Britain in China

Community, culture and colonialism 1900-1949

Bibliographic Data

ID19940735
AuthorsRobert Bickers (0000-0002-3663-7658, corresponding author), Andrew Thompson (0000-0003-3250-1603), John M Mackenzie
Year2017
Publication date2017-03-01
Open AccessNo
TypeBOOK
VenueBritain in China (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherManchester University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.7765/9781526119605
OpenAlexW1979749307
Open LibraryOL35557222M
ISBN9781526119605
LanguageEN
Citations received10

The British community in China was rooted in the diverse cultures of imperial Britain. This book presents 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 book presents a portrait of the traders, missionaries, businessmen, diplomats and settlers who constituted "Britain-in-China", challenging people's understanding of British imperialism there. Imperialism is no new subject for scholars of modern Chinese history. The largest settler communities were selfgoverning; even the smallest were still self-replicating. The book focuses on the structure and workings of this establishment in the decades before the Pacific War. The survey presented examines the processes by which Britain in China evolved, how it replicated itself and represented itself (and China). It looks at how it attempted to reform itself in the face of the militant state and mass nationalism it met in China in the mid-1920s and after. The survey also looks at the face of the efforts of the British state to regain control over it and to decolonise the British presence. All Britons in China possessed multiple identities: British, imperial and local. 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

Ancient history · Antipathy · British Empire · China · Economic history · Empire · Face (sociological concept) · Imperial unit system · Militant · Nationalism · Political science · Politics · Reign · Social science · Sociology · State (computer science) · Australian History and Society · Chinese history and philosophy · History · Law

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