The working title of my long essay is ‘Currents of Resistance? The Upheaval of Nationalist Space During the 1931 China Floods’. I aim to evaluate the effects of natural disaster on the population of Wuhan, following the flood of the Yangtze River Valley area in 1931. The floods and their destruction of traditional spatial boundaries had several implications for the dissemination of nationalist authority and its reception by the Chinese population.

I initially explored how spaces of authority, such as public squares, statues, and government offices were physically submerged in water and left to stagnate. This removed symbolic markers of political and class authority and left the inhabitants of Wuhan treading the same water for survival. The Yangtze Valley was transformed into a flat plain where the water disrupted the hierarchical arrangement of space and left the Kuomintang government to reconstruct the physical markers of their legitimacy. The Hankow Herald published a ‘Flood Relief Edition’, in which one item describes the government’s attempts to restore railway lines and electrical plants.[1] The flood had the ability to physically remove markers of technological progress and modernity from the Chinese landscape and the restoration of these amounted to a restructuring of Republican authority as they accepted help from international parties and attempted to alleviate their responsibility for the disaster. Additional sources, such as the missionary journal, China’s Millions have been instrumental in understanding the interaction of Western and Chinese spatial practices in the reconstruction of Wuhan’s physical landscape.[2]

Whilst this approach was valuable in my initial research, I wanted to look at the floods from the perspective of those who they affected the most; the poorer, local, Chinese population. Through research guided by Chris Courtney’s The Nature of Disaster, I have found that it was not only the initial force of natural disaster which challenged the Kuomintang.[3] Relief efforts, in tandem with international aid, met with resistance from locals and refugees who had been dislocated from their homes after the devastating impact of the floods. This is reported in the case of famous aviator, Charles Lindbergh, who attempted to deliver medicine, instead of food, to starving refugees. Lindbergh dealt poorly with the anticipation of the Chinese people, who discarded the medicine as it had no immediate or tangible effects on their suffering. [4] Mistrust of government officials and foreign missionaries was prompted by this mismatch between official policy and lived experiences of the refugees. From a perspective of spatial theory, the refusal of aid often amounted to spatial resistance, where refugees sought to either retain or reinvent the memory of home rather than being shipped off to government camps. In doing so, they claimed the environment of the floods for themselves, rather than submitting their home to the government’s remedial intervention. The Hankow Herald Flood Edition reports that homes were constructed in trees or on top of hills as a reaction against human transportation to government camps.[5] Seemingly, no matter how unrecognisable home may have become, the emotional and physical attachment to the environment was a means of empowerment against the culpable government. In addition, disparaging and impatient state newspaper reports on the increase of sampan boats reveal another form of spatial resistance.[6] These locally constructed boats were the most efficient way to navigate the flood waters, and were a means of generating monetary profit, but also established autonomy over government aid workers who were forced to adopt this traditional means of transport in order to navigate the flood waters. The Yangtze flood plain was visually dominated by the sampan boat- a symbol of local autonomy against the parallel threat to home of both natural disaster and the Kuomintang.

National and international aid did of course help mitigate the economic and social impact of natural disaster. However, I aim to further investigate reports of the 1931 floods which suggest that the Kuomintang met with resistance to their efforts to reconstruct the nation. Using a variety of primary sources, I aim to chart how the flood destroyed politically determined boundaries and analyse how this granted Chinese inhabitants a level of autonomy over the Kuomintang. Chris Courtney’s accounts of refugee’s construction of makeshift homes, promotion of the traditional sampan and enactment of traditional practices within the temporary home environment of the refugee camp will be a useful support to primary resources, alongside other secondary literature.

 

Bibliography

Primary Sources

‘The Flood in Kiangsu’, China’s Millions, London, 1931, pp.228-231.

‘Flood Relief Edition’, Hankow Herald, Hankow, 1931.

North China Herald, Vol. 1931, No. 3342, Shanghai, 25 August 1931.

North China Herald, Vol. 1931, No. 3344, Shanghai, 08 September 1931.

North China Herald, Vol. 1931, No. 3345, Shanghai, 15 September 1931.

‘Govt Not Responsible for Floods’, Singapore Standard, Singapore, 7 November 1950, p.4.

‘South China Floods’, The Singapore Free Press and Mercantile Adviser, Singapore, 6 July 1931, p.11.

‘The China Floods’, The Singapore Free Press and Mercantile Adviser, Singapore, 22 October 1908, p.16.

‘Floods in China’, The Singapore Free Press and Mercantile Adviser, Singapore, 19 October 1917, p.10.

 

Select Secondary Sources

Courtney, Chris, The Nature of Disaster, (Cambridge 2018).

Li, Lillian, Fighting Famine in North China: State, Market and Environmental Decline 1690s-1990s, (Stanford 2007).

Pietz, David, Engineering the State: The Huai River and Reconstruction in Nationalist China, 1927-37, (2002).

 

 

[1] ‘Flood Relief Edition’, Hankow Herald, Hankow, 5 September 1931, p.1.

[2] ‘The Flood in Kiangsu’, China’s Millions, London, 1931, pp.228-231.

[3] Chris Courtney, The Nature of Disaster, (Cambridge 2018).

[4] Chris Courtney, The Nature of Disaster, (Cambridge 2018), pp.153-155.

[5] ‘Flood Relief Edition’, Hankow Herald, Hankow, 18 August 1931, p.2.

[6] ‘South China Floods’, The Singapore Free Press and Mercantile Adviser, Singapore, 6 July 1931, p.11.

The fall of Qing dynasty brought about turbulence and change, particularly in treaty-port cities like Shanghai, where, as LaCouture emphasises, dwellings held ritual significance, and physically represented systems of belief for the residents (LaCouture, Dwelling, p.124). Domesticity, and the way in which one occupied the home, became something that was taught in school systems, in subjects like home economics, or domestic management, which were taught to women and girls in particular (LaCouture, Translating, p.1285). In fact, in her article on translating domesticity, LaCouture brings up the writings of Dzung Zoh-yi, a student in such a class, who rejected what she deemed the ‘Americanised’ version of the perfect ideological home, maintained by good housekeeping and sewing, and instead embraced things like cooking and eating which symbolised a happy home for her. (LaCouture, Translating, p.1286). LaCouture uses this example to emphasise that there is a difference between the ideology of domesticity enforced in schools, and what domesticity meant to women and girls in practice. Nowhere is it more interesting to trace the boundaries between practiced and idealised domesticity than in women’s’ magazines which became abundant in the 1920s and 30s.

The magazine Linglong (which translates loosely to ‘elegance’) was a 13cm high weekly magazine published in Shanghai between 1931-1937 and targeted mainly at girls and young women. Even just by looking at the images and the loose translations provided in the archives, it is evident that though students like Dzung rejected Americanised home practices, Western influences in both personal appearance, room layouts, and furniture were abundant. In presenting images of these perfect interiors, magazines like Linglong cultivated taste in their young female readers.

Linglong contained many advertisements for interior decoration and furniture. In Issue 8, May 1931 there is an image of a detachable sofa, advertised (as translated in the archive) as something ‘used in small households in the United States’ (p.15). Issue 45, January 1932, similarly presents a corner of a ‘smoking and drinking room’, taken from the ‘interior design of a French modern home’ (p.22). The implications of both pieces of furniture being portrayed as pinnacles of style and modernity implies that Europe and America were places to be looked up to, whose style was to be emulated. Similarly, in Issue 35, November 1931, a completely glass ‘Western-style dinner table’ is advertised as being ‘clean’, emphasising not only its fashionableness, but also its practicality: this is an item associated with neatness, cleanliness, and modernity (p.16). Here, furniture can be seen as an item to either buy or desire: wanting these Euro-American items was an action of good taste.

Linglong also offered images of tastefully-decorated interiors to inspire readers: Issue 5, April 1932, shows a windowsill with a glass table, a plant, and draping curtains with the caption that’s been translated as ‘if you let a person with artistic taste decorate this window…it will become attractive and pleasant to the eye’ (p.17), showing that it is taste that makes a living room modern, not necessarily the specific furnishings in it. LaCouture argues that Western-style houses and furnishings were a clear indicator of class: an annual wage for a labourer in Tianjin was equivalent to two months’ rent in the Italian concession, for example (LaCouture, Dwelling, p.149). However, magazines like Linglong were cheap and easy to circulate around treaty port cities: cultivating taste through this magazine (rather than the specific furniture in it) became a way to cultivate a shared identity through taste, even before China had a well-defined bourgeoisie.

The magazine was filled with a range of furniture, objects, interiors that signified modernity and taste. Fabrics like gauze, advertised in Issue 103, July 1933 (p.30) as being both fashionable and versatile, to be used for chair cushions, table cloths, and bedcovers. The furnishings of a room themselves, like modern cupboards, recliners and tea tables made of glass as seen in Issue 70, October 1932, (p.42) all were part of this new taste, even if specific readers would not, or could not purchase this item. As LaCouture says, designing the interior became its own form of social distinction (LaCouture, Dwelling, p.156).

Popular magazines like Linglong, read by female students all over China targeted young women to teach them how to consume goods ‘correctly’, building knowledge about home and interiors, creating educational and cultural capital they could show off in the home. Through consuming magazines like Linglong, readers could create a shared identity, signifying that they were women of good and modern taste.

Bibliography:

Primary Sources:

Pinyin Lun, trans. Barbara Mittler and Liying Sun, ‘Cookery’, Linglong, Shanghai, 11 Nov, 1931, p.15, < https://kjc-sv034.kjc.uni-heidelberg.de/frauenzeitschriften/public/magazine/page_content.php?magazin_id=3&year=1931&issue_id=107&issue_number=035&img_issue_page=016> [accessed 26.10.2021].

Zhang Pinhui, trans. Barbara Mittler and Liying Sun, ‘Arrangement of Modern Living Room’, Linglong, Shanghai, 15 April 1931, p.17, < https://kjc-sv034.kjc.uni-heidelberg.de/frauenzeitschriften/public/magazine/page_content.php?magazin_id=3&year=1931&issue_id=5&issue_number=005&img_issue_page=17> [accessed 26.10.2021].

n.g. trans. Barbara Mittler and Liying Sun, ‘My Method for Cleaning Up’, Linglong, Shanghai, 6 May 1931, p.15, < https://kjc-sv034.kjc.uni-heidelberg.de/frauenzeitschriften/public/magazine/page_content.php?magazin_id=3&year=1931&issue_id=46&issue_number=008&img_issue_page=15> [accessed 26.10.2021].

n.g. trans. Barbara Mittler and Liying Sun, ‘Another Woman’s New Style Overcoat’, Linglong, Shanghai, 27 Jan. 1932, p.22, < https://kjc-sv034.kjc.uni-heidelberg.de/frauenzeitschriften/public/magazine/page_content.php?magazin_id=3&year=1932&issue_id=118&issue_number=045&img_issue_page=022> [accessed 26.10.2021].

n.g. trans. Barbara Mittler and Liying Sun, ‘A Cupboard; A Tea Table; A Recliner’, Linglong, Shanghai, 10 Oct. 1932, p.42, < https://kjc-sv034.kjc.uni-heidelberg.de/frauenzeitschriften/public/magazine/page_content.php?magazin_id=3&year=1932&issue_id=141&issue_number=070&img_issue_page=42> [accessed 26.10.2021].

n.g, trans. Barbara Mittler and Liying Sun, ‘The Most Fashionable Decoration’, Linglong, Shanghai, 19 July, 1933, p.30, < https://kjc-sv034.kjc.uni-heidelberg.de/frauenzeitschriften/public/magazine/page_content.php?magazin_id=3&year=1933&issue_id=100&issue_number=103&img_issue_page=030> [accessed 26.10.2021].

 

Secondary Sources:

LaCouture, Elizabeth, ‘Translating Domesticity in Chinese History and Historiography’, The American Historical Review, 124:4 (1 Oct. 2019), pp.1278-89

LaCouture, Elizabeth, Dwelling in the World: Family, House, and Home in Tianjin, China 1860-1960 (New York, 2021).

 

Working with primary sources for my long essay is vital, sure. However, the value of each source needs to be evaluated and examined thoroughly. Therefore, I will be reviewing The Far Eastern Review, which will hopefully be one source – or type of source – that I will be using for my essay on spatial histories in Manila.

The Far Eastern Review (FER) was the first English-language Engineering, Commerce and Finance journal. It started in the Philippines (Manila-based) in 1904 and was published monthly; the publication eventually moved to Shanghai, China, with the last issue published in 1941. The editor, George Bronson Rea, also known as G. B. Rea, was the sole owner of the FER (until his death in 1936). Rea was an American engineer, journalist, publisher and later “mercenary propagandist” for the Japanese.[1]

Rea started his publication in Manila, where he was a delegate of the Philippine government, “lobbying Washington on behalf of Philippine business interests”.[2] However, when he moved the publication to Shanghai in 1906, Rea became more involved in politics, which was reflected in the publication. At first, Rea was “sympathetic” to the Chinese and resisted against foreign powers. However, during his later years, his allegiance changed, and he eventually became an adviser to Manchukuo, Japan’s puppet regime.[3] His political involvement was directly against the journal’s policy, as it stated: “We have no space for long-winded political discussions, nor for gossip”.[4]

Ultimately, while the publication proves useful and insightful for a multitude of content regarding engineering, finance, architecture and commerce, the highly politicised nature of the journal shows that one must be careful in reading its contents. This is especially true in the later issues of the journal, where Rea extends his knowledge and opinions onto his subscribers.

The Far Eastern Review 1: 3 (Manila, August 1904).

[1] Anonymous, ‘George Bronson Rea (1869-1936)’, Gwulo: Old Hong Kong, (date of published unknown). <https://gwulo.com/atom/35922> [accessed 26 October, 2021].

[2] Peter A. Crush, ‘The Far Eastern Review – Indexes & Contents’, ResearchGate (November 2020), p. 2. <https://www.researchgate.net/project/THE-FAR-EASTERN-REVIEW-INDEXES-CONTENTS-PAGES> [accessed 27 October 2021].

[3] ‘George Bronson Rea (1869-1936)’, Gwulo: Old Hong Kong.

[4] Crush, ‘The Far Eastern Review’ p. 2.

I wish to construct a multi-layered spatial history of resistances to British rule in Rangoon from the late 19^th Century, to the early 20^th Century, using the Insane Asylum/Mental Hospital of Rangoon as a narrative tool and microcosm of wider themes, ultimately answering the question of “how, where, and when did the presentation and implementation of colonial institutions of control in British Rangoon fail to enforce the intended spatial practices upon local people”. I hope that this focus on such a small space, and identifying the similar themes of resistance in response to British rule that it shared with other spaces within this larger imagined landscape (that of “Rangoon”), can provide for a perspective of colonial rule that does not look at the effectiveness or ineffectiveness, or the “good” or “bad” outcomes of colonial policies, but rather looks towards undermining the concept that the physical presence of colonial institutions and structures within a space automatically meant control of such a space. In this regard, I have heavily drawn inspiration from Michel de Certeau’s descriptions of individual agency in the face of spatialised and physicalised representations of systems of control.[1] The people of Rangoon had their own agency, and they did not act in the way that the colonialists conceptualised they would do, and therefore we should not assume that they did so when attempting to write a non-colonialist history contextualising this space.

That being said, I face the immediately obvious issue that I cannot read any of the languages which these people spoke other than English. However, I don’t presume to ever be able to write a history which understands or accurately represents the thoughts, feelings, and perspectives that these people held, and to do so would be to undermine the fact that they are so separate from myself. Instead, I can reclaim a particular narrative of theirs by analysing colonialist sources to see how the colonialists conceptualised the space and spatial practices of Rangoon, and then to read between-the-lines to understand where this failed to truly affect itself upon the people of Rangoon; that is a narrative of resistance. For instance, I can read from reports how different patients responded to their treatment within the Insane Asylum/Mental Hospital, and how the local populace undermined its intended role within the colonial conceptualisation of this space, and this allows me to understand where and when colonial control failed. This is a way of presenting the subaltern without presuming to know them.

I also believe that the Insane Asylum/Mental Hospital provides a perfect example of a point in time and space where colonial ideas interacted with local ideas of mental health, and how each one responded to the other is fascinating and indicative of wider themes. Such an analysis has already been done excellently by Jonathan Saha who has explored the institution in various ways to explain British colonial attitudes towards the insane, to describe medicine not as a tool of the state but as a set of state practices which were accepted, rejected, and modified as each individual context called for it, and also to explore the relationship between the human and non-human in conceptualisations of these spaces.[2] However, I want my project to be less of an anatomy of British medical practices in colonial settings, which would require knowledge and skills that I do not possess, and more about the recurrent assertions of local culture against alien ideas that happen throughout this over half a century of history. For this, I plan to use: governmental reports and maps, to understand the development of these spaces and the colonial conceptions of them; newspapers, to understand the bourgeois conceptualisations of this space and how they inhabited it; construction and engineering papers which apply to this space, in order to understand how the physical representations of these institutions were meant to impose themselves upon this space; and various governmental manuals, to understand the state practices which were meant to be enacted within this space.[3] Throughout these sources, as well as many others, there are details and anecdotes of the day-to-day resistances practiced, sometimes unwittingly, by the people living their day-to-day, and how the representations of colonial institutions of control failed to induce the intended spatial practices upon those living within this space.

[1] Michel de Certeau, “Walking in the City”, The Practice of Everyday Life, (Berkeley, 2011), 91-110.

[2] Jonathan Saha, “’Uncivilized Practitioners’: Medical Subordinates, Medico-Legal Evidence and Misconduct in Colonial Burma, 1875-1907”, South East Asia Research, 20: 3 (2012), 423-443; Jonathan Saha, “Madness and the Making of a Colonial Order in Burma”, Modern Asia Studies, 47: 2 (2013),  406-435.

[3] I have accessed multiple sources of each of these listed types, but to provide one specific example of this last type: F. Rath Carreck, Handbook for the Use of Nurses and Attendants of Lunatic Asylums in India & Burma, (Madras, 1910).

 

By the 1930s, the West’s cultural influence on Asia was evident. This was most noticeable in the western architecture present in Asia. In old Saigon, for instance, the Municipal Opera House erected in 1897 looks as if it were situated in the middle of Paris. This western architecture however, had not developed in the countryside yet. This piece will examine how urban architecture in Japan and China of the 1930s was heavily influenced by the West, and on the other hand, in rural Indochina, there is little to no Western influence on architecture.

First, in Tianjin, Elizabeth LaCouture explains that elites had multiple choices when choosing a house; these options were mainly either a courtyard house, a villa in the residential Italian Concession, a row house in the Japanese Concession, a modernist apartment on Rue de France, a townhouse in the British garden city, an alleyway house in the new Chinese municipality, or finally, a Qing-era courtyard house in the old Chinese city.¹ In Japan, Jordan Sand reports that Japanese architects were tasked with combining Western and Japanese styles in their work.² More specifically, Yasuoka Katsuya, a Japanese architect devoted his work to creating “The Ideal House” which, to put it simply, was a Japanese house with Western rooms and facilities.³ Western urban architecture had incorporated itself into that of China and Japan.

On the other hand, in 1919, Charles Robequain writes about houses in rural French Indochina.⁴ During his excursion, he says that rural houses he saw can be divided into two main groups: the land house and the house on stilts.⁵ According to Robequain, both types of houses were built mainly with unrefined natural resources, and they mainly consisted of a few rooms to house domesticated animals, the family, and one room for the kitchen.⁶ It can be seen that the architecture in rural French Indochina was not at all influenced by the West.

 

Biblioraphy:

 

Primary Sources:

Robequain Charles, ‘L’habitation rurale dans l’Indochine française’, Bulletin de l’Association de géographes français, 40:7, 1930, pp. 31-36

 

Secondary Sources:

LaCouture, Elizabeth, Dwelling in the World : Family, House, and Home in Tianjin, China, 1860–1960, (New York, 2021)

Sand, Jordan, House and Home In Modern Japan: Architecture, Domestic Space, and Bourgeois Culture, 1880-1930, (Cambridge, 2005)

 

 

 

 

1. Elizabeth LaCouture, Dwelling in the World: Family, House, and Home in Tianjin, China, 1860–1960, (New York, 2021), p. 123 [↩]
2. Jordan Sand, House and Home In Modern Japan: Architecture, Domestic Space, and Bourgeois Culture, 1880-1930, (Cambridge, 2005), p. 265 [↩]
3. Ibid., p. 267 [↩]
4. Robequain Charles, ‘L’habitation rurale dans l’Indochine française’, Bulletin de l’Association de géographes français, 40:7, 1930, pp. 31-36 [↩]
5. Ibid., p. 32 [↩]
6. Ibid., p. 34 [↩]

In the space of British Rangoon, the administrative capital of British Burma, attempts to control women’s bodies began to falter as they were imposed increasingly at the women’s inconvenience. This particular imposition applies specifically to “prostitution”.

As a part of the British attempt to reduce the prevalence of venereal disease infections amongst their military forces, the Contagious Diseases Act required colonial administrations to register all female “prostitutes”, collect a licensing fee from them, and subject them to regular medical inspections. However, this system of surveillance and control struggled to ever record an accurate number of the women performing sexual acts as a part of a material exchange for a number of reasons, those including: an assertion of cultural practices against the attempted imposition of British conceptions of femininity; and an active rejection of British medical responses to the presence of venereal disease. Both of these responses are acts of resistance, and they fundamentally undermined British efforts to control women’s bodies in this space in order to allow their colonial agents safer sexual gratification.

The British, and more broadly Western, conceptions of domesticity, familial exclusivity, and feminine biological roles were, and are, not, as stressed so heavily in Jordan Sand’s House and Home in Modern Japan, permanent social structures.[1] That sex in the home should be tied to broader spatial practices of familial exclusivity and reproduction, and that the ties of marriage should restrict a woman’s sexual freedom, are presumptions made by the British colonial authorities which quickly became understood as not being so universal. When attempting to define what form of material exchange deserved the label of “prostitution” in Rangoon, the British authorities realised that the cultural relativity of these conceptions of sex meant that they could not control nor cajole the Burmese women into conformity. As the 1875 annual report for the lock-hospitals in the wider Pegu region suggests:

‘There is no doubt a number of women in Rangoon, who, if not prostitutes, are next door to it. These are chiefly, if not entirely, among Burmans, and it is always a question of some difficulty whether any individual of this class should be registered or not. The existence of this class is a part of the Burmese social structure, and any harsh dealing with its members, so long as they keep within certain limits, would produce an outcry. What I mean is, that there are many women who lead loose lives, and have three or four lovers a-piece, who support them. Their neighbours recognize the situation with but a modified disapproval, until the women fall a stage lower. It is then that we interfere; but it is not always an easy matter to decide, in sympathy with the popular sentiment, when a woman has overstepped the line, and in such cases the order to register is generally vehemently opposed.’[2]

These were not women in a brothel working for a fee, unlike the British provision of prostitutes for their colonial agents, but these were women with specific and publicly known arrangements with certain people, and the communal protection that they received in defence of this culturally acceptable practice allowed them to resist any definition of the sex acts that they were performing within their own cultural community’s space that the British sought to impose upon them. The domestic space of these women’s homes thus become a space of resistance and security against colonial acts.

Beyond the spatialised cultural contexts of these women’s homes offering a space of resistance, the British also found that their requirements for evidence of “prostitution” further troubled their own definitions of who a “prostitute” was. In many of the impoverished villages surrounding the roads entering Rangoon, the British authorities struggled to charge any of the women who were offering to perform sex acts in exchange for material gain since many of these women were married.[3] This difficulty arose because the British required such women’s husbands to testify to their “infidelity”, and, since these women were generally performing these exchanges with the agreement of their husbands, the husbands rarely ever did so. In fact, the general reluctance of any of the Non-European population to testify as witnesses to a woman’s “prostitution” meant that only a single woman was convicted of unlicensed prostitution throughout the entirety of 1875, only 5 were arrested and agreed to join the register, and none were fined.[4] This lack of control only worsened for the British as those who had joined the register began to resist the increasingly invasive control of their bodies.

As cases of venereal diseases amongst colonial agents rose throughout the year, the lock-hospitals were told to increase the frequency of these women’s medical examinations to a weekly rate.[5] However, the lock-hospitals in Rangoon lacked the capacity for such frequent examinations, and thus, upon arrival at such institutions, women were forced to wait for inconvenient periods of time. On top of this, it was also the practice of these particular lock-hospitals to mistakenly classify various urinary tract infections as cases of gonorrhoea, thus resulting in many women being imprisoned within these institutions for weeks for having very common, non-contagious infections.[6] These women were not allowed to leave under the belief that if they were allowed to, then they would continue to perform sex acts and spread the venereal diseases further, and thus a woman whose sexuality was controlled and regulated by the state was mistrusted by the state, thus intensifying the state’s attempts to control her. The result of the increased frequency of these examinations were protests outside the magistrate’s office, women absconding from the examinations altogether, and a refusal to pay the fines associated with such absconding, meaning that 22% of the women on the register had to be removed since the British officials had no practical way of contacting and controlling these women.[7] Within a few years, the Contagious Diseases Act was scrapped due to its ineffectiveness at reducing the prevalence of venereal diseases amongst the male colonial agents, and a non-compulsory clinic for women with such diseases was constructed within the general hospital of Rangoon.[8]

Thus, despite the official imposition of controls over sex acts in the space of Rangoon, the interpersonal reality of the situation did not widely change due to the cultural practices tied to these spaces being alien to the types of controls being imposed by the British. Additionally, the construction of lock-hospitals by the British undermined their own attempts of controlling women’s bodies since they worked against the convenience of the women whom they were trying to impose them upon. Instead, the resisting actions of the people and, most importantly, these women in Rangoon helped contribute to altering the British colonial authorities’ entire approach to controlling women’s sexuality in these spaces.

[1] Jordan Sand, “Introduction: Dwelling and the Space of Modern Japan” in House and Home in Modern Japan: Reforming Everyday Life 1880-1930, (Cambridge, Mass., 2005), 1-19.

[2] Pegu Division Annual Report on the Lock-Hospital for the year 1875, (Rangoon, 1876), 5.

[3] Ibid., 7.

[4] Ibid., 8.

[5] Ibid., 5.

[6] Ibid., 9.

[7] Ibid., 5.

[8] London, School of Oriental and Asian Studies Library, PP MS 14/002/067, Charles Stewart Addis, Letter Book 1892-1893, fol. 312r.

The modern homes and houses prevalent in Treaty-Port China highlight the interconnectedness and competitiveness of global markets in these urban landscapes. Elizabeth LaCouture discusses the urban landscape of the treaty-port city of Tianjin and how the modern home was developed as a result of foreign concessions competing to form a universal model of modernity. This, therefore, allowed a Tianjin modern style to emerge, where style and taste became a measurement of social status, thus allowing a bourgeois class to form.[1] LaCouture examines the role of rugs and how these rugs were initially created for a western market. However, Chinese urbanites eventually adopted it, “incorporating American and European Orientalism into their homes”. This illustrates the complex network of global capitalism and bourgeois tastes experienced in Tianjin.[2] In this chapter, she researched the role of women’s magazines and how domestic roles for women were emphasised in Republic-era China. In addition to this, the culture capital women held in this era (facilitated through women’s magazines) allowed them to be a proprietor of knowledge, therefore gendering the knowledge of the political landscape of treaty-port Tianjin, as women made sense of the world around them; by using, buying worldly goods and designing their homes.[3]

Reading LaCouture’s chapter on designing houses and homes in Tianjin made me curious about whether other treaty ports in China were facing similar experiences through the competitive global markets due to different western concessions. Therefore, I would like to examine Shanghai’s quest for homes called lilongs and whether or not they were influenced by the global markets and foreign concessions in the way that Tianjin’s modern homes were.

A lilong is a neighbourhood alleyway. These were homes in certain alleys that were “gated, hierarchically organised compounds”, from one to four storey’s high.[4] Lilongs almost “mirrored” traditional Chinese homes; they were a bridge between the public and private spaces, where the private space of their home directly met public alleyways, where residents sat talking to their neighbours or where vendors set up stalls.[5] Lilongs were constructed due to an increased Chinese population in Shanghai, as some Chinese were fleeing Taiping rebels.[6] The lilong was therefore a way to place the increased Chinese population into Shanghai, after Westerners took advantage of the housing shortages.[7]

Although Shanghai allowed for a westernised way of life, the lilong did not share the same experience as Tianjin. Lilongs resulted from an increased Western presence and forced the Chinese population to be housed in these alleys with their extended families and neighbours, restructuring the family life and cultural praxis of the Chinese population.

 

[1] Elizabeth LaCouture, Dwelling in the World: Family, House, and Home in Tianjin, China, 1860–1960 (New York, 2021), p. 187.

[2] Ibid., p. 185.

[3] Ibid., p. 188.

[4] Gregory Bracken, ‘The Shanghai lilong. A new concept of home in China’, International Institute for Asian Studies, Issue 86 (Summer, 2020). <https://www.iias.asia/the-newsletter/article/shanghai-lilong-new-concept-home-china>

[5] Ibid.

[6] Renee Y. Chow. ‘In a Field of Party Walls: Drawing Shanghai’s Lilong.” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, 73: 1 (2014), p. 19.

[7] Ibid. pp. 20-23.

Pauline Roosemalen’s edited chapter on the Netherlands Indies Planning Commission provides a valuable insight into the notion of modernisation in relation to formal town planning in the Dutch East Indies. Roosemalen argues how Dutch initiatives to engage in formal town planning processes facilitated the modernisation of the colony for the Indonesian people in the early 20th century.^[1] However, her argument falls upon an over-simplistic view of the nature of ‘modernisation’. Modernisation is viewed entirely within a Eurocentric and materialistic view, which filters Roosemalen’s view of Indonesian cities and kampongs. Dutch planned cities are viewed positively due to their material abundance and European style visual aesthetic, while native kampongs are viewed negatively because of their unplanned nature and ‘limited visual aesthetic’.^[2]

I would contradict this argument by highlighting the limitations of Dutch town planning processes as agents of modernisation and the diversity of the Indonesian kampong. Kampongs are not monolithic, and neither is the modern Indonesian state. It encompasses a vast array of islands and resultingly cultures, languages and ethnicities. The diversity of the Indonesian kampong reflects the diversity of its people, a factor that Roosemalen does not present. Each kampong utilises a unique architectural style and town planning structure. Kampongs in Medan have houses with large, triangular, outward protruding grass roofs.^[3] The extravagance and height of rooftop design increases depending on the importance of the building. Houses in Kampong Garut are one storey structures with tiled roofs and surrounded by large thatched windows to facilitate the free flow of air in and out of the structure.^[4] Kampong Nias Selatan displays formal town planning elements as structures are arranged in rows adjacent to each other, with wide streets separating groups of residences. Next to these houses are large communal gathering centres with chairs arranged for outdoor recreation or discussion.^[5] Even by European standards, kampongs displayed formal town planning and architectural design elements that provided necessary services for each community. Each kampong reflected its community’s social structure and its relationship to the landscape around them. They were not monolithic as Roosemalen might suggest and deserve further analysis as a distinct element of local town planning.

Additionally, Roosemalen argues a strong relationship between Dutch town planning and modernisation despite prevalent urbanisation issues that were evident even amongst the European population of its cities. In 1901, Surabaya came under high alert as the Shell Transport and Trading Company built petroleum reservoirs with weak foundations next to rivers that flowed into the harbour.^[6] The reservoirs were at risk of breakage if filled too high, risking the entire Surubayan maritime industry and water reserves.^[7] Even after the decentralisation policy and enactment of the town planning ordinance in 1903, the Singapore Rotary Club highlights pertaining issues of the Batavian urban landscape.^[8] The article compares Singapore and Batavia with an apparent British bias towards its own colonial cities. However, the article does highlight important issues relating to formal town planning processes. By 1938, the city was organised with ‘little evidence of town-planning’ as buildings were placed abnormally distant from each other, overpopulation was rife, supply of basic necessities were limited, and traffic conditions were chaotic with no formal regulation in place.^[9] Batavia is viewed as neither visually aesthetic nor materially abundant, two factors that enforced Roosemalen’s notion of Batavian modernness.

The formalised nature of town planning is what enforced Roosemalen’s argument of Dutch’ modernisation’. It exemplified the difference between the ‘modern’ Netherland Indies city and the ‘unmodern’ Indonesian Kampong. From the short analysis above, Dutch-planned cities appeared less formal and ‘modern’ as previously perceived. The analysis of urban planning appears to be both eurocentric and hypocritical as European urban landscapes did not even fit the parameters of modernisation set by Europeans. Although it is important to understand how institutionalised town planning affected the development of the Indonesian city, it is also vital to detach ourselves from a purely eurocentric view of ‘development and modernisation’ and engage with alternate understandings of town planning based on the political and environmental context of the landscape. 

 

Bibliography:

Primary Sources:

KITLV Leiden, ‘Kampong in Garoet’, photograph, 1910, Garut Indonesia, KITLV Leiden.

Lett, A, ‘Het dorpsplein van de kampong Sedregeasi op Zuid-Nias’, photograph, 1895, Nias Selatan Indonesia, Museum Volkenkunde.

‘Netherlands India’, The Straits Times, Singapore. June 24 1901, p. 3, <https://eresources.nlb.gov.sg/newspapers/Digitised/Page/straitstimes19010624-1.1.3?ST=1&AT=search&k=town%20planning%20ordinance%20batavia&QT=town,planning,ordinance,batavia&oref=article> [accessed 20th October 2021].

Onbekend, ‘Een kampong in Medan’, photograph, 1920, Medan Indonesia, Museum Volkenkunde.

Singapore Rotary Club, ‘Java and Malaya Compared’, The Morning Tribune, Singapore, 14th July 1938, p. 8, <https://eresources.nlb.gov.sg/newspapers/Digitised/Page/morningtribune19380714-1.1.8?ST=1&AT=search&k=(Town%20Planning)%20and%20(Batavia)&QT=town,planning,and,batavia&oref=article> [accessed 20th October 2021].

Secondary Source:

Roosemalen, Pauline, ‘Netherlands Indies Town Planning: An Agent for Modernisation’, in Freek Colombijn and Joost Cote (eds), Cars, Conduits and Kampongs: The Modernisation of the Indonesian City, 1920-1960 (Leiden, 2014), pp. 87-120.

 

 

^[1] Pauline Roosemalen, ‘Netherlands Indies Town Planning: An Agent for Modernisation’, in Freek Colombijn and Joost Cote (eds), Cars, Conduits and Kampongs: The Modernisation of the Indonesian City, 1920-1960 (Leiden, 2014), pp. 87-90.

^[2] Ibid., pp. 115-116.

^[3] Onbekend, ‘Een kampong in Medan’, photograph, 1920, Medan Indonesia, Museum Volkenkunde.

^[4] KITLV Leiden, ‘Kampong in Garoet’, photograph, 1910, Garut Indonesia, KITLV Leiden

^[5] A Lett, ‘Het dorpsplein van de kampong Sedregeasi op Zuid-Nias’, photograph, 1895, Nias Selatan Indonesia, Museum Volkenkunde.

^[6] ‘Netherlands India’, The Straits Times, Singapore. June 24 1901, p. 3, <https://eresources.nlb.gov.sg/newspapers/Digitised/Page/straitstimes19010624-1.1.3?ST=1&AT=search&k=town%20planning%20ordinance%20batavia&QT=town,planning,ordinance,batavia&oref=article> [accessed 20th October 2021].

^[7] Ibid.

^[8] Singapore Rotary Club, ‘Java and Malaya Compared’, The Morning Tribune, Singapore, 14th July 1938, p. 8, <https://eresources.nlb.gov.sg/newspapers/Digitised/Page/morningtribune19380714-1.1.8?ST=1&AT=search&k=(Town%20Planning)%20and%20(Batavia)&QT=town,planning,and,batavia&oref=article> [accessed 20th October 2021].

^[9] Ibid.

In the first half of the twentieth century, various parts of China were under colonial control. In the north, Japan controlled Manchuria from 1931 to 1945. In the south, Guangzhoudong was part of French Indochina from 1898 until it was taken over by the Japanese in 1943. In the early stages of either colony, French and Japanese officials employed different tactics in the colonial community building. This piece will compare Japanese and French efforts of community building in Manchuria and Guangzhoudong respectively.

In Japan, colonial city planning efforts prioritized Japanese prosperity. In order to do so, they planned to create an array of organized farming villages with the help of the Guangdong Army. According to David Tucker, in 1933 Japanese planners proposed to move over 100,000 farmers to fifty new villages in northern Manchuria.¹ Tucker explains that Japanese planners saw Manchuria as a blank slate, perfect for the pursuit of utopian plans.² The plan, as Tucker describes, consists of the creation of villages, each comprised of three hamlets whose goal was to sustain an economically and psychologically viable life for Japanese immigrant farmers.³ It is important to note that these hamlets were built in order to appeal to the everyday life of the Japanese. Tucker reveals that “the village plan portrays an entire plain as completely Japanese; one sees at first not even a sliver of Chinese space.”⁴ Japanese planners aimed to create a Japanese utopia; the lives of the Chinese immigrants were not recognized. In accordance, these villages were heavily militarized in order to keep the non-Japanese out. In Tucker’s words: “the plan accommodates two sets of very different activities, those of the Japanese settlers and those of the enemy it defends against.”⁵ With this in mind, Japanese planners’ goal in the creation of farming villages in Manchuria was to create a Japanese utopia. All plans revolved around the prosperity and military protection of the Japanese immigrant. On the other hand, French officials sought to create a community where colonials shared prosperity.

In 1902, Alfred Cunningham writes of his experience of French colonization efforts in Guangzhoudong. In a similar fashion to the Japanese hamlets and villages, Cunningham reveals that “French Administrators are assisted by a system of rural communes;” however, whereas the Japanese hamlets were under Japanese control, the communes in Guangzhoudong appointed a council of elders to collect taxes and decide where tax money should be allocated for infrastructure.⁶ Although Cunningham does not clearly say who these elders are and who appoints them, there are multiple distinctions between the French and the elders, implying that the elders are in fact Chinese. Moreover, the French military was not entirely French. In order to create a community space, Cunningham tells us that French officials employed a “garde indigene,” a local police force comprised of Chinese policemen.⁷ The greatest difference between the Japanese and the French was the French’s welcoming community building efforts. Cunningham says that in the French communes “everything was being prepared for the accommodation of the population, foreign and native, by a paternal government.”

In short, in France and Japan’s colonial city planning efforts in China, Japanese officials sought to create a Japanese utopia, built by and for the Japanese people, while French officials created a community which favored the prosperity of all.

 

 

Bibliography:

Cunningham, Alfred, The French in Tonkin and South China, (London, 1902)

Tucker, David, ‘2. City Planning without Cities: Order and Chaos in Utopian Manchukuo’ in Mariko Asano Tamanoi (ed), Crossed Histories, (Honolulu, 2005), pp. 53-81

 

1. Tucker, David, ‘2. City Planning without Cities: Order and Chaos in Utopian Manchukuo’ in Mariko Asano Tamanoi (ed), Crossed Histories, (Honolulu, 2005), p. 53 [↩]
2. Tucker, ‘City Planning without Cities’, p. 55 [↩]
3. Tucker, ‘City Planning without Cities’, pp. 61-64 [↩]
4. Tucker, ‘City Planning without Cities’, p. 67 [↩]
5. Tucker, ‘City Planning without Cities’, p. 66 [↩]
6. Cunningham, Alfred, The French in Tonkin and South China, (London, 1902), pp.13-14 [↩]
7. Cunningham, The French in Tonkin and South China, p.14 [↩]

The first Europeans to come into contact with fengshui were missionaries who spread inland in the late 1840s and 50s as a result of the Opium Wars (Brunn, p.40.). The first record of Anglo-Dutch-German-American writing on fengshui was in the Chinese Repository Volume VI, published from May 1837-April 1838 by protestant missionaries working in China, intended to inform Europeans about life in China. For the next 13 volumes of the repository, fengshui was mentioned a few more times, either under the heading ‘geomancy’, or under from a linguistic/translation angle explaining the meaning of the word ‘fung’. Tracing the linguistic and cultural understandings of fengshui reveals that missionaries engaged linguistically with Chinese spiritualism, they made absolutely no progress over 15 years in understanding the practice of fengshui.

Wright explains that the underlying belief of fengshui is that the worlds of gods and men were interconnected, and that men needed to respect forces of nature and their ancestors, who played an important role in this interconnected web (Wright, p.41). That gods and men, living and dead were all interconnected and interacting is an important belief that protestant missionaries were attempting to understand in the Chinese Repository. In Vol. XVIII published in 1849, Philo explains the “Philological Diversions, illustrating the word Fung or Wind, in its various meanings and uses as they are exhibited by Chinese Lexicographers, Poets, Historians and the Common People” (Vol. XVIII, p.470). Philo provides the results of his “leisure reading in Chinese” with the hope that they will “entertain the readers of the Chinese Repository (Vol. XVIII, p.470). He expresses much personal delight at the “poetical and harmonical uses of this remarkable character”, and proceeds to discuss its multitudes of meaning, including ‘breath’, ‘spirit’ (Vol XVIII, p.473), ‘producer of all things’, ‘messenger of heaven and earth’ (Vol XVIII, p.474). While Philo’s account does seem to be a mere exploration through literature of the various meanings of this word, his article elicited a response in Volume XIX of the Chinese repository published the following year in 1850. W.H Medhurst Sen produced ‘Animadversions on the Philological Diversions of Philo’ (Vol. XIX, p.486), where he criticized Philo for his lack of accuracy in some of his translation. Medhurst states that ‘in Philo’s estimation, the Chinese regard Heaven and Earth “the Parents of all things”, as this controlling cause, and fung as one of their active agents in this grand operation’ (Vol.XIX, p.486), thus further interpreting the word’s meaning. The implications of these two discussions of the word ‘fung’, is that clearly attempts were made, even if just from a linguistic angle, at understanding the Chinese perspective of the world. What a linguistic analysis of a word could reveal about Chinese cultural perspectives was taken up with enthusiasm, and discussed by Protestant missionaries.

The same enthusiasm and attempt to understand a cultural perspective cannot be said about the practice of fengshui itself. In its first mention in Volume VI of the Chinese Repository, published 1837-8, fengshui is called a “vain superstition”, a belief that “buildings have an influence on all things around them”, that when “in a proper state of repair” they will cause “soil to be productive, the people prosperous, and the elements (such as fire, water, &c.) submissive and obedient” (Vol. VI, p.190). It is also remarked with disappointment that it is used by both commoners and distinguished men, and that the process of building a house or burial place takes months to make a decision on the precise place. The whole process is not treated with much sympathy from the writer, and rather as a silly idiosyncrasy, an ‘unaccountable Chinese superstition’, containing very little sense (Vol. VI, p.190). Nearly 15 years later, in Volume XX of the Chinese Repository published 1851, nothing has changed about the missionaries’ understandings of fengshui, but perhaps there is even more annoyance at the existence of the practice. This time, fengshui is discussed in is titled “Prohibitions addressed to the Chinese converts of the Romish faith, translated by P.P Thoms, with notes illustrating the customs of the country” (Vol XX, p.85). Specifically, “those who cause to be engraved on the tomb-stones, that such a hill was selected; and that the person lies towards such a point of the compass, and was buried on such a propitious day, or foolishly believe the geomancy of the fung-shwui- Sin” (Vol XX, p.90). After describing the practice of fengshui as a sin, the writer calls it ‘useless’ and ‘absurd’, and that it is only the ‘minds of the simple’, who could believe it. There is a tone of complete refusal to understand why a family would go through so much trouble to find a grave, after the geomancer will “pass over the same ground twenty times over” (Vol XX, p.90). As Brenda Yeoh argues, it was simply not understandable to Western minds why burial practices were so important for the Chinese, and so they were simply labeled as a sin, and as a foolish practice for their fellow missionaries to dismiss (Yeoh, p.288).

Comparing these four passages reveals that while linguistically missionaries were eager to engage with and debate understandings and uses of the word ‘fung’, to understand how the Chinese viewed the world, they were utterly unwilling to use that same knowledge of Chinese world viewpoint to understand the practice of fengshui. It is almost surprising, that over 15 years no deeper attempts were made to understand this clearly important practice, and that fengshui was described in both entries in fairly similar terms, with the same type of annoyance. This shows that the understanding of the worldview, and the practice itself were two separated things in the Western mind, and that while one was treated as a stimulating intellectual exercise, meant to delight Western readers, the other was treated as a non-acceptance of Christianity, a sin, and a fault to be righted by the protestants.

 

 

Primary Sources

Bridgemen, James Granger (ed.), Chinese Repository Volume VI, (Canton, 1838).

Williams, Samuel Wells (ed.), Chinese Repository Volume XVIII, (Canton, 1849).

Williams, Samuel Wells (ed.), Chinese Repository Volume XIX, (Canton, 1850).

Williams, Samuel Wells (ed.), Chinese Repository Volume XX, (Canton, 1851).

 

Secondary Sources:

Bruun, Ole, An Introduction to Fengshui (Cambridge University Press, 2008).

Wright, Arthur, ‘The Cosmology of the Chinese City’ in G. William Skinner ed. The City in Late Imperial China (1977).

Yeoh, Brenda, Contesting Space in Colonial Singapore (NUS Press, 2003), pp.281-311.