Colonialism and Compromise
The Shanghai Municipal Police and the Arrest of Communists, 1927–37
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12563590 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Peter Kwok-Fai Law (0000-0003-4684-3727, Institute of Modern Physics, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2021 |
| Volume | 31 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 831-853 |
| Publication date | 2021-03-15 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1356-1863 • E-ISSN: 1474-0591 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/s1356186320000723 |
| OpenAlex | W2764399995 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 22 |
The Shanghai Municipal Council (SMC), which was mainly controlled by British residents in the treaty port of Shanghai, and protected by the British Foreign Office, came under serious challenge from the Guomindang (GMD) (the rising Nationalist Party of China) from 1927 onwards. The Shanghai Municipal Police (SMP)—an imperial police force with powers to arrest, prosecute and detain—was forced to collaborate with the GMD, and practice unlawful arrest, extradition and re-indoctrination of Communist suspects and convicts. This resulted in the erosion of state powers and the management of prisons. This article argues that the dismantling of British colonialism began to take place in Shanghai during the inter-war period at the expense of some English legal conventions, as demonstrated by SMP violations of existing legal practices and humanitarian commitments. Second, it also suggests that English judicial conventions had an unintended impact on some Chinese civilians, who were keen to safeguard their rights during their detention and trial in and beyond the Shanghai Legation. This article, therefore, offers a new periodisation of British decolonisation and a re-examination of colonial legacy in East Asia
China · Colonialism · Communism · Compromise · Decolonization · Dissent · Municipal council · Nationalism · Political science · State (computer science · Treaty · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Global Maritime and Colonial Histories · History · Law · Public Administration · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies
Civil Society and Urban Change in Republican China
Rickshaw Beijing
The Compelling Ideal
Grounds of JudgmentExtraterritoriality and Imperial Power in Nineteenth-Century China and Japan
Empire in Question
Britain and Decolonisation
The Diplomacy of Imperial Retreat
The Empire Project
Decolonization since 1945
Dogs and British Colonialism
An Empire on Trial
Britain's Declining Empire
My Twenty-Five Years in China
Rethinking Decolonization
Order and Discipline in China
| Citations per year | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2026 - 2026 (1) |
| Highly cited | No |