Title
Shanghai : China's gateway to modernity / Marie-Claire Bergère ; translated by Janet Lloyd.
Uniform Title
Histoire de Shanghai. English
ISBN
9780804749046 (alk. paper)
0804749043 (alk. paper)
9780804749053 (pbk. : alk. paper)
0804749051 (pbk. : alk. paper)
Publication Details
Stanford, Calif. : Stanford University Press, c2010.
Language
English
Description
xix, 497 p. : ill., maps ; 24 cm.
Call Number
DS796.S257 B4713 2010
Dewey Decimal Classification
951/.132
Summary
Shanghai today is a thriving, bustling metropolis. But does its avid pursuit of the modern trappings of success truly indicate that it will once again become the shining example of China's commercial and cosmopolitan culture? While history continues to unfold, the author, an eminent scholar on China takes readers back to when Shanghai first opened to the world in 1842 to narrate the city's tumultuous and unique course to the present. This work is the first comprehensive history of Shanghai in any Western language. Divided into four parts, it details Shanghai's beginnings as a treaty port in the mid-nineteenth century; its capitalist boom following the 1911 Revolution; the fifteen years of economic and social decline initiated by the Japanese invasion in 1937, and attempts at resistance; and the city's disgraced years under Communism. Weaving together a range of archival documents and existing histories to create a global picture of Shanghai's past and present, the author shows that Shanghai's success was not fated, as some contend, by an evolutionary pattern set into motion long before the arrival of westerners. Rather, her account identifies the relationship between the Chinese and foreigners in Shanghai, their interaction, cooperation, and rivalry, as the driving force behind the creation of an original culture, a specific modernity, founded upon western contributions but adapted to the national Chinese culture. Eclipsed for three decades by socialism, the wheels of the Shanghai spirit began to turn in the 1990s, when the reform movement took off anew. The city is again being referred to as a model for China's current modernization drive. Although it makes no claims to what will happen next, this work stands as a compelling and definitive profile of a city whose urban history continues to be redefined, retold, and resold.
Note
"Originally published in French under the title Histoire de Shanghai, Librairie Arthème Fayard, 2002."
Bibliography, etc. Note
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Foreigners in the town (1843-1853)
Local diplomacy and national policy (1853-1864)
The birth of Shanghai capitalism (1860-1911)
The kaleidoscope of Shanghaian society
The model represented by the concessions
The 1911 revolution
The metropolis (1912-1937)
The golden age of Shanghaian capitalism (1919-1937)
The revolutionary centre (1919-1937)
Order and crime (1927-1937)
Haipai and the ideal of modernity
The end of a world (1937-1952)
The war, the occupation, and the end of international status
Backward into revolution (1945-1952)
Shanghai under communism
Shanghai in disgrace under the Maoist regime
Shanghai's rebirth (1990-2000).
