Colonialism China And The Chinese

This book explores the place of China and the Chinese during the age of imperialism. Focusing not only on the state but also on the vitality of Chinese culture and the Chinese diaspora, it examines the seeming contradictions of a period in which China came under immense pressure from imperial expansion while remaining a major political, cultural and demographic force in its own right. Where histories of China commonly highlight episodes of conflict and subjugation in China’s relations with the West, the contributions to this volume explore the complex spaces where empires and their peoples did not merely collide but also became entangled.

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.

An innovative study of colonialism in China, examining Shanghai's International Settlement as the site of key developments in the Republican period.

India and China in the Colonial World brings together thirteen essays by eminent Indian and Chinese scholars as well as young researchers who look at the multidimensional interaction between the two countries. This interaction was of many kinds and took place at various levels. This volume casts new light on some of the problems that have confronted the relations between India and China as new states and, in doing so, challenges stereotyped images of this relationship. The major areas of India-China relationships covered in this book include some aspects of the situation during and after World War II. Some papers, such as those on the importance of Shanghai in Sino-Indian trade, the presence of the Chinese community in India and Indians in China; Indian fighters in the Taiping Rebellion; Gandhi and the Chinese in South Africa; and ties between south-west China and north-east India during World War II; present the findings of new research. Others such as those pertaining to India-China relations in the period, such as the opium trade; the controversial visit of Rabindranath Tagore to China; and the complexity of Subhash Chandra Bose’s position with relation to both China and Japan have been put in a new light. The essays in this book are particularly relevant as they help to understand the relationship between India and China in the context of a historical perspective.

Rewriting Hong Kong's history from the bottom up, the chapters investigate vital, but hitherto obscured, aspects of the colony's rise. They cover the Chinese collaboration with the colonial regime, legal discrimination and intimidation, rural politics, social movements, government-business relations, industrial policy, flexible manufacturing and colonial historiography. Drawing together contributions from historians, sociologists and political scientists, the book highlights the role played by a variety of social actors in Hong Kong's history and differs both from recent celebrations of British colonialism and anti-colonial Chinese nationalism.

"Colonial legacies in knowledge production affect the way the world is represented and understood today. However, the subject is rarely attended. The book, Colonial Legacies and Contemporary Studies of China and Chineseness: Unlearning Binaries, Strategizing Self, is about the colonial construction of intellectual perspectives of the colonized population in terms of the latter's approach to China and Chineseness in the modern world. Relying on the available oral histories of senior China scholars primarily in Asia, authors from various postcolonial and colonial sites present these multiple routs of self-constitution and reconstitution through the use of China and Chineseness as category. The revealed manipulation of this third category, romantically as well as antagonistically, is easier than straightforward self-reflection for us all to accept that, coming to identities and relations, none, even subaltern, is politically innocent or capable of epistemological monopoly. Through comparative studies, it shows a way of self-understanding that does not always require discursive construction of border or cultural consumption of any specific "other""--

The core argument of this book is that China poses both challenges and creates opportunities for Africa, and that the transformative potentials of China-Africa engagements can be compared to Africa’s experiences with European colonialism. However, it would be patently misleading to claim any equivalence between African experiences of European colonialism with Africa’s engagements with China. Although, China does not replicate the exact colonial model, its actions have all elements of dependent relations, thus underpinning neo-colonialism with Chinese characteristics. Analysing China’s growing economic relations with Africa, this book posits that, Africa’s underdevelopment situation with China does not indicate a significant point of departure from the colonial model of development because China’s actions in Africa, although not exactly colonial, have all possibilities of Neocolonialist model with Chinese characteristics. As such the author argues that China’s increasing trade, FDI inflow and influence on the economic growth and development in Africa will result in a long-term negative impact in development outcomes and capacity building, governance practice, democratic transition and human rights for future self-reliance and sustainable development.

Using archival materials newly available in China and records in Britain and the US, Robert Bickers paints a detailed portrait of the traders, missionaries, businessmen, diplomats and settlers who constituted "Britain-in-China." Bickers argues that the British presence in China was dominated by urban settlers whose primary allegiance lay not with any grand imperial design but with their own communities and precarious livelihoods. This brought them into growing conflict with the Chinese population and the British imperial government. Bickers goes on to examine how the British state and its allies brought an end to the reign of freelance, settler imperialism on the China coast. At the same time, other British sectors, missionary and business, renegotiated their own relationship with their Chinese markets and the Chinese state and distanced themselves from the settler British.