I have identified two primary sources pertaining to this week’s reading on the treaty ports and extraterritoriality. Both concern Shanghai’s International Settlement during China’s war with Japan in the 1930s and 1940s. Taken together, they open up interesting avenues of inquiry into the ways in which Western extraterritoriality in the city was disrupted and how it negotiated the threat—and, later, the reality—of occupation by the forces of Imperial Japan. More broadly, they provide an opportunity to investigate the manipulation and negotiation of urban space in this Asian metropolis during a particularly tumultuous period.

The first source is an article in the Far Eastern Review written by the paper’s editor, the American C. J. Laval. Dating from November 1937, towards the end of the Battle of Shanghai, the article, entitled “How to End the War”, offered the author’s own assessment of the prospects for China’s war against the invading Japanese. Despite praising the valour of Chinese soldiers and the resolve of the nation, Laval urged China to enter into negotiations with Japan in the hope of securing a more favourable settlement, rather than relying futilely on a war of attrition or on international intervention.¹ Yet the aspect of his article that I find particularly intriguing is his description of the foreign settlements in Shanghai, with which he chose to open his discussion:

“…some semblance of the former busy appearance of the streets has been restored in the French Concession and in that portion of the International Settlement south of Soochow Creek where the shops, the theaters and the dance halls have reopened, transportation services again are operating and the familiar throngs of Chinese crowd thoroughfares and narrow passages to all intent and appearance indifferent to the encirclement of Japanese bayonets around the entire area that now is under Japanese military domination”²

At the time of writing, Japan had not yet entered into war with the Western powers and had therefore not occupied the International Settlement or the French Concession following its conquest of Shanghai. Indeed, it is a well-known folkloric story in China that the numerous residents of the International Settlement, Chinese included, quite literally watched the Japanese offensive against the Chinese garrison at Sihang Warehouse from across the Suzhou Creek. Laval’s account thus offers an intriguing perspective on the coexistence of Western extraterritoriality and Japanese military presence in Shanghai before December 1941. Writing of the Bund, the emblematic space of the International Settlement, Jeremy Taylor described it as a “spatial reminder of an entire social system and lifestyle that came to East Asia”.³ In Laval’s article, the stark juxtaposition between the prosperity and tranquillity of the foreign-administered areas and the warfare ravaging the rest of Shanghai testifies to the continued existence not only of such a distinctive social system, but also of its spatial manifestation. Yet, for all the security afforded by extraterritoriality, it was now accompanied — and perhaps somewhat unsettled — by the burgeoning military presence of the hitherto formidable Japanese Empire. Laval’s text therefore provides a useful vantage point from which to ask not simply how the separate jurisdictions of Shanghai were maintained, but how they were experienced and negotiated within a devastating yet geographically confined theatre of warfare, particularly from a spatial perspective. An overarching line of inquiry consequently presents itself: to what extent were the foreign concessions truly unperturbed by the Japanese presence around them? More crucially, a series of spatial questions follows. The communication and exchange between the concessions and the world beyond them — especially at their borders — would make for an interesting subject of study. And, turning towards people’s interaction with and production of space, how might the meanings and significance attached to particular spaces within the concessions have changed amidst the Japanese incursion? Building upon Taylor’s study of the Bund, it would be interesting to examine how the waterfront’s significance, both as a stage upon which military power could be displayed and as a safe and leisurely space for civilian activity, may have been influenced and disrupted during this period.⁴ Similar examinations of spatial re-imaginings could be extended more broadly to the various meanings attached to the foreign settlements: as spaces of privilege, security, domination, confidence, and, indeed, home.

Naturally, this inquiry can be extended to the period after 1941, when full-scale warfare broke out between Japan and the Allies. The second source I have encountered is the minute of a special meeting of the Council held on 8 December 1941. The minute clearly reveals the difficult task confronting the American and British members of the Council as they attempted to balance their duties as citizens of their respective countries with their responsibilities as officials of the Shanghai Municipal Council.⁵ As Japan annexed the French Concession and the International Settlement of Shanghai, it nevertheless sought to preserve and work through the existing administrative structure of the Shanghai Municipal Council. The indecision that appears to haunt the councillors thus reflects a broader administrative ambivalence in Shanghai after 1941: the city had formally come under full Japanese control, yet its existing administrative machinery was preserved and expected to cooperate with the new regime. How this spatial reconfiguration of the city unfolded within such a novel and intricate political milieu consequently begs investigation. How did the SMP administer the city under Japanese authority? Was a new urban plan envisaged by its new rulers? Now that their former sanctuary had fallen under Japanese control, how was the spatiality of the Shanghai concessions re-imagined by the Westerners who remained there?

All of this remains, admittedly, highly rudimentary. Taken together, however, these ideas point towards a general direction for potential research: the disruption, reinvention and perhaps also preservation of spatiality in the context of both extraterritoriality and warfare and political change. Such an inquiry would also approach spatiality with a particular human focus, examining not merely physical landscapes and urban layouts, but the ways in which different groups of people conceptualised, experienced, interacted with and manipulated them. For this purpose, the online access to a vast array of historical sources—including newspapers, reports, books, maps and photographs—made available through Virtual Shanghai and the Internet Archive could prove particularly valuable. This, I hope, might provide the starting point for something genuinely exciting.

1. C. J. Laval, ‘How to End the War’, The Far Eastern Review, Shanghai, 11 November, pp. 375-376, [accessed 20 September 2026] [↩]
2. Ibid. [↩]
3. Jeremy Taylor, ‘The Bund: Littoral Space of Empire in the Treaty Ports of East Asia’, Social History, 27:2 (2002), p. 125. [↩]
4. Ibid., pp. 132-140. [↩]
5. “At the Special Meeting of the Council held on Monday, December 8, 1941, at 4.30 p.m” in Shanghai Municipal Council, The minutes of the Shanghai Municipal Council – 1940-1943 (Shanghai, 2001), pp. 354-355. [↩]