Imperialism in the city: war and the making of the municipal administration in the French Concession of Shanghai in the Taiping period, 1853–1862

This article, based on western primary sources, seeks to investigate the relationship between western imperialism in China and the making of modern Chinese statecraft in urban form, focusing on the French perspective and on historical institutionalism. Both internal rebellions and western empires sh...

Ausführliche Beschreibung

Gespeichert in:
Bibliographische Detailangaben
Veröffentlicht in:Urban history 2020-02, Vol.47 (1), p.126-151
1. Verfasser: Xu, Chong
Format: Artikel
Sprache:eng
Schlagworte:
Online-Zugang:Volltext
Tags: Tag hinzufügen
Keine Tags, Fügen Sie den ersten Tag hinzu!
Beschreibung
Zusammenfassung:This article, based on western primary sources, seeks to investigate the relationship between western imperialism in China and the making of modern Chinese statecraft in urban form, focusing on the French perspective and on historical institutionalism. Both internal rebellions and western empires shaped modern Chinese cities. The Chinese response to western intervention is a more complicated story. Pace Paul Cohen, we do need to know about foreign activities in modern China – not as ‘impact-response’ and ‘tradition-modernity’ paradigms – but rather as part of local history, both in terms of local administration and urban landscape. Euro-American expansion and exploitation are not part of a unitary or totalizing enterprise, and warfare and Franco-British conflicts facilitated the making of modern municipal administration in the French Concession of Shanghai; on the other hand, Chinese forces indirectly shaped the structure of the institutions of imperialism, as well as pointing to divergent national approaches to imperialism.
ISSN:0963-9268
1469-8706
DOI:10.1017/S0963926819000579