In the new world order mapped out by Japanese and Western imperialism in East Asia after the mid-nineteenth century opium wars, communities of merchants and settlers took root in China and Korea. New identities were constructed, new modes of collaboration formed and new boundaries between the indigenous and foreign communities were literally and figuratively established. Newly available in paperback, this pioneering and comparative study of Western and Japanese imperialism examines European, American and Japanese communities in China and Korea, and challenges received notions of agency and collaboration by also looking at the roles in China of British and Japanese colonial subjects from Korea, Taiwan and India, and at Chinese Christians and White Russian refugees. This volume will be of interest to students and scholars of the history and anthropology of imperialism, colonialism's culture and East Asian history, as well as contemporary Asian affairs. -- .

This book presents a range of new research on British-Chinese relations in the period from Britain's first imperial intervention in China up to the 1960s. Topics covered include economic issues such as fi nance, investment and Chinese labour in British territories, questions of perceptions on both sides, such as British worries about, and exaggeration of, the 'China threat', including to India, and British aggression towards, and eventual withdrawal from, China.

The British Empire gave rise to various new forms of British identity in the colonial world outside the Dominions. In cities and colonies, and in sovereign states subject to more informal pressures such as Argentina or China, communities of Britons developed identities inflected by local ambitions and pressures. As a result they often found themselves at loggerheads with their diplomatic or colonial office minders, especially in the era of decolonisation. The impact of empire on metropolitan British identity is increasingly well documented; the evolution of dominions' nationalisms is likewise well known; but the new species of Britishness which attained their fullest form in the mid-twentieth century have received significantly less attention.
Settlers and Expatriates revisits the communities formed by these hundreds of thousands of Britons, as well as the passages home taken by some, and assesses their development, character, and legacy today. Scholars with established expertise in the history of each region explore the communalities that can be found across British communities in South, East and Southeast Asia, Egypt, and East and Southern Africa, and highlight the particularities that were also distinctive features of each British experience. These overseas Britons were sojourners and settlers; some survived in post-independent states, others were swept out quickly and moved on or back to an often uninterested metropolitan Britain. They have often been caricatured and demonized, but understanding them is important for an understanding of the states in which they lived, whose politics were at times a crucial part of British history and the history of migration and settlement.

This book presents a wide range of new research on the Chinese treaty ports the key strategic places on China s coast where in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries various foreign powers controlled, through "unequal treaties," whole cities or parts of cities, outside the jurisdiction of the Chinese authorities. Topics covered include land and how it was acquired, the flow of people, good and information, specific individuals and families who typify life in the treaty ports, and technical advances, exploration, and innovation in government."

In 1900, China chose to take on imperialism by fighting a war with the world on the parched north China plain. This multidisciplinary volume explores the causes behind what is now known as the Boxer War, examining its particular cruelties and its impact on China, foreign imperialism in China, and on the foreign imagination. This war introduced the world to the "Boxers," the seemingly fanatical, violent xenophobes who, believing themselves invulnerable to foreign bullets, died in their thousands in front of foreign guns. But 1900 also saw the imperialism of the 1890s checked and the Qing rulers of China move to embark on a series of shattering reforms. The Boxers have often been represented as a force from China's past, resisting an enforced modernity. Here, expert contributors argue that this rebellion was instead a wholly modern resistance to globalizing power, representing new trends in modern China and in international relations. The allied invasion of north China in late summer 1900 was the first multinational intervention in the name of "civilization," with the issues and attendant problems that have become all too familiar in the early twenty-first century. Indeed, understanding the Boxer rising and the Boxer war remains a pressing contemporary issue. This volume will appeal to readers interested in modern Chinese, East Asian, and European history as well as the history of imperialism, colonialism, warfare, missionary work, and Christianity. Contributions by: C. A. Bayly, Lewis Bernstein, Robert Bickers, Paul A. Cohen, Henrietta Harrison, James L. Hevia, Ben Middleton, T. G. Otte, Roger R. Thompson, R. G. Tiedemann, and Anand A. Yang.

This book presents a range of new research on British-Chinese relations in the period from Britain s first imperial intervention in China up to the 1960s. Topics covered include economic issues including finance, investment and Chinese labour in British territories, questions of perceptions on both sides including British worries about, and exaggeration of, the "China threat," including to India, and British aggression towards, and eventual withdrawal from, China."

This is a study of Britain's presence in China both at its peak, and during its inter-war dissolution in the face of assertive Chinese nationalism and declining British diplomatic support. Using archival materials from China and records in Britain and the United States, the author paints a portrait of the traders, missionaries, businessmen, diplomats and settlers who constituted "Britain-in-China", challenging our understanding of British imperialism there. 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 conflict not only with the Chinese population, but with the British imperial government. The book also analyzes the formation and maintenance of settler identities, and then investigates 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. -- .

In 1900, China chose to take on imperialism by fighting a war with the world on the parched north China plain. This multidisciplinary volume explores the causes behind what is now known as the Boxer War, examining its particular cruelties and its impact on China, foreign imperialism in China, and on the foreign imagination. This war introduced the world to the "Boxers," the seemingly fanatical, violent xenophobes who, believing themselves invulnerable to foreign bullets, died in their thousands in front of foreign guns. But 1900 also saw the imperialism of the 1890s checked and the Qing rulers of China move to embark on a series of shattering reforms. The Boxers have often been represented as a force from China's past, resisting an enforced modernity. Here, expert contributors argue that this rebellion was instead a wholly modern resistance to globalizing power, representing new trends in modern China and in international relations. The allied invasion of north China in late summer 1900 was the first multinational intervention in the name of "civilization," with the issues and attendant problems that have become all too familiar in the early twenty-first century. Indeed, understanding the Boxer rising and the Boxer war remains a pressing contemporary issue. This volume will appeal to readers interested in modern Chinese, East Asian, and European history as well as the history of imperialism, colonialism, warfare, missionary work, and Christianity. Contributions by: C. A. Bayly, Lewis Bernstein, Robert Bickers, Paul A. Cohen, Henrietta Harrison, James L. Hevia, Ben Middleton, T. G. Otte, Roger R. Thompson, R. G. Tiedemann, and Anand A. Yang.

This book presents a wide range of new research on the Chinese treaty ports - the key strategic places on China's coast where in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries various foreign powers controlled, through "unequal treaties", whole cities or parts of cities, outside the jurisdiction of the Chinese authorities. Topics covered include land and how it was acquired, the flow of people, good and information, specific individuals and families who typify life in the treaty ports, and technical advances, exploration, and innovation in government.

The British Empire gave rise to various new forms of British identity in the colonial world outside the Dominions. In cities and colonies, and in sovereign states subject to more informal pressures such as Argentina or China, communities of Britons developed identities inflected by local ambitions and pressures. As a result they often found themselves at loggerheads with their diplomatic or colonial office minders, especially in the era of decolonisation. The impact of empire on metropolitan British identity is increasingly well documented; the evolution of dominions' nationalisms is likewise well known; but the new species of Britishness which attained their fullest form in the mid-twentieth century have received significantly less attention. Settlers and Expatriates revisits the communities formed by these hundreds of thousands of Britons, as well as the passages home taken by some, and assesses their development, character, and legacy today. Scholars with established expertise in the history of each region explore the communalities that can be found across British communities in South, East and Southeast Asia, Egypt, and East and Southern Africa, and highlight the particularities that were also distinctive features of each British experience. These overseas Britons were sojourners and settlers; some survived in post-independent states, others were swept out quickly and moved on or back to an often uninterested metropolitan Britain. They have often been caricatured and demonized, but understanding them is important for an understanding of the states in which they lived, whose politics were at times a crucial part of British history and the history of migration and settlement.

In the early nineteenth century China remained almost untouched by British and European powers - but as new technology started to change this balance, foreigners gathered like wolves around the weakening Qing Empire. Would the Chinese suffer the fate of much of the rest of the world, carved into pieces by Europeans? Or could they adapt rapidly enough to maintain their independence? This important and compelling book explains the roots of China's complex relationship with the West by illuminating a dramatic, colourful and sometimes shocking period of the country's history.

SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2018 WOLFSON HISTORY PRIZE The extraordinary and essential story of how China became the powerful country it is today. Even at the high noon of Europe's empires China managed to be one of the handful of countries not to succumb. Invaded, humiliated and looted, China nonetheless kept its sovereignty. Robert Bickers' major new book is the first to describe fully what has proved to be one of the modern era's most important stories: the long, often agonising process by which the Chinese had by the end of the 20th century regained control of their own country. Out of China uses a brilliant array of unusual, strange and vivid sources to recreate a now fantastically remote world: the corrupt, lurid modernity of pre-War Shanghai, the often tiny patches of 'extra-territorial' land controlled by European powers (one of which, unnoticed, had mostly toppled into a river), the entrepots of Hong Kong and Macao, and the myriad means, through armed threats, technology and legal chicanery, by which China was kept subservient. Today Chinese nationalism stays firmly rooted in memories of its degraded past - the quest for self-sufficiency, a determination both to assert China's standing in the world and its outstanding territorial claims, and never to be vulnerable to renewed attack. History matters deeply to Beijing's current rulers - and Out of China explains why.