Global Connections. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2013. xiii, 281 pp., [16] pp. of plates. (Tables, figures.) US$50.00, cloth, ISBN 978-988-8139-41-5; US$25.00, paper, ISBN 978-988-8139-42-2.
The historic sections of many Asian cities are marked by a distinctive amalgam of foreign- and native-built modern buildings that belie a variety of political, social and cultural conflicts and exchanges that are otherwise unmarked in the contemporary city. This compelling collection of essays augments the normative political narratives of European and Japanese colonial expansion in East and Southeast Asia by examining the social histories of the colonial built environment in Manchuria, coastal China, Hong Kong, and Hanoi. Consisting of an introductory chapter, 11 essays, and one concluding chapter, this volume underscores the formative role of architecture and planning in variously fostering and complicating foreign colonial schemes and fomenting the creation of modern, novel modes of architecture, knowledge and lifeways among the native population that contested the perquisites of foreign powers.
The first three essays explore the confrontation among Russian and Japanese imperialism, Chinese nationalism, and French colonial enterprise in Manchuria. Victor Zatsepine examines Harbin’s success as a Russian economic outpost and notes that Russian and Soviet influence continued after both Russia’s defeat by Japan in 1905 and the Bolshevik revolution of 1917. Bill Sewell notes that the hybrid Euro-Asian architecture of Changchun bespoke Japanese ambition to distill a modern Asian urban vision in Manchukuo. However, he opines, rather than representing vigour, the city revealed the spiritual emptiness of all imperialist societies, while effectively manifesting the overwhelming state power that propelled Japan’s colonial project.
David Tucker explores the complexities of colonial engagements in Asia in his chapter on the attempts by French investors and the engineering firm Société d’exploitation des établissements Brossard Mopin to pursue business opportunities in the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo. Although unrecognized diplomatically by the major powers, Manchukuo nonetheless elicited interest from foreign governments hoping to ensure that markets would remain open to their nation’s commerce and from foreign enterprises eager to exploit business opportunities afforded by Japan’s intensive development scheme. The French government was markedly less hostile to Japan’s colonial enterprise than Britain or the USA, while some officials viewed Japan sympathetically as a fellow proponent of the mission civilisatrice in Asia. Brossard Mopin, which was especially active in Indochina, pursued Manchurian contracts, which it won due to Japanese enthusiasm for fostering foreign commercial engagements in Manchukuo. Awarded the contract for the Foreign Ministry in Changchun, Brossard Mopin’s building lacked the tell-tale marks of synthetic Pan-Asian architecture and seems to reflect a desire that Manchukuo be, above all, “modern.”
The following three chapters on Tianjin, Qingdao and Shanghai highlight the diversity of European colonialisms and their influence within treaty-port China. Zhang Chang and Liu Yue emphasize Tianjin’s singularity as a hyper-colony where some nine countries established concessions and where public space, community organization, and cultural politics were distinct from the dominant pattern set in Shanghai. Such international diversity, Zhang and Liu argue, underlay a generally “eclectic” approach to architecture and living for elite Chinese and foreigners alike. Although vague, their suggestive analysis highlights the variety of urban space in semi-colonial eastern China. Klaus Muhlhaun’s chapter discusses the attempts by Imperial Germany to organize Qingdao according to the dictates of military concerns and German imperial ideology, which imposed distinct segregation of different peoples. The number of Chinese living in the city forced some changes so that Qingdao came to represent a new “enlightened” form of the imperial project that was designed to be more efficient, more flexible, and less openly violent than its nineteenth-century variants.
Two chapters explore the construction of the Hong Kong Supreme Court and the selection of a site for the University of Hong Kong and the subsequent building of the main campus. Although intended to serve as edifices of colonial domination, both projects were affected by Asian colonial subjects, who built the structures and also served as benefactors, including, in the case of the University of Hong Kong, the Parsee merchant (i.e., opium dealer) Hormusjee Mody, who paid for the Main Building. Similarly, colonial justice and university education, though serving British privilege, also provided means for some colonial subjects to seek advantages in colonial society. These two notable structures of colonial rule thus complicate our understanding of imperialism as a system of simple foreign dominance.
The final three essays explore the attempts of French urban planners and colonial medical theorists to create ordered public spaces and salubrious hygiene in Hanoi. Like Hong Kong, Hanoi was the seat of a potent colonial regime, yet the vagaries of power and advantage could betray imperial ambitions. The last chapter by Danielle Labbe et al. notes that young Vietnamese architects, whom the colonial administration intended to serve as technicians under French guidance, emerged as significant, autonomous designers and developers of the city. In particular, Vietnamese architects took the lead in creating a hybrid Vietnamese-French modern house that dominated the New Indigenous Quarter of the city.
All of the chapters are clearly written and richly documented. Some essays address broad themes that would appeal to general readers, while others examine discrete topics that would most likely appeal to academic specialists alone. By combining studies on British, French, Russian, German and Japanese colonialism, this volume will be especially rewarding for all interested in modern empires and colonial studies. As such, Harbin to Hanoi will appeal to a variety of readers interested in urban history, architecture and imperialism in East and Southeast Asia during the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as well as those interested in European politics and colonialism as a whole.
Peter Carroll
Northwestern University, Evanston, USA
pp. 307-309