Twentieth Century Colonialism And China

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.

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.

Postcolonial states and metropolitan societies still grapple today with the divisive and difficult legacies unleashed by settler colonialism. Whether they were settled for trade or geopolitical reasons, these settler communities had in common their shaping of landholding, laws, and race relations in colonies throughout the world. By looking at the detail of settlements in the twentieth century--from European colonial projects in Africa and expansionist efforts by the Japanese in Korea and Manchuria, to the Germans in Poland and the historical trajectories of Israel/Palestine and South Africa--and analyzing the dynamics set in motion by these settlers, the contributors to this volume establish points of comparison to offer a new framework for understanding the character and fate of twentieth-century empires.

Twentieth Century China: New Approaches is an important revisionist study of China's recent past. The chapters throw light on a variety of subjects within the field, which has recently undergone considerable change. The three major parts of this reader take into account the historical shape of the century, local perspectives on national history, and reflections on cultural history. The chapters in this volume reflect a move away from a Western-centred analysis of Chinese history, as well as the new wealth of archival material made accessible over the last decade. They highlight in challenging ways important topics that have generated considerable excitement among historians. Subjects discussed include the watershed date of 1949, feminism, the revolutions, the discourse of the communist party, and political theatre in modern China.

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.

In Staging the World Rebecca E. Karl rethinks the production of nationalist discourse in China during the late Qing period, between China’s defeat in the Sino-Japanese War in 1895 and the proclamation of the Republic in 1911. She argues that at this historical moment a growing Chinese identification with what we now call the Third World first made the modern world visible as a totality and that the key components of Chinese nationalist discourse developed in reference to this worldview. The emergence of Chinese nationalism during this period is often portrayed as following from China’s position vis-à-vis Japan and the West. Karl has mined the archives of the late Qing period to discern the foci of Chinese intellectuals from 1895 to 1911 to assert that even though the China/Japan/West triangle was crucial, it alone is an incomplete—and therefore flawed—model of the development of nationalism in China. Although the perceptions and concerns of these thinkers form the basis of Staging the World, Karl begins by examining a 1904 Shanghai production of an opera about a fictional partition of Poland and its modern reincarnation as an ethno-nation. By focusing on the type of dialogue this opera generated in China, Karl elucidates concepts such as race, colonization, globalization, and history. From there, she discusses how Chinese conceptions of nationalism were affected by the “discovery” of Hawai’i as a center of the Pacific, the Philippine revolution against the United States, and the relationship between nationality and ethnicity made apparent by the Boer War in South Africa.

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.