Britain and China, 1840-1970: Empire, Finance and War / Edition 1

by Robert Bickers, Jonathan Howlett

Overview

This book presents a range of new research on British-Chinese relations in the period from Britain’s first imperial intervention in China up to the 1960s. Topics covered include economic issues such as fi nance, investment and Chinese labour in British territories, questions of perceptions on both sides, such as British worries about, and exaggeration of, the ‘China threat’, including to India, and British aggression towards, and eventual withdrawal from, China.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780415658768
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	07/13/2015
Series:	Routledge Studies in the Modern History of Asia
Pages:	266
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.19(h) x (d)

About the Author

Robert Bickers is Professor of History at the University of Bristol, UK.

Jonathan J. Howlett is a Lecturer in Modern Asian History at the University of York, UK.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1. 'The Usual Intercourse of Nations': The British in Pre-Opium War Canton 2. British Intervention in the Taiping Rebellion 3. Britain and China, and India, 1830s-1947 4. The Interest of Our Colonies Seems to Have Been Largely Overlooked: Colonial Australia and Anglo-Chinese Relations 5. ‘Coolies’ or ‘Huagong’? Conflicting British and Chinese attitudes towards Chinese contract workers in World War One France 6. Sino-British Relations in Railway Construction: State, Imperialism and Local Elites, 1905-1911 7. Foreign investment in modern China: an analysis with a focus on British interests 8. Curative Finance: Francis Aglen, Bond Markets, and the Early Republic, 1911-1928 9. Expansion and Defence in the International Settlement at Shanghai 10. Nationalistic Enthusiasm versus Imperialist Sophistication: Britain from Chiang Kai-shek’s Perspective 11. ‘Decolonisation' in China, 1949-1959

Editorial Reviews

"This volume provides a sophisticated understanding of the British presence in China and the actors and agencies involved within the broader contours of the British Empire. Its chapters help to trace the construction of the British presence in China as a transnational agent through migration, labour, foreign capital and wars. This transnational character of the British presence in China presents us with difficulties in distinguishing clearly between what was ‘Chinese’ and what was ‘foreign’, a theme that seems central to several chapters in this volume (especially those by
Hirata, Howlett, Jackson and Chen)."
Shilpa Sharma, China Report

From the Publisher