twentieth Century Colonialism and China is an essential resource for students and scholars of modern Chinese history and colonialism and imperialism.

Bryna Goodman is Professor of History at the University of Oregon, USA.
David S G Goodman is Professor of Chinese Politics at the University of Sydney, where he is also Academic Director of the China Studies Centre.

Introduction: Colonialism and China, Bryna Goodman and David S. G. Goodman Part I: Colonial governance and questions of identity 1. ‘Good work for China in every possible direction’: the Foreign Inspectorate of the Chinese Maritime Customs, 1854-1950, Robert Bickers 2. Negotiating the Nation: German Colonialism and Chinese Nationalism in Qingdao, 1897-1914, Klaus Mühlhahn 3. Things Unheard of East or West: Colonialism, Nationalism, and Cultural Contamination in Early Chinese Exchanges, Bryna Goodman Part II: Colonial spaces and everyday social interactions 4. The Peak: Residential Segregation in Colonial Hong Kong, John M. Carroll 5. An Italian ‘Neighbourhood’ in Tianjin: Little Italy or Colonial Space? Maurizio Marinelli 6. The Colonial Space of Death: Shanghai cemetries, 1844-1946, Christian Henriot 7. French Medicine in Nineteenth and Twentieth Century China: Rejection or Compliance in Far South Treaty Ports, Concessions and Leased Territories, Florence Bretelle-Establet 8. Writing Home and China: Elisabeth Frey in Tianjin, 1913-1914, Yixu Lu and David S. G. Goodman Part III: Late colonialism and local consequences 9. Modernism and its Discontent in Shanghai: the Dubious Agency of the Semi-colonized in 1929, Yiyan Wang 10. Equality and the ‘Unequal Treaties’: Chinese émigrés and British colonial routes to modernity, John Fitzgerald 11. Hong Kong and the New Imperialism in East Asia, 1941-1966, Prasenjit Duara 12. The Hapless Imperialist? Portuguese Rule in 1960s Macau, Cathryn Clayton