Corrupted Infrastructure: Imperialism and Environmental Sovereignty in Shanghai, 1873–1911

The introduction of Western science in order to change physical and operational aspects of Shanghai’s Huangpu River had been debated by Qing and Western officials since almost the beginning of its history as a Treaty Port. At stake in those debates was the perception of the river’s proper use: as a natural barrier for military defense, or as a conduit for global trade. After the Western powers unified to militarily suppress the Boxer Uprising in 1900, they attained their long-awaited goal of the right to transform the river for global trade as part of Article 11 of the Boxer Protocol: the Junpuju (or Huangpu Conservancy Board) was created and authorized by the central government to make the Huangpu River navigable for shipping vessels. Although the Junpuju continued the ethos of earlier extra-bureaucratic organizations established during the Self-Strengthening Movement, after 1901 the organization bore the authority of the central government. During the era of the New Policies, Qing officials were intent on revising the original terms of river conservancy so that they would be more favorable to Chinese sovereignty. At the same time, imperialist rivalries among the Western powers ruptured the apparent unity of the earlier alliance during the suppression of the Boxer Uprising. Before long, Western corruption in the Huangpu River dredging was brought to the attention of Qing officials, who deftly used it to recover Qing control over certain parts of the body of the river.     

Re-using ‘uncomfortable heritage’: the case of the 1933 building,Shanghai

This paper opens up a discussion over the processes of forgetting and remembering that occur in the adaptive reuse of quite commonplace buildings that, nevertheless, have been classified as ‘heritage’. For most buildings survival depends upon finding a new economic use once original use has ceased. At this point decisions are also made about what stories are carried forward from the building’s past. The principal case study discussed in this paper is the former Shanghai Municipal Abattoir, a modernist concrete sculpture now branded 1933 Shanghai. The paper delineates how a process of ‘strategic forgetting and selective remembrance’ has been undertaken, negotiating the bloody nature of the building’s past, in its reuse as an upscale commercial venue. Reuse is further considered within the wider frames of a 1920–1930s Shanghai urban branding ‘imaginary’ and as a ‘building of control and reform’ – a category of buildings developed from the eighteenth-century European Enlightenment-thinking. In reflecting upon this negotiation in the heritage making process with potentially difficult past events, we propose the category of ‘uncomfortable heritage’, as part of a wider spectrum of ‘dark heritage’, and conclude with a final reflection upon 1933 Shanghai as a heterotopic space.     

Venereal Disease Prevention,Moral Welfare and Civilized Image: The Shanghai Moral Welfare Committee and the Anti-Prostitution Campaign in the Shanghai International Settlement, 1918–24

This paper focuses on the Shanghai Moral Welfare Committee (renamed the Shanghai Moral Welfare League in 1920), which was founded on May 16, 1918, following a decision made by seventeen foreign religious and secular charities of the Shanghai International Settlement. In 1919–24, the Municipal Council of the Shanghai International Settlement declared a five-year timeframe for gradually shutting down all the brothels under its administration. The few previous studies of this topic by European and American scholars mainly concentrated on the aspect of venereal disease prevention and the prohibition of prostitution, as well as the construction of gender, but they paid little attention to the Moral Welfare Committee as a primary advocate of this reform. As such, this event has been misrepresented as yet another story about the modernization and spiritual salvation of Chinese society by Western municipal authorities and moral reformers. However, the Committee, created by foreign moral reformers in Shanghai, was primarily focused on white males with venereal diseases and white prostitutes, in order to reestablish an image of the Western Christian countries as civilized in Chinese eyes. Underlying this effort was a strong sense—among foreign communities in China at that time—of superiority over Chinese society in both civilization and morality. However, this arrogance was rife with insecurities; foreign reformers lacked necessary confidence in their civilized image and in their capacity to set themselves up as a model for the moral discipline and salvation of the Chinese people.     

Venereal disease prevention, Moral Welfare and civilized image: The Shanghai Moral Welfare Committee and the anti-prostitution campaign in the Shanghai International Settlement, 1918�C24

This paper focuses on the Shanghai Moral Welfare Committee (renamed the Shanghai Moral Welfare League in 1920), which was founded on May 16, 1918, following a decision made by seventeen foreign religious and secular charities of the Shanghai International Settlement. In 1919–24, the Municipal Council of the Shanghai International Settlement declared a five-year timeframe for gradually shutting down all the brothels under its administration. The few previous studies of this topic by European and American scholars mainly concentrated on the aspect of venereal disease prevention and the prohibition of prostitution, as well as the construction of gender, but they paid little attention to the Moral Welfare Committee as a primary advocate of this reform. As such, this event has been misrepresented as yet another story about the modernization and spiritual salvation of Chinese society by Western municipal authorities and moral reformers. However, the Committee, created by foreign moral reformers in Shanghai, was primarily focused on white males with venereal diseases and white prostitutes, in order to reestablish an image of the Western Christian countries as civilized in Chinese eyes. Underlying this effort was a strong sense—among foreign communities in China at that time—of superiority over Chinese society in both civilization and morality. However, this arrogance was rife with insecurities; foreign reformers lacked necessary confidence in their civilized image and in their capacity to set themselves up as a model for the moral discipline and salvation of the Chinese people.     

‘The Dirty Vat’: European Migration to Australia from Shanghai, 1946–47

At the end of World War II, European residents of Shanghai included Jewish displaced persons and ‘White’ émigrés. While the Jewish refugees were initially viewed by Australia as a humanitarian crisis, they then became a controversial sideshow to a planned mass resettlement of displaced persons from Europe. This article contextualises the actual and proposed Jewish and Russian migration from Shanghai with regard to Australian attitudes towards postwar European migrations from the East. This argument traces the anti-Semitic and anti-Russian sentiments that pressured Calwell into ultimately blocking Russian migration from Shanghai as well as placing a tight curb on the migration of Jewish displaced persons from both Asia and Europe.     

Borderless sport? Imagining and organising bicycle racing in Belgium, 1869–1914: between transnational dynamics and national aspirations

From the 1860s onwards, the new sport of bicycle racing engendered transnational flows of ideas, practices and performers. However, national actors and sensitivities always remained present. In interaction with these transnational flows they shaped national identity in this sport, as the Belgian case shows. Belgium was a site of cross-border interaction for racing from early on. Nevertheless, actors like the Belgian cycling press or national cycling union also continuously tried to construct a ‘national’ racing culture. French and British influences were especially crucial here, as Belgian actors were continuously torn between both in determining their position in the amateur–professional question or in the International Cycling Association. France and Britain thus functioned as ‘significant others’ in the shaping of ‘national’ Belgian racing, a process often complicated by the transnational activities of other, commercially motivated actors like cycling tracks or racers themselves. In competition, too, the discourses of the Belgian press on racers Hubert Houben and Robert Protin celebrated their ‘small nation’ and its success against and differences from its bigger neighbours. The Belgian orientation on French racing eventually became dominant, and proved to be crucial to the resurrection of the sport in Belgium after a period of crisis around 1900.     

The Research Laboratory for Conservation and Archaeology, Shanghai Meseum

Thelaboratorywasfoundedin1960.Asaresearchinstituteforscientificconservation.itisthefirstoneestablishedinChina.Intherecent30years,ithasdevelopedintoaspecializedagencyinthesciencesofconservationandarchaeology,andactedasaShanghaiTestCenterof相似文献   

Indigenous migrants negotiating belonging: Peticiones de cambio de fuero in Cajamarca,Peru, 17th–18th centuries

Prehispanic corporate social units in northern Peru, the pachacas or ayllus and the guarangas, continued to structure social life in Cajamarca throughout the Spanish colonial period. They were restructured by Spanish rule, as they had been by the Inca conquest before. Spanish rule also reshaped indigenous migration and the social categorization of the migrants, which was closely intertwined with the regime of land tenure. This article takes a look at the integration of new and old migrants and their descendants into the local social structure and examines how they negotiated their belonging in petitions to change or defend their fuero. The petitioners successfully argued on the basis of their ancestry, whether legitimate or not, and activated personal networks on their behalf. In that, they paralleled mestizo and mulatto petitioners who, like migrants, benefited from fiscal prerogatives, which were however challenged during the course of the 18^th century, leading to a partial re-categorization. The redistribution of land was an important motive in these late colonial re-categorizations, but also earlier in the colonial period the absence of bonds to the land was an essential characteristic of being categorized as a ‘migrant.’