scholarly journals Western Merchants and Intra-Asian Trade: John Henry Duus at Treaty port Hakodate (Part One 1861-68)

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven Ivings
Keyword(s):  
Western Countries ◽  
Treaty Port ◽  
Local Agent ◽  
Treaty Ports

This article examines the business activities of John Henry Duus, a long-standing foreign resident of the treaty port of Hakodate. In the first of this two-part article, I trace Duus’ background and focus in on his efforts to conduct business at Hakodate in the 1860s. Though Duus’ efforts to foster trade between Japan and western countries proved largely fruitless, he played an important role as a local agent for Chinese and China-based western firms and thus was active in fostering intra-Asian trade. As an Asia-born Anglo-Dane who first came to Hakodate as a British merchant but later switched allegiances to Denmark and served as Danish consul, Duus’ career also points to the cosmopolitan background of western treaty porters at the more peripheral treaty ports such as Hakodate.

‘The Inalienable Right of the White Man’

2019 ◽  
pp. 78-99
Author(s):  
Cees Heere
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
East Asia ◽  
Political Influence ◽  
The Other ◽  
Treaty Port ◽  
British Policy ◽  
Regional Order ◽  
Treaty Ports ◽  
China Coast ◽  
Public Campaigns

Victory over Russia established Japan as the leading power in East Asia, and inaugurated a period during which its economic and political influence in the region sharply expanded. This chapter explores these shifts in the regional order from the perspective of both British policymakers in London, and from that of the British communities in Shanghai, Hong Kong, and the other ‘treaty ports’ scattered along the China coast. For many, Japan, came to represent a challenge to British hegemony in China that manifested itself on a racial as well as on the commercial or political fronts. The chapter goes on to analyse the efforts of the ‘Shanghailanders’ to mobilize British policy to constrain Japanese power in the region through public campaigns and political manoeuvring. In the process, it demonstrates how treaty port residents articulated their own vision on Britain’s imperial future in Asia.

To Control the Uncontrollable

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shuge Wei
Keyword(s):  
Information Control ◽  
Top Down ◽  
Treaty Port ◽  
The Government ◽  
Treaty Ports

Chapter 3 highlights the Nationalist government’s attempts to build an international propaganda system and to control the extraterritoriality-protected treaty-port papers from 1928 to 1932.The top-down information control exercised by the party-led propaganda system conflicted with the liberal journalism practiced in the treaty ports. Unable to achieve diplomatic progress in abolishing extraterritoriality, the Nanjing government made inroads into the extraterritorial system in specific fronts. Press control was one of them. By issuing postal bans, deporting journalists, and reviewing treaties with foreign cable companies, the government sought to strengthen its censorship power. It also adapted to the treaty-port press environment by camouflaging the party’s involvement through transnational covers.

The Raj on Nanjing Road: Sikh Policemen in Treaty-Port Shanghai

2012 ◽  
Vol 46 (6) ◽  
pp. 1672-1704 ◽  
Author(s):  
ISABELLA JACKSON
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Treaty Port ◽  
Municipal Police ◽  
Treaty Ports ◽  
The City

AbstractSikh policemen were an indelible part of the landscape of Shanghai in the first decades of the twentieth century, and have left their mark in the ways in which the city is remembered up to the present day. Yet their history has never been told and historians of the period have, at best, simply referred to them in passing. This paper redresses this gap in the literature by accounting for the presence of the Sikh branch of the Shanghai Municipal Police and exploring their role in the governance and policing of the International Settlement. This enriches our understanding of the nature of the British presence in China and the ways in which Indian sub-imperialism extended to China's treaty ports, for on the streets of Shanghai, and not Shanghai alone, British power had an Indian face.

News Under Fire

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shuge Wei
Keyword(s):  
English Language ◽  
International News ◽  
Media Environment ◽  
Vital Importance ◽  
Information Order ◽  
War Machine ◽  
Treaty Port ◽  
History Of ◽  
Treaty Ports ◽  
Comprehensive Study

News under Fire: China’s Propaganda against Japan in the English-Language Press, 1928–1941 is the first comprehensive study of China’s efforts to establish an effective international propaganda system during the Sino-Japanese crisis. It challenges the notion of Chinese passivity in international propaganda and demonstrates how the fractured government was able to carry out an effective propaganda scheme in spite of Japan’s advanced international news network and the general Western bias against China’s nationalist foundations. By retrieving the long neglected history of English-language papers published in the treaty ports, Shuge Wei reviews a multilayered and often chaotic English-language media environment in China, and demonstrates its vital importance in defending China’s sovereignty. Chinese bilingual elites played an important role in linking the party-led propaganda system with the treaty-port press. Yet the development of propaganda institution did not foster the realization of individual ideals. As the Sino-Japanese crisis deepened, the war machine absorbed their hopes of maintaining a liberal information order.

Robert Hart and China's Statistical Revolution

2006 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
pp. 605-629 ◽  
Author(s):  
ANDREA EBERHARD-BRÉARD
Keyword(s):  
Royal Statistical Society ◽  
Inspector General ◽  
Western Countries ◽  
Treaty Ports

In 1890 Robert Hart was elected Honorary Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society. Hart had sent copies of the statistical publications of the Maritime Customs Service regularly to the Society, but he himself was no statistician. He did publish one piece in the Journal of the Statistical Society of London, but this was no more than an extract of a conclusion Hart wrote to reports written by the Commissioners at China's Treaty Ports on local opium consumption. But Hart, as Inspector General of the Maritime Customs Service, bore general responsibility for its publications and involved himself deeply in its statistical projects. H. B. Morse, who would serve as Statistical Secretary, wrote: ‘while weak in the fiscal and economic field, he was a marvel in organisation and the direction of the work of others’. Within the Customs Service, it was the Statistical Secretary who had immediate responsibility for the statistical publications of the Customs. He was stationed in Shanghai, China's busiest port, rather than Beijing, where the Inspectorate had its offices close to the Zongli Yamen, the Qing agency overseeing China's relations with Western countries.

scholarly journals The Outside Perspective – The Treaty Port Press, the Meiji Restoration and the Image of a Modern Japan

2019 ◽  
pp. 93-114
Author(s):  
Andreas Eichleter
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
East Asia ◽  
Meiji Restoration ◽  
The North ◽  
Treaty Port ◽  
Long Time ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Treaty Ports ◽  
Unequal Treaties ◽  
The 19Th Century

The Treaty Ports established by the Unequal Treaties in the middle of the 19th century were crucial spaces of interaction between Japan and the West. For a long time, they were the only places were foreigners were allowed to permanently reside in Japan. While the interior of the nation might be visited by Western travelers and globetrotters, the primary contacts, commercial as well as social and cultural, took place in the environment of the Treaty Ports, where the vast majority of foreigners resided and visited. Because of this exclusive role, the ports played a critical venue for the creation and formation of images of Japan, as well as their transmission abroad. This article focuses at the image of Japan generated in these Treaty Ports in the immediate aftermath of the Meiji Restoration. It will look at how the restoration and subsequent Japanese policies of modernization were perceived by the foreign communities in East Asia and how it was presented in the foreign language press in the Treaty Ports. This will be undertaken by the study of two of the most important foreign language newspapers of East Asia at the time, the North China Herald, published in Shanghai from 1850 to 1951, and the Japan Weekly Mail, published in Yokohama from 1870 to 1917. Both were amongst the largest and most influential newspapers in their respective communities, but also further abroad, and their pages reflect the understanding these communities had of Japan at the time. Furthermore, their comparison enables us to look at the creation of images, within the wider Treaty Port network of East Asia, and analyze how it differed or remained similar across the China Sea.

Shaping a New Profession

2021 ◽  
pp. 21-47
Author(s):  
Andrew Cobbing
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
East Asia ◽  
International Law ◽  
First Generation ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Judicial System ◽  
Treaty Port ◽  
Regional Order ◽  
Treaty Ports

Not until the nineteenth century were the Japanese forced to confront and engage with the European conception of international law. In East Asia a Sinocentric regional order had governed their worldview for over a thousand years, and during the early modern period the Tokugawa dynasty then modified this outlook to place Japan in the centre of its own framework of international relations. Under the Tokugawa judicial system, moreover, the concept of a lawyer, international or otherwise, was practically unknown. It was the reluctant opening of treaty ports in 1859 that paved the way for Japan’s reception of international law. This chapter charts the shift from the early Japanese exploration of the outside world after centuries of self-imposed isolation, to the training of Japan’s first generation of international lawyers as the Meiji state embarked on reclaiming sovereign rights lost through the imposition of the treaty port regime.

Beyond the Front Line: China's rivalry with Japan in the English-language press over the Jinan Incident, 1928

2013 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 188-224
Author(s):  
SHUGE WEI
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
English Language ◽  
New York Times ◽  
Treaty Port ◽  
The Media ◽  
Political Conditions ◽  
British Press ◽  
Treaty Ports ◽  
The Times

AbstractThis paper examines how China and Japan fought for supremacy in China's treaty-port English-language press during the Jinan Incident of 1928. It argues that China's defeat in this media battle was a result of the long-term, unsettled political conditions the country was experiencing. The constant changes of government thwarted China's official and non-official efforts to establish a national news network. The threat from the northern warlords and China's intricate relations with the imperialist powers deterred the Nanjing regime from formulating decisive foreign propaganda policies. In contrast, Japan, with a strong news network in China, quickly installed its version of the event in the media. Its response was fast, consistent, and intensive. Japan also took advantage of the Nanjing Incident to justify its actions in Jinan. Press opinion in the treaty ports towards the Jinan Incident was split, with the British press supporting the Japanese and American papers favouring China's case. However, Japanese accounts, with the endorsement of the British treaty-port papers, still dominated the reports in The Times of London and influenced the views of the Manchester Guardian and The New York Times.

Beyond Colonial Dichotomies: The deficits of Spain and the peripheral powers in treaty-port China

2018 ◽  
Vol 53 (04) ◽  
pp. 1222-1247 ◽  
Author(s):  
CARLES BRASÓ BROGGI ◽  
DAVID MARTINEZ-ROBLES
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Great Britain ◽  
Foreign Trade ◽  
United States Of America ◽  
The United States ◽  
Treaty Port ◽  
Negative Balance ◽  
Treaty Ports

AbstractThe semi-colonial character of China during the treaty-port era brings into question the dichotomy between the colonizer and the colonized. China's foreign trade had an overall negative balance, and Great Britain, Japan, and the United States of America benefited from it. However, dozens of minor powers suffered a negative balance with China, despite the favourable conditions set in the treaty ports. This article examines the presence of Spain in China during the first decades of the twentieth century, focusing on trade, population, and issues of self-representation. Through a comparative analysis of the Sino-Spanish trade with that of other smaller powers in China, this article shows both the diversity of colonial formations in China and the existence of colonial relations that, although peripheral and complementary, pose a doubt on the adequacy, not only of the colonizer/colonized dichotomy, but also of the representation of colonialism in China.

IMAGINING THE RUSSIAN CONCESSION IN HANKOU

2018 ◽  
Vol 61 (4) ◽  
pp. 969-989
Author(s):  
ALAN CRAWFORD
Keyword(s):  
Russian Empire ◽  
Early Years ◽  
Treaty Port ◽  
Treaty Ports ◽  
The Russian Empire ◽  
Imperial State

AbstractIn 1896, the Russian empire established a territorial concession in the Chinese treaty port of Hankou. Russian activity in the treaty ports has usually been subsumed into a wider ‘European’ or ‘Western’ presence, the assumption being that the Russian empire copied existing British and French concessions. This article traces the development of the idea of establishing a Russian concession from its inception to the early years of its development. The various arguments made at different stages in this process make clear that the decision was not a simple case of imitation of existing concessions, but was reached in the context of a broader shift in ideas about the proper relationship between economy, nation, and the Russian imperial state.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document