Abstract
This introductory chapter opens with a question: what was everyday life like for foreigners in the treaty ports of China and Japan? We argue that the residents of the treaty ports—local and foreign, in the trading concessions of China and Japan—experienced vastly different realities in similar material conditions. The careful study of everyday life is often overshadowed by the special status given to treaty ports as sites of power and contestation and symbols of modernity in scholarship and as the subject of nostalgia in popular culture. This chapter critiques treaty port histories and examines scholarship on material culture and the treaty ports. It also overviews the main themes and ideas addressed by our contributors, including everyday life, health and welfare, law and land, visualising the port and treaty port legacies.
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Notes
- 1.
Kenneth Pomeranz, The Great Divergence: China, Europe and the Making of the Modern World Economy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001). Pomeranz argues that this divergence started in the 1750s.
- 2.
Robert Bickers, Out of China: How the Chinese Ended the Era of Western Domination (Milton Keynes, Allen Lane, 2017), pp. 14–15.
- 3.
This was in part a reaction against the restrictions of the earlier Canton system but also a reflection of growing European ambitions to engage the East Asian market.
- 4.
See Donna Brunero, Britain’s Imperial Cornerstone in China: The Chinese Maritime Customs Service, 1854–1949, (Abingdon: Routledge, 2006), pp. 12–13, for the Customs Services’ list of ports and outports.
- 5.
Bickers , Out of China, p. 15.
- 6.
J.E. Hoare , Japan’s Treaty Ports and Foreign Settlements: The Uninvited Guests 1858–1899, (Kent: Japan Library, 1994) pp. 1–2.
- 7.
Ibid. The Japanese were aware that Perry’s black ships represented only the ‘spearhead’ of what would be a much greater force.
- 8.
Ibid., p. 3.
- 9.
Access was limited initially to the ports of Hakodate and Shimoda, and by 1858, Kanagawa, Nagasaki and Hakodate were opened to foreign residence. Edo and Osaka were opened a decade later.
- 10.
For example, see Robert Bickers , Out of China, for a discussion of the role of history (and the treaty ports) in modern Chinese statecraft. Also see Robert Bickers and Christian Henriot (eds), New Frontiers: New Communities in East Asia, 1842–1953 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000). For Japan, see the work of Harald Fuess, “Informal Imperialism and the 1879 “Hesperia” Incident: Containing Cholera and Challenging Extraterritoriality in Japan.” Japan Review, No. 27, (2014). In this article, Fuess discusses the idea of informal empire as experienced in Japan.
- 11.
Hoare , Japan’s Treaty Ports and Foreign Settlements.
- 12.
Robert Bickers and Isabella Jackson, “Introduction” in Robert Bickers and Isabella Jackson, eds., Treaty Ports in Modern China: Law, Land and Power (London: Routledge, 2016), for a recent historiographical assessment of the treaty ports, pp. 12–18.
- 13.
Scholarship on the Asian port city is well developed; notable works include Frank Broeze (ed), Brides of the Sea: Port Cities of Asia from the 16th–20th Centuries (Hawai’i: Hawai’i University Press, 1989), and Frank Broeze’s subsequent edited volume Gateways of Asia: Port Cities of Asia in the 13th-20th Centuries (New York: Kegan Paul, 1997). A more recent addition to scholarship that traces the interconnectivity of Asian port cities is Haneda Masashi (ed), Asian Port Cities, 1600–1800: Local and Foreign Cultural Interactions. (Singapore: NUS Press, 2009).
- 14.
See chapters by Donna Brunero, Stephanie Villalta Puig and Robert Nield, for example.
- 15.
Robert Bickers and Isabella Jackson, Introduction, Treaty Ports in Modern China, p. 1.
- 16.
Jeremy E. Taylor, “The Bund: Littoral Space of Empire in the Treaty Ports of East Asia” Social History. Vol. 27, No. 2, May 2002.
- 17.
Ibid.
- 18.
Bickers and Jackson, Introduction, Treaty Ports in Modern China: Land, Law and Power, p. 1.
- 19.
See, for example, Peter Burke (ed.), New Perspectives on Historical Writing (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991); more recent Asian Studies scholarship, specifically Barbara Andaya Watson (ed), Preface, in Marianne Hulsbosch, Elizabeth Bedford & Martha Chaiklin (eds), Asian Material Culture (Amsterdam: ICAS/Amsterdam University Press, 2009).
- 20.
Fernand Braudel, Civilisation and Capitalism, 15th–18th Century: Vol. 1. The Structures of Everyday Life, (Berkeley: University of California Press, (1979) 1992).
- 21.
Arjun Appadurai (ed), The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective, (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986).
- 22.
Anne Gerritsen and Giorgio Riello, “Introduction” in Anne Gerritsen and Giorgio Riello (eds), Writing Material Culture, pp. 1–2. (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015).
- 23.
Marianne Hulsbosch, Elizabeth Bedford and Martha Chaiklin, “Asian Material Culture in Context” in Marianne Hulsbosch, Elizabeth Bedford and Martha Chaiklin (eds), Asian Material Culture (Amsterdam: ICAS/Amsterdam University Press, 2009), p. 12.
- 24.
See the chapter by James Hoare for a discussion on the legacies of the treaty ports.
- 25.
Frank Dikötter , Exotic Commodities: Modern Objects and Everyday Life in China (New York: Columbia University Press, 2006).
- 26.
Ibid., p. 1.
- 27.
Ibid., pp. 2–3.
- 28.
Ibid., pp. 4–7. For a broader discussion again, see Christopher Bayly’s magisterial work The Birth of the Modern World 1780–1914: Global Connections and Comparisons (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2004) for insightful reflection on foreign and indigenous contributions to creating ‘modernity’.
- 29.
See chapters by Timothy Amos and Donna Brunero in this volume.
- 30.
Dikötter , Exotic Commodities, p. 4.
- 31.
Hulsbosch, Bedford and Chaiklin, “Asian Material Culture in Context,” p. 13.
- 32.
Morgan Pitelka , Spectacular Accumulation: Material Culture, Tokugawa Ieyasu, and Samurai Sociability (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2016), pp. 42–43. This grand tea gathering was intended to not only allow participants to enjoy tea but also witness the spectacle of Hideyoshi’s impression collection of famous objects related to tea culture.
- 33.
Ibid.
- 34.
Ibid., p. 176.
- 35.
Pitelka , Chap. 4, “Lordly Sport: Raptors, Falconry and the Control of the Land,” pp. 94–117.
Bibliography
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Bickers, Robert, and Christian Henriot, eds. New Frontiers: New Communities in East Asia, 1842–1953. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000.
Braudel, Fernand. Civilisation and Capitalism, 15th–18th Century: Vol. 1. The Structures of Everyday Life. Berkeley: University of California Press, (1979)1992.
Broeze, Frank, ed. Brides of the Sea: Port Cities of Asia from the 16th–20th Centuries. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1989.
Broeze, Frank. Gateways of Asia: Port Cities of Asia in the 13th–20th Centuries. New York: Kegan Paul, 1997.
Brunero, Donna. Britain’s Imperial Cornerstone in China: The Chinese Maritime Customs Service, 1854–1949. Abingdon: Routledge, 2006.
Burke, Peter, ed. New Perspectives on Historical Writing. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991.
Dikötter, Frank. Exotic Commodities: Modern Objects and Everyday Life in China. New York: Columbia University Press, 2006.
Fuess, Harald. “Informal Imperialism and the 1879 “Hesperia” Incident: Containing Cholera and Challenging Extraterritoriality in Japan.” Japan Review 27, 2014: 103–140.
Gerritsen, Anne, and Giorgio Riello. Writing Material Culture. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015.
Hoare, J.E. Japan’s Treaty Ports and Foreign Settlements: The Uninvited Guests 1858–1899. Kent: Japan Library, 1994.
Hulsbosch, Marianne, Elizabeth Bedford, and Martha Chaiklin, eds. Asian Material Culture. Amsterdam: ICAS/Amsterdam University Press, 2009.
Masashi, Haneda, ed. Asian Port Cities, 1600–1800: Local and Foreign Cultural Interactions. Singapore: NUS Press, 2009.
Pitelka, Morgan. Spectacular Accumulation: Material Culture, Tokugawa Ieyasu, and Samurai Sociability. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2016.
Pomeranz, Kenneth. The Great Divergence: China, Europe and the Making of the Modern World Economy. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001.
Taylor, Jeremy E. “The Bund: Littoral Space of Empire in the Treaty Ports of East Asia.” Social History 27, no.2, May 2002: 125–142.
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Brunero, D., Villalta Puig, S. (2018). Introduction. In: Brunero, D., Villalta Puig, S. (eds) Life in Treaty Port China and Japan. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-7368-7_1
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