“that treacherous perfidious race of Beings, whose natural piratical dispositions might, by the small size of our vessel, [provoke] them to some act of violence”.

John Septimus Roe was a British explorer, navigator, and surveyor who is most renowned for charting the Western coast of Australia in the 18^th century. He recorded his expeditions both in the ship logbook, letters, and navigational and coastal sketches. These sources are largely valuable for their contrasting depictions of his journey through Southeast Asia to get to Australia. Within them, we are confronted with both scientific visual representation and a haze of tropical madness- the phenomenon of ‘tropicality’, whereby imperial preconceptions of the tropical climate and its inhabitants seeped into their lived experience of these ‘other’ countries. As historians our task is to navigate the fog and determine the value of these sources beyond their accusations, preconceptions, and racism. Felix Driver’s work on the ‘Views and Visions’ of the tropics is significant for beginning this task.

Driver presents the idea of the “view” and the “vision” as a means for distinction between ‘tropicality’ and the tropical. He defines the view as a process where “landscapes are depicted at a distance, their surface features translated into a recognisable visual code”.[1] In this way, landscape sketches became a means of scientific representation through their “topographic aesthetic”.[2] Meanwhile, Driver argues, the “vision” was a dangerously “transformative” concept.[3] It included the spectator as an active participant in the scene, creating an image of the whole which was influenced by the preconceptions, motivations, ‘haze’ which imbued the explorer. Both concepts are useful for determining the influence of ‘tropicality’ on 18^th century visions of Asia and Southeast Asia.

The full entry from Roe’s logbook on the Tamar, which set sail in 1824, reads as follows:

“Traces of Malays, who come here to fish for Trepang (a kind of blubbery soft fish, which sells well to the Chinese) were everywhere seen, and put us on our guard against that treacherous perfidious race of Beings, whose natural piratical dispositions might, by the small size of our vessel, [provoke] them to some act of violence”.[4]

Here, Roe ‘others’ the Malaysian population, by implying that their geographical position on an island influences their psychological nature. He suggests that because of their coexistence with the sea as a life source, they have “natural piratical dispositions”, as if the wild coastline infiltrates their character. They are violent, unpredictable, and domineering- all according to the small “traces” of their existence which Roe has actually witnessed. The notion of the tropical landscape becoming synonymous with the characteristics of a population also adds to the thrill of Roe’s adventure. He adopts a self-congratulatory tone when he later marks himself immune from the influence of the climate, which “saps” the strength of his colleagues- “I feel great pleasure in being able to say that [my constitution] is exempt from that particularity”.[5] Whilst the analytical interlude in the first entry related to the Trepang fish gives us a small insight into the transnational relationships across Asia and broader economic features of the Malaysian population, the extract is dominated by Roe’s preconceived “vision” of the tropics. His writing attempts to reconcile the haze of ‘tropicality’, which sees Asia as both thrilling and degenerative, with the empirical evidence of his expedition. In doing so, the haze becomes stronger, as his preconceptions of ‘tropicality’ are projected onto the natural landscape.

By contrast, Roe’s accompanying drawings are a valuable insight into his journey and serve as both an empirical and historical source which provide a “view” of the tropics uninhibited by his own gaze.[6] In his coastal sketches, the mountains form part of a panoramic view which suggest that we too, are a witness to this unfamiliar landscape. The observational detail of these sketches continues to the edge of the page, situating the viewer at the edge of the boat from which the sketch was made. Drops of plantain juice on the parchment itself immerse the viewer in Roe’s view, providing tangible evidence of the tropics, not as a singular specimen, but as a vibrant and interactive whole. Consequently, they are valuable for their scientific accuracy and spatial placement- we are aware of the presence of the explorer, without their unwanted encroachment on the real view. Rather than being immersed in a tropical haze, we are immersed in the explorer’s empirical and representational gaze, which sought to create an accurate and uninhibited portrayal of their travels. Driver states that the drawings are evidence of “more personal aspirations” too, a testament to the explorer and his craft. As such, they are evidence of a very real passion, rather than a passionate haze of imperialist intention.

“If we look more closely at the archive of tropical travel…it is clear that [the travels] raised as many questions as they answered. How was the experience of travelling itself to be put into words and images?”[7]

As Driver notes, the view of the tropics is hard to decipher from amongst the multi-layered visions of ‘tropicality’ which infiltrated the explorer’s mind. The questions which it raised for the explorer however, are of equal importance to the historian when studying travel accounts of Asia and Southeast Asia- what were the processes, both empirical and psychological, which were behind the words and images?

[1] Felix Driver, ‘Imagining the Tropics: Views and Visions of the Tropical World’, Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography, vol.25, no. 1 (2004), p.4.

[2] Ibid, p.4.

[3] Ibid, p.5.

[4] John Septimus Roe, The Mermaid and Bath Letters, (1817-1823), <https://www.matthewfishburn.com/writing/2021/2/15/letters-of-john-septimus-roe> [accessed: 04 February 2022], p.124.

[5] Ibid, p.106.

[6] Felix Driver, ‘Imagining the Tropics’, p.10.

[7] Ibid, p.14

Mary Sutphen argued in 1997 in favour of David Arnold’s position that germ theory did not affect the primacy of environmental determinism in the European doctor’s view of aetiology.[1] However, Sutphen’s article underplays the impact which bacteriologists’ linkage between plague and rats had upon municipal public health policy considerations. Sutphen is right to place colonial responses to bacteriology within the context of tropicality, but just because this new form of empiricism contributed to this hegemonic discourse rather than undermined it is not an indicator that such developments failed to make an historical impact. Indeed, there is a whole wealth of literature that highlights the role which the plague outbreaks of the 1890s and onwards had on the decisions that municipal authorities took in the name of public health, whether they be in road construction or the architecture of houses.[2]

 

In the case of Rangoon, Sutphen’s argument that, rather than diminishing the emphasis of environmental determinism, new biomedical knowledge had shifted its focus from natural miasmas to the insanitary conditions of cities’ slums is evidenced in the town’s Municipal Committee reports. It is no surprise that the committee’s first reported encounter with the plague in 1899 was accompanied in the same year’s report with a lengthy request for funds to perform land reclamation of the town’s suburb with the highest mortality rates, Lanmadaw, as it was only through improvement of the land that they believed disease rates could be reduced.[3] Not a single mention of rats appears in this report. However, when the plague finally did strike Rangoon in 1905, the destruction of rats was noted as one of the immediate measures to combat the epidemic, with requests for funds in order to change the sewer systems and to demolish the insanitary abodes of the town.[4] This same report does also bring up the need to reclaim the land of Lanmadaw, but this time the language had changed, without a reference to how the swampy soil contributed to the spread of disease as they had done in 1899, instead the necessity for reclaiming this land was entirely for the purpose of constructing new properties to offset the town’s rising house prices.[5] This shift in emphasis between the two reports would suggest that, as Sutphen argued, colonial authorities accepted the scientific link between rats and plague that bacteriology had made possible as the natural environment of these communities were no longer considered the main factor in disease spread, but rather the nature in which people lived. As the committee’s health officer reported:

‘the epidemic seems never to have been more severe in the… undrained and badly conserved quarters of Lanmadaw… than in the “Pucca Area,” which is better provided with… surface drains… but where the houses are often… four storeys in height, the lighting and ventilation very imperfect, and where over-crowding upon area attains its maximum… The only conditions common to all the infected dwellings were their general dirtiness and the absence of adequate light and ventilation, and the prevalence of rats in the vicinity.’[6]

However, Sutphen’s assertion that this ‘did not require colonial officials to change any of the routines they had used to control disease in the past’[7] was absolutely not the case in Rangoon, and the effects of this discursive shift bore itself out in drastically new approaches to municipal policy. For instance, in 1899 the committee sought to improve the drainage and infrastructure of the less urbanised sections of Rangoon, with the first response for prevention being the quarantining of ships from infected ports under the Venice Convention; there was little intention of changing how people living in these areas conducted themselves or organised their households.[8] Whereas, in the years following the 1905 report, with the blame for the plague’s spread being placed upon those dirty households attracting rats which the health officer had described, the committee started requesting designers to present examples of new ‘model houses for the poorer classes.’[9] With this, the rate of forced evictions increased as an amendment to the Burma Municipal Act of 1898 allowed for greater numbers of lower ranking officials’ signatures to count as providing sufficient authorisation for the demolition of buildings, a reflection of the increasing workload the rate of these demolitions were creating for the higher authorities in the effort to construct more free-standing masonry structures.[10] Finally, it is with the efforts to totally redesign the barracks provided by private businesses for their hired coolies that showed the extremity with which the plague had affected municipal policy, the 1910 report reading:

‘the want of power to control the laying out of private estates is a serious danger to the proper development of the town. The Committee is not eager to apply for these powers, but unless they are obtained and exercised or unless private owners exercise more liberality and foresight in the laying out of their estates… the health of the inhabitants of East Rangoon and other improved quarters will be imperilled by the existence of undrained, illventilated and grossly over crowded buslees which would put the slums of Liverpool to the blush.’[11]

A sentiment which was reflected across South Asia, with Robert Home directly linking the plague outbreaks to the development of new town planning techniques by taking a broader view of the discourses of colonial policy, a view which takes the impact of such developments into greater account than Sutphen’s focus on the immediate medical responses to such events.[12]

 

Therefore, it is clear that the link between rats and incidences of plague that bacteriology made possible greatly impacted the nature of municipal policy. The shift from theories that natural miasmas caused plague to plague being the result of human insanitary practices meant that local governments sought to exercise a new governmentality of biopower that increased controls over how indigenous people occupied domestic spaces. While it is important to note, to Sutphen’s credit, that the goals of colonialism existed similarly either side of the change from humanity needing to conquer nature to survive, to humanity needing to conquer humans to survive as both discourses sought to exploit foreign resources, the significance of this change lies in how the latter allowed the state to justify intensifying the regimentation of people’s lives. It is this change in policy that is absent in Sutphen’s article.

[1] Mary P. Sutphen, “Not What, but Where: Bubonic Plague and the Reception of Germ Theories in Hong Kong and Calcutta, 1894-1897”, Journal of the History of Medicine, Vol. 52 (1997), 81-113.

[2] Robert Home, Of Planting and Planning: The Making of British Colonial Cities (Abingdon, 1997; 2013), 149-199; Michel Sugarman, “Reclaiming Rangoon: (Post-)Imperial Urbanism and Poverty, 1920-1962”, Modern Asian Studies, 52: 6 (2018), 1856-1887.

[3] Report on the Working of the Rangoon Municipality, for the Year 1898-99 (Rangoon, 1899), 18-19.

[4] Report on the Working of the Rangoon Municipality for the Year 1905-06 (Rangoon, 1906), 11-12.

[5] Ibid., 10.

[6] Ibid., 12.

[7] Sutphen, “Not What, but Where”, 112.

[8] Report on the Working of the Rangoon Municipality, for the Year 1898-99, 29.

[9] Report on the Working of the Rangoon Municipality for the Year 1907-08 (Rangoon, 1908), 21.

[10] Report on the Working of the Rangoon Municipality for the Year 1909-10 (Rangoon, 1910), 14.

[11] Ibid., 16.

[12] Home, Of Planting and Planning, 149-199.

The study of labour as an integral element of empire is frequently underrepresented in academic literature. Labour is an integral element in fueling colonial capitalist enterprise and oftentimes enlightens the reader on the fabrics of how an imperial power was supported. The third chapter of Shu-Mei Huang and Hyun Kyung Lee’s work, Heritage, Memory and Punishment: Remembering Colonial Prisons in East Asia, engages with the experiences of Korean, Chinese and Taiwanese penal labourers under Japanese colonial rule between 1895 and 1945.¹ It highlights the gruelling experiences of Korean and Taiwanese penal labourers, the conditions they endured, the work they were forced to conduct and the Japanese structures and rhetoric that supported the system. An enlightening aspect of Lee and Huang’s chapter is their argument regarding Japan’s desire to demonstrate its modernity to western powers by mimicking western practices of punishment. The intense study of western penal systems led Japanese penal institutions to emulate those practices in their penal settlements to expand their imperial holdings and demonstrate their modernity.² I argue that efforts to mimic the west are most visible when comparing the rhetoric and conditions of penal labour usage of Korean penal labourers in Japanese colonies and South Asian penal labourers in British Southeast Asian colonies. Both structures, which were prevalent less than a century apart, hold distinct similarities that demonstrate the origins behind Japanese structures of correction.

Lee and Huang highlight how justifications for the use of Korean penal labour was to reform the prisoner through labour. The Japanese were endeavouring on a moral mission to change the attitudes of the prisoner and convert them to become ‘dutiful subjects of the Japanese emperor’.³ The rhetoric demonstrates how Japanese officials self-identified as their subjects’ moral educators and reformers. These justifications are quite similar to Indian experiences in Penang, Malacca and Singapore as John McNair, a former superintendent of convicts highlights how the use of convict labourers was so they ‘become useful members of society, and free themselves from the disabilities under which they labour’.⁴ From McNair’s account, he viewed himself as integral to the moralising mission of ‘reforming’ the convicts he supervised and making them into ‘useful members of society.⁵ Written in 1899, McNair’s accounts were logged not long after the colonisation of Taiwan and Korea. Although not displayed directly, the two accounts display the transnationality of penal ideology as both states utilised paternalistic rhetoric to uplift their own international image.

In addition to the justifications, the practices of penal labour usage beyond the rhetoric also falls upon similar lines. Structures under both imperial regimes expanded, assimilated, and maintained empires in their colonised territories. Both examples demonstrate the mobile nature of penal life as labourers were juggled between the military, engineering department, private enterprise and their labour was not restricted to any particular prison or space.⁶ However, one of the unique links I believe both examples hold is their use of their prisoners as skilled labourers. Lee and Huang highlight the profitability of Taipei prison by utilising convicts as skilled labourers that would construct furniture, consumer and military goods for department stores, railway hotels, railway museums, the military and even the royal family.⁷ This correlates strongly to accounts of South Asian convicts being used as skilled labourers for government and private usage. McNair accounts for convicts in Singapore being particularly skilled in brickmaking whose production capacity and quality surpassed any private business and heavily supported the construction of infrastructure for the engineering department.⁸ Statistical accounts of the Strait Settlements detail the revenue generated by ‘selling’ penal labourers to private institutions and other government departments, highlighting the commercialised nature of penal labour usage.⁹ South Asian penal labourers were primarily viewed in the context of their profitability, and as the account details, the eventual abandonment of the practice came primarily from their lack of profitability that provided no incentive to employ them.¹⁰ From these examples, the South Asian and Korean examples show strong similarities as both structures were enforced due to the highly commercialised nature of skilled labour supported by the rhetoric of reform.

Insights into the rhetoric and practices of penal labour usage across both empires speak to the profit-making nature of penal institutions that exist even to this day. As mentioned by Dr Huang in her discussion with the MO4971 class, the privatisation of the US penal system in the use of prisoners as a cheap skilled labour force holds legacies from previous systems of imprisonment, which guise their practices under the rhetoric of reform.

In addition to the above connection, the comparative analysis speaks to the transnational nature of penal history. Although spatial in nature, penal institutions are not isolated to a single compound or building. Rather, the institutions also uphold an ideological foundation that can be inspired, affected and influenced by foreign penal practices and institutions. Penal history also connects to the wider historical narratives of modernity and empire. As reflected in the Japanese example, the operation of Japanese penal institutions resonated with imperial desires to appear modern in the face of western powers, both by upholding a reformist image while sustaining an ever-growing empire. The examples above spoke to the contradictory nature of penal institutions, necessary as a signal of reform and necessary to expand private and imperial interests.

1. Shu-Mei Huang and Hyun Kyung Lee, Heritage, Memory and Punishment: Remembering Colonial Prisons in East Asia (New York, 2020), pp. 31-52. [↩]
2. Ibid., pp. 35-37. [↩]
3. Ibid., p. 49. [↩]
4. John McNair, Prisoners their own Warders (London, 1899), p. 5. [↩]
5. Ibid., p. 159. [↩]
6. Lee and Huang, Heritage, p. 44-45; McNair, Prisoners, p. 66. [↩]
7. Lee and Huang, Heritage, p. 44. [↩]
8. McNair, Prisoners, p. 29; Ibid., p. 58. [↩]
9. Department of Statistics, Government of the Straits Settlements, Straits Settlements Blue Book for the Year 1873, 1874, pp. 38-46. [↩]
10. Ibid., pp. 60-76. [↩]

The kisaeng, with her outstretched hand, welcomed the visitors to Kyŏngbok Palace Colonial Industry Exhibition with the promise of entertainment, her vibrant dress and painted face the hallmark of an “ancient Korea”.[1] This “ancient past” formed a mirage in front of the visitors’ eyes, only to be interrupted by the dominant Japanese-built structures of the Machine Building and Special Forestry Building which offered up facts, statistics, and mechanical solutions to Korea’s progression into modernity. This was Michel De Certeau’s “concept city” in miniaturised form- the Japanese Government-General’s imaginative vision of Korea rendered into consumable and attractive exhibits whose attached discourse dismissed history in favour of the future.[2]

The 1915 Colonial Industry Exhibition was created with the purpose of spreading the ideology of progress and modernity on behalf of the Japanese Government-General. It included Korean and Japanese exhibitions ranging from sumo wrestling to agricultural and factory technologies. The intentions of the Exhibition were later summarised in the illustrated government publication Chōsen of Today, (1930).[3] The brochure aimed to highlight the agricultural, industrial, and cultural achievements of the colonial government. As De Certeau would suggest, it formed part of the imagined “spatial story” of Korean modernity in which technological progression was asserted through a linguistic narrative that dictated the public’s reaction to the exhibition.[4] The publication states that the Keijo Museum “preserved many treasures”.[5] This language suggests that the Korean displays belonged to a distinct historical past. In the exhibition, shamanic rituals and non-mechanical agricultural technologies were deliberately exoticized to create a sense of displacement because of their physical location next to statistical posters and mechanised technologies such as the rice-polisher.[6] This suggests that the Korean exhibits, or “treasures”, were valued for their juxtaposition with colonial exhibits and contributed to the artificial construction of Korean space and time. By suggesting that Korean culture belonged to an ancient and intangible past, the exhibition involved the temporal-spatial reconstruction of Korea’s historical timeline in order to bring the ‘new era’ of Japanese coloniality to the forefront. In doing so, the very space of the exhibition became an immersive lesson in the Government-General’s ability to immediately propel colonial Korea into modernity.

The concept of space-time reconstruction which pervades the Chōsen Today publication, as well as the exhibition itself, is evidential of the government’s anxiety toward the ideological cooperation of their Korean subjects. Fifteen years on from the exhibition, the brochure situates the Colonial Industry Exhibition in a similar juxtaposition between ‘modern’ and ‘ancient’. The description of the 1915 “treasures of ancient art” is paired with that of the “recent establishment” of the government library.[7] The library possesses an “efficient male staff” and “ancient and foreign” collection. The contrast in language concentrates the historical timeline, forcing the reader to jump abruptly from the static relics of the museum to the humanised and spacious library. This suggests that the ideology of progress in the Colonial Industry Exhibition had to be reinforced in multiple different forms. By consolidating the aims of the exhibition in written form it implies that Korea’s modernisation needed to be immortalised in text to reinforce the lived experiences of the population. This implies an artificial application of ideology to space, in contrast to De Certeau’s abstract acting out of the city.[8] It suggests that the government struggled to fully impart the messages of the exhibition, which is reinforced by reports of confusion and misunderstanding.[9] The attempt to transform the notion of ‘progress’ from a timely process into an immediate lived state connects with Michel de Certeau’s suggestion that it is discourse which makes space habitable.[10] In the report of Chōsen of Today, language of juxtaposition seeks to transform the empty and artificially constructed modernity of the Colonial Industry Exhibition into a lived experience, long after the event.

Consequently, the anxieties of the brochure reveal the failures of the 1915 exhibition. The preface states that change should be “manifest to even the most casual observer” and that “the aim of this brochure is to give readers at a glance some real idea of the progress…”.[11] The gulf between the “casual observer” and the “reader” is apparent on reflection. The “observer” would be far from the audience of a government-issued brochure, as the necessity of technological progress was largely aimed at small-town agricultural farmers and industrial labourers who would be unable to access such materials. In the same way, the ideological messages of the exhibition remained obscure to the observer. Patrol officers and cooperative community guides were placed to either physically steer the visitors through the new modernity exhibited in the Kyŏngbok Palace or narrate the transformation between the two distinct eras.[12] Despite this, the visitors were the people who occupied the missing space in between the ancient and the modern. Consequently, they usurped the narrative of the Government-General, simply through their personal interpretations of the exhibits and the way they both physically and psychologically navigated the space. As De Certeau would suggest, this spatial practice resulted in the creation of “singularities”- individual visions which disrupted the government’s singular, concentrated timeline of Korea’s progression with multiple space-time divisions formed from the moment of their individual exhibition experience.[13]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[1] Government General of Chosen, Chosen of Today, (Korea, 1930), p.17.

[2] Michel De Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, trans. Steven Rendall, (California, 1988), p.96.

[3] Government General of Chosen, Chosen of Today, (Korea, 1930), <https://archive.org/details/chosen-of-to-day-illustrated-october-1930/mode/2up?q=exhibition> [accessed: 21 January 2022].

[4] De Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, p.117.

[5] Government General of Chosen, Chosen of Today, p.17.

[6] Todd Henry, Assimilating Seoul: Japanese Rule and the Politics of Public Space in Colonial Korea 1910-1945, (California, 2014), p.107.

[7] Government General of Chosen, Chosen of Today, p.17

[8] De Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, p.98.

[9] Henry, Assimilating Seoul, p.108.

[10] De Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, p.106.

[11] Government General of Chosen, Chosen of Today, p.1.

[12] Henry, Assimilating Seoul, p.105.

[13] De Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, p.100.

The purpose of this piece is to propose and defend a potential essay topic. That topic is: the colonization of the culinary space in French Indochina. More specifically, the aim of the essay would be to see the evolution of the culinary space in Indochina from the beginning of French control until the end. Through the analysis of primary and secondary sources in French and English, the essay would focus on the literal culinary space of the kitchen and the symbolic culinary space of Indochinese cuisine. In the literal culinary space, the essay would look at the increase in the number of French utensils and kitchenware and French ingredients in Indochinese kitchens over time, as well as magazines and posters selling French kitchenware in Indochina. As for the symbolic culinary space, the essay will be using Doreen Massey’s definition of space and place. Massey’s definition of place focuses on having a sense of place rather than a geographical place.¹ In other words, her ‘place’ is the idea of individual specificity. Moreover, space and place are always changing as a result of space and place being created by social interactions. In the context of culinary colonization, the essay will discuss how the social interactions between French colonists and Indochinese colonials changed the culinary space of Indochinese colonials. These social interactions which colonized the Indochina’s culinary space were put in place with intent to colonize. The essay will show how these interactions in the culinary space happened in places such as cooking/educational magazines and the educational system for both women and children. To summarize, this essay will explore how the French colonized the culinary space of Indochinese colonials. First, the physical culinary space was colonized through the increase in the ratio of French products in the Kitchen. Next, it was done socially through education and advertisement to the masses.

 

 

Bibliography:

Massey, Doreen, Space, Place, and Gender, (Minneapolis, 1994)

1. Doreen Massey, Space, Place, and Gender, (Minneapolis, 1994), p. 118 [↩]

I would like to focus my long essay on spaces regarded as ‘hygienic’ and ‘non-hygienic’ in Shanghai. Throughout the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, it seems that notions of sanitation and hygiene were very closely tied to Westernization, at first by missionaries and concession governments, then later by Chinese newspapers, through advertisements of new ‘hygienic’ products. I would like to investigate who pronounced a space as hygienic or not, and how conceptions of these spaces changed over time. Shanghai is an ideal place to investigate the relationship between hygienic/non-hygienic spaces because it allows us to see notions of hygiene played on the scale of entire concessions, down to specific types of shops or interiors.

From the late 19^th century, British medical missionary journals consistently ‘othered’ Chinese residents in Shanghai through health and hygiene practices. Leung argues that this is particularly seen in British medical practitioners’ insistence that China was similar in climate to the tropics, despite the fact that most of China was not in a tropical zone (Leung, p.111). Leung goes on to argue that calling a place ‘the tropics’ was a Western way of defining something as ‘culturally and politically alien, as well as environmentally distinct from Europe’ (Leung, p.115). The Medical Missionary Society in 1847 reports that “the natives have of course become thoroughly acclimated, and are not affected by the climate to the same extent as the foreigners” (Chinese Repository Vol. 17, p.189). This implies that even as the first missionary hospitals are being established in Shanghai, medical practitioners dictated a different health and hygiene standard for Chinese and foreign patients. Therefore, it is easy to agree with Leung’s argument that hygienic regiments and standards were not a method of maintaining health, but rather a way to “distinguish and distance the European self from the native other”(Leung, p.124).

Particularly in Shanghai, the way in which concession governments discussed the presence of Chinese houses in their European concessions demonstrates that they regarded Chinese spaces as unclean, unsanitary, and un-modern. This is particularly evident if we look at the reports from the ‘Conseil d’Administration Municipale de la Concession Française a Changhai’. A report from the Hygiene Committee in 1923 contains a speech on the ‘rural houses’ on Route Pere Robert, stating that “it is hardly acceptable that in this quarter, that has become an important European centre, exist a cluster of constructions as dirty as these ones. These houses do not have a single drainage, excretions and debris of all sorts of nature overrun…we cannot do practically anything there, all the disinfection would be only temporary and very costly” (Sèance du Comité, p.141). The report continues, and mentions under a section titled “Houses that are un-Sanitary and un-Aesthetic” the existence of a “typical town, not drained, typically dirty, a house on the border of Avenue Joffre constructed out of bamboo … almost all the real estate is in a state of dilapidation”(Sèance du Comité, p.142), concluding that these houses are a danger to public sanitation. This report demonstrates the severe ‘other-ing’, and complete blame the French concession government placed on these houses. The French government were using sanitation to insist that nothing non-European should exist in their concession.

Rogaski also explores this desire to create parallels between hygiene, modernity and Westernization by bringing up a 1930s short story called “Etiquette and Hygiene” by Liu Na-ou, about a Chinese couple living in the international settlement. The husband of the couple takes a walk from their home to enter the Chinese neighbourhood, and immediately describes how he has entered a ‘danger zone’, filled with ‘ghastly stenches’, and ‘prostitutes soliciting customers in alleys smelling of urine’ (Rogaski, p.225). This short story demonstrates that the association between hygiene and Westernisation had been prevalent in the early 20^th century, as in the late 19^th century. The descriptions offered in the short story are not dissimilar to descriptions from medical missionaries in 1850, where Shanghai was described as filled with a “stench that pervaded the whole city (…) If it had been wished to invent a plan for making a district unhealthy in the highest degree (…) perhaps none could have been devised so likely to prove prejudicial to the people, or one better adapted to produce extensive disease” (Chinese Repository Vol.20, p.154).

If we investigate spaces on a smaller scale, however, the concern with hygiene increases as we near the early 20^th century. For example, medical missionary William Lockhard wrote in 1861 that “At Shanghai, there are numerous bathing houses established…[that are] for the most part very commodious and clean, and much resorted to” (Lockhard, p.40). Bathhouses would have been used as a social space, and a space for physical health and cleanliness. Here, the bathhouse is seen as a clean space, encouraged for use by everyone. However, if we compare this social space to tiger stove shops in the Nanjing Decade (1927-37), the relationship with hygiene is entirely different. Tiger stove shops sold hot water for drinking and bathing, and at night functioned as a ‘tea house’, which provided shelter for the night for the price of a cup of tea. These shops, like bathhouses, performed a social and practical function. This time however, they were regarded as filthy and unregulated. Historian Lu indicates a source where the writer complains that “the authorities have paid much attention to the hygiene of restaurants and the like, but (…) there has not been a single effort to regulate the filthy tiger stove shops- this can be counted as an oddity in the concessions!” (Lu, p.291). The Nanjing decade saw an increased interest of the state in regulating shops and businesses, and this seemed to come with an increased awareness for hygienic and non-hygienic spaces, and thus an increased pull towards all things western.

So, by looking at reports of concession governments, advertisements in newspapers, and works of medical missionaries, as well as the works of historians like Hershatter, Rogaski and Lu, I hope to explore how this relationship between modernity, westernisation, and hygiene developed, both in larger spaces like concessions, and in smaller, social spaces.

 

Bibliography:

Primary Sources:

Lockhard, William, The Medical Missionary in China: a Narrative of Twenty Years’ Experience (London, 1861).

n.g, ‘Sèance du Comité d’Hygiène du 10 Juillet 1923’, Conseil d’Administration Municipale de la Concession Française a Changhai: Compte-Rendu de la Gestion pour l’Excercice 1923, pp141-142, <https://www.bnasie.eu/coreWeb/docReader/myReader.php?fID=bnPeriodical_ID-32_No-02.pdf> [accessed 28.10.2021]

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

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

Secondary:

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

Leung, Angela Ki Che, Health and Hygiene in Chinese East Asia: Policies and Publics in the Long Twentieth Century (Durham, 2010).

Lu, Hanchao, Beyond the Neon Lights: Everyday Shanghai in the Early Twentieth Century (Oakland, 1999).

Rogaski, Ruth, Hygienic Modernity: Meanings of Health and Disease in Treaty-Port China (Berkley, 2004).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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).