Robert Bickers. Out of China

On November 23, 1918, the foreign community in China celebrated the end of the Great War with parades and ceremonies. The fact that there were so many different foreigners in China—Britons, Americans, French, Belgians, Serbs, Indians, and many more—and the fact that much of their celebration on Chinese soil more or less elided the participation of China itself in the war on the side of the Allies, reveals much about the unequal foreign presence and power in China at the time. In the twenty-first century, Chinese officials gather every year on October 1 at Shanghai’s Monument to the People’s Heroes, not far from where some foreigners had celebrated a century earlier, and remind themselves and the Chinese public of both how far China has come in expelling the resented foreign presence and how important it is to “never forget” (wuwang) the dark days of “national humiliation” (guochi...

Ancient history · China · Economic history · Humiliation · Political science · Power (physics) · Chinese history and philosophy · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Law · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies