This volume is the result of a discussion between its editors, both historians of empires, about the possibility of comparing the experiences of imperial European powers and Japan in the Pacific region during the period of time between the First Opium War (1839–42) and the Second World War (1939–45). This foreign intrusion and presence generated a large amount of material evidence on the eastern coast of the Asian continent. As a result, several Asian cities had entire districts designed and built by imperial powers. Several generations of Europeans, Russians, and Japanese moved to the colonies, treaty ports, and...

When prominent Japanese poet Yosano Akiko traveled to Harbin in spring of 1928, she had mixed feelings about the city. She was impressed by its orderly layout, by its Russian-European style architecture, broad paved streets, shops, parks, and cafes. Grand Russian mansions and beautiful churches exemplified Imperial Russia’s former presence in this part of the world. However, she also noticed that the Russian influence in Harbin showed signs of decay. Some of the mansions were abandoned. There were Russian beggars on the street. The vast Russian cemetery with white marble gravestones covered with flowers reminded her that at least one...

Spring 1937 likely represented the high point in the short history of the puppet state of Manchukuo (1932–45) and its new capital.¹ The hostilities following that summer’s Marco Polo Bridge Incident inevitably required a reallocation of resources for the prosecution of war in China. And though the first five-year plan was launched that year, an array of new buildings was already completed or nearing completion, emerging amid a haven of parks, tree-lined boulevards, and modern infrastructure. The Japanese media understandably lavished a fair amount of attention on the new city and its promise, sometimes in foreign languages in an...

In September 1931, the Japanese colonial army in Manchuria, the Kwantung Army, began operations to take over Manchuria, the northeastern provinces of China. The Kwantung Army long had exercised strong influence over Zhang Zuolin, a regional military authority based in Shenyang, but had grown dissatisfied with his failure to cooperate completely and his military adventurism in North China. In June 1928, Zhang, defeated by Chiang Kai-shek’s Guomindang Army, returned to Shenyang from a failed attempt to control Beijing. As his train approached Shenyang, a group of Kwantung Army officers exploded a bomb, destroying his railcar and assassinating him. Zhang’s son,...

Within Chinese scholarship on urban development, two major schools of thought stand out.¹ The first focuses on the humanities and uses historical, sociological, and anthropological approaches to understand city growth. Another school of thought mainly utilizes architectural and urban planning methodology. Both groups have been particularly interested in the treaty ports of modern China as objects of study; they have primarily focused their efforts on understanding the relationship between spatial and cultural change, including the link between urban construction and the development of social and communal life.

The most successful works to date have used Shanghai as their case study,...

Mathias Erzberger (1875–1921), a member of the German Reichstag representing the Catholic Centre Party, delivered a speech in the budget talks in the German Reichstag in 1908, in which he sharply criticized the expenditure of a total of 110 million Reichsmark for the German leasehold in Kiaochow China in 1897.¹ He said, “I believe that if that 110 million had been spent in Germany, one could make the finest garden in the world even out of the Mark of Brandenburg.”² At that time he could not know that the final bill for developing Kiaochow would run much higher, in...

In 1842, Great Britain and China signed the Treaty of Nanjing, ending the First Opium War, redefining five cities along the Chinese coast as treaty ports, and creating urban spaces of indeterminate cultural and political identity within which international trade could legally proceed within and adjacent to Qing imperial boundaries.¹ The creation of such cities, lying as they did beyond the bureaucratic reach of any formal, colonial administrative authority, coupled with the unwillingness of foreign representatives to expose themselves or their constituents to Qing rule of law, necessitated the establishment of a new system of extraterritoriality whereby foreign residents remained...

Erected nearly a century ago, the old Hong Kong Supreme Court (1898–1912) still stands proud on the eastern perimeter of Statue Square, Central. Dwarfed by commercial skyscrapers which have since risen all around, including the HSBC headquarters by Sir Norman Foster, it is one of very few historic buildings left on Hong Kong Island dating back to the heady days of British imperial rule. Even the harbor’s edge, which it once graced, greeting visitors as they arrived by boat, has almost disappeared from view. Indeed, it is no longer even a court of law, having been the offices of...

Despite all the evidence to the contrary, people still like to imagine the British Empire as a monolithic structure, which exerted from its center in London a high level of control over the scattered colonial possessions and other spheres of influence in which the British nation had interests. This is, of course, anything but an accurate depiction of how the empire really functioned. The mandarins in Whitehall were seldom able to supervise Britain’s far-flung colonies to the extent that they would have liked, and much imperial policy, although decided in London, was left to those on the periphery to implement....

A few short years after the conclusive French conquest and occupation of the imperial citadel in Hanoi, the urban development of this new, soon-to-be capital became a priority for the colonial administration and a key concern of the civil population. The self-designated spokesperson for that small but fast-expanding European community, the editor of the first French language newspaper, l’Avenir du Tonkin, made urban commentary an integral part of this new medium. Successive editors continued this role, using the paper and its Chronique Locale¹ column, as well as front page columns when the occasion demanded it, to voice criticism and confidence...

Major shifts in the paradigm of Western medical thought and practice occurred in the late nineteenth century, during the high age of imperialism. The discoveries made by Louis Pasteur, Robert Koch, and a host of other bacteriologists from the 1860s onward had profound effects on medicine and empirical science. Germ theory underpinned the conception that diseases, through the knowledge of particular pathogens, could be prevented and cured. The understanding of the basis of infection and contagion led to the implementation of preventive measures that greatly reduced disease-related mortality, and touched everyday life through courses of vaccinations, water purification, sanitation, and...

The urban built environment of Hanoi, Vietnam, has been the object of much writing in recent years. This scholarship focuses on the colonizers’ attempts to assert their domination over the territory and people of Indochina through the transformation and expansion of Hanoi’s urban space.¹ Writers insist on the intentional destruction of pre-colonial administrative and religious artifacts (citadel, pagodas, temples, etc.) and their replacement by pompous civic buildings symbolizing the dominance of the French tutelary power. Authors also typically highlight the vast urban planning operations that led to the construction of residential neighborhoods south and west of Hanoi’s old merchant city....

The European built form in Asia was a colonial enterprise from the very beginning—an expression of imperial aspirations in challenging environments. Once the gun smoke cleared, the diplomats, traders, and sovereign agents used the built form to send a clear message of new order: a court representing European justice, the government house on a hill representing power, the banks representing financial might, and hospitals representing progress, along with schools, parks, and churches.

The cities explored in this volume involved different forms of foreign authority—formal colonies, treaty ports, leased territories, concessions, and settlements, yet they were all based on...