Enclave to Urbanity

Enclave to Urbanity PDF Author: Johnathan Andrew Farris
Publisher: Hong Kong University Press
ISBN: 988820887X
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 281

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Book Description
Cross-cultural relations are spatial relations. Enclave to Urbanity is the first book in English that examines how the architecture and the urban landscape of Guangzhou framed the relations between the Western mercantile and missionary communities and the city’s predominantly Chinese population. The book takes readers through three phases: the Thirteen Factories era from the eighteenth century to the 1850s; the Shamian enclave up to the early twentieth century; and the adoption of Western building techniques throughout the city as its architecture modernized in the early Republic. The discussion of architecture goes beyond stylistic trends to embrace the history of shared and disputed spaces, using a broadly chronological approach that combines social history with architectural and spatial analysis. With nearly a hundred carefully chosen images, this book illustrates how the foreign architectural footprints of the past form the modern Guangzhou. “Enclave to Urbanity is a study of one of China’s most important cities at the most exciting time in its history. This carefully researched work not only offers an in-depth look at Canton (Guangzhou), it narrates history through anecdotes and personalities associated with the city. The superior illustrations combined with the excellent choice of quotes will be appreciated by audiences who are familiar with the city as well as those who have never been there.” —Nancy S. Steinhardt, Professor of East Asian Art and Curator of Chinese Art, University of Pennsylvania “Cross-cultural exchanges draw a lot of attention across various disciplines today. Painting a fascinating picture of the multiple ways in which Western traders and their families transformed Guangzhou/Canton together with local Chinese people from the late eighteenth to the twentieth century, Farris provides a finely illustrated, close reading of life and building in a global context.” —Carola Hein, Professor and Head of History of Architecture and Urban Planning, Delft University of Technology

Enclave to Urbanity

Enclave to Urbanity PDF Author: Johnathan Andrew Farris
Publisher: Hong Kong University Press
ISBN: 988820887X
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 281

Get Book Here

Book Description
Cross-cultural relations are spatial relations. Enclave to Urbanity is the first book in English that examines how the architecture and the urban landscape of Guangzhou framed the relations between the Western mercantile and missionary communities and the city’s predominantly Chinese population. The book takes readers through three phases: the Thirteen Factories era from the eighteenth century to the 1850s; the Shamian enclave up to the early twentieth century; and the adoption of Western building techniques throughout the city as its architecture modernized in the early Republic. The discussion of architecture goes beyond stylistic trends to embrace the history of shared and disputed spaces, using a broadly chronological approach that combines social history with architectural and spatial analysis. With nearly a hundred carefully chosen images, this book illustrates how the foreign architectural footprints of the past form the modern Guangzhou. “Enclave to Urbanity is a study of one of China’s most important cities at the most exciting time in its history. This carefully researched work not only offers an in-depth look at Canton (Guangzhou), it narrates history through anecdotes and personalities associated with the city. The superior illustrations combined with the excellent choice of quotes will be appreciated by audiences who are familiar with the city as well as those who have never been there.” —Nancy S. Steinhardt, Professor of East Asian Art and Curator of Chinese Art, University of Pennsylvania “Cross-cultural exchanges draw a lot of attention across various disciplines today. Painting a fascinating picture of the multiple ways in which Western traders and their families transformed Guangzhou/Canton together with local Chinese people from the late eighteenth to the twentieth century, Farris provides a finely illustrated, close reading of life and building in a global context.” —Carola Hein, Professor and Head of History of Architecture and Urban Planning, Delft University of Technology

Form Follows Fever

Form Follows Fever PDF Author: Christopher Cowell
Publisher: The Chinese University of Hong Kong Press
ISBN: 9882372902
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 377

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Book Description
Form Follows Fever is the first in-depth account of the turbulent early years of settlement and growth of colonial Hong Kong across the 1840s. During this period, the island gained a terrible reputation as a diseased and deadly location. Malaria, then perceived as a mysterious vapour or miasma, intermittently carried off settlers by the hundreds. Various attempts to arrest its effects acted as a catalyst, reconfiguring both the city’s physical and political landscape, though not necessarily for the better. Caught in a frenzy to rebuild the city in the devastating aftermath, this book charts the complex interplay between a cast of figures, from military surveyors, naval doctors, Indian sepoys, and corrupt and paranoid officials to opium traders, arsonists, Chinese contractors, and sojourner architects and artists. However, Hong Kong’s ‘construction’ was not just physical but also imagined. Architecture, cartography, epidemiology, and urban infrastructure offer a critical forensic lens through which to examine the shifting ideologies of public health and space, race and place-making, and commerce and politics, all set against the radical alteration of the settlement—from shore-hugging to climbing city—in response to miasma theory, a pre-bacteriological belief in gaseous emanations from a sickly environment. This kaleidoscopic study draws upon many unpublished textual sources, including medical reports, personal diaries and letters, government records, journal accounts, newspaper articles, and advertisements. As this history is set a decade before the introduction of photography to the colony, the book relies upon a variety of alternate visual evidence—from previously lost watercolour illustrations of the city to maps, plans, and drawings— that individually and in combination provide trace material enabling the reconstruction of this strange and rapidly evolving society. Form Follows Fever sheds new light on a period often considered the colonial Dark Ages in the territory’s history. ------------------------------------------------------------- Christopher Cowell’s account of British Hong Kong offers the most detailed account yet of the crucial first decade of the colony’s existence. His engagement with the medley of actors, from across the globe, that contributed to the colony’s ultimate success is both intriguing and revealing. It is a brilliant miniature of colonial urban development in action. —Alex Bremner, Edinburgh School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, University of Edinburgh This is a beautifully written book. Cowell offers fresh perspectives on how malaria played a decisive role in shaping the forms of the colonial built environment and the future course of the city. It is a must-read for anyone interested in Hong Kong history and urbanism. —Cecilia L. Chu, School of Architecture, The Chinese University of Hong Kong A wonderfully rich and detailed architectural history of Hong Kong’s first decade as a British colony that sheds new light on the consequential effects of disease and climate on what was built, by whom, and why. —Cole Roskam, Department of Architecture, The University of Hong Kong Form Follows Fever shows how Hong Kong’s path from a so-called ‘barren island’ to a thriving port city was often a perilous one. It is a wonderfully original and insightful study that weaves together an unlikely melange of urban history, military engineering, and medical history. —John M. Carroll, Department of History, The University of Hong Kong

Once We Were Slaves

Once We Were Slaves PDF Author: Laura Arnold Leibman
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197530494
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
An obsessive genealogist and descendent of one of the most prominent Jewish families since the American Revolution, Blanche Moses firmly believed her maternal ancestors were Sephardic grandees. Yet she found herself at a dead end when it came to her grandmother's maternal line. Using family heirlooms to unlock the mystery of Moses's ancestors, Once We Were Slaves overturns the reclusive heiress's assumptions about her family history to reveal that her grandmother and great-uncle, Sarah and Isaac Brandon, actually began their lives as poor Christian slaves in Barbados. Tracing the siblings' extraordinary journey throughout the Atlantic World, Leibman examines artifacts they left behind in Barbados, Suriname, London, Philadelphia, and, finally, New York, to show how Sarah and Isaac were able to transform themselves and their lives, becoming free, wealthy, Jewish, and--at times--white. While their affluence made them unusual, their story mirrors that of the largely forgotten population of mixed African and Jewish ancestry that constituted as much as ten percent of the Jewish communities in which the siblings lived, and sheds new light on the fluidity of race--as well as on the role of religion in racial shift--in the first half of the nineteenth century.

Diverse Voices in Photographic Albums

Diverse Voices in Photographic Albums PDF Author: Mary Trent
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000615294
Category : Photography
Languages : en
Pages : 235

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Book Description
Through a variety of case studies by global scholars from diverse academic fields, this book explores photographic-album practices of historically marginalized figures from a range of time periods, geographic locations, and socio-cultural contexts. Their albums' stories span various racial, ethnic, gender and sexual identities; nationalities; religions; and dis/abilities. The vernacular albums featured in this volume present narratives that move beyond those reflected in our existing histories. Essays examine the visual, material, and aural strategies that album-makers have used to assert control over the presentation of their histories and identities, and to direct what those narratives have to say, a point of special relevance as these albums move out of private domestic space and into public archives, institutions, and digital formats. This book does not consider photographic albums and scrapbooks as separate genres, but as a continuum of modern creative practices of photographic and mass-print collage aimed at self-expression and narrative-building that co-evolved and were readily accessible. The book will be of interest to scholars working in art history, history of photography, visual culture, material culture, media studies, and cultural studies.

The China Firm

The China Firm PDF Author: Thomas Larkin
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231558538
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 216

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Book Description
What roles did Americans play in the expanding global empires of the nineteenth century? Thomas M. Larkin examines the Hong Kong–based Augustine Heard & Company, the most prominent American trading firm in treaty-port China, to explore the ways American elites at once made and were made by British colonial society. Following the Heard brothers throughout their firm’s rise and decline, The China Firm reveals how nineteenth-century China’s American elite adapted to colonial culture, helped entrench social and racial hierarchies, and exploited the British imperial project for their own profit as they became increasingly invested in its political affairs and commercial networks. Through the central narrative of Augustine Heard & Co., Larkin disentangles the ties that bound the United States to China and the British Empire in the nineteenth century. Drawing on a vast range of archival material from Hong Kong, China, Boston, and London, he weaves the local and the global together to trace how Americans gained acceptance into and contributed to the making of colonial societies and world-spanning empires. Uncovering the transimperial lives of these American traders and the complex ways extraimperial communities interacted with British colonialism, The China Firm makes a vital contribution to global histories of nineteenth-century Asia and provides an alternative narrative of British empire.

Heterotopia and Heritage Preservation

Heterotopia and Heritage Preservation PDF Author: Smaranda Spanu
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3030182592
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 490

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Book Description
This book approaches the field of built heritage and its practices by employing the concept of heterotopia, established by the French philosopher Michel Foucault. The fundamental understandings of heritage, its evolution and practices all reveal intrinsic heterotopic features (the mirror function, its utopic drive, and its enclave-like nature). The book draws on previous interpretations of heterotopia and argues for a reading of heritage as heterotopia, considering various heritage mechanisms – heritage selection, conservation and protection practices, and heritage as mnemonic device – in this regard. Reworking the six heterotopic principles, an analysis grid is designed and applied to various built heritage spaces (vernacular, religious architecture, urban 19th century ensembles). Guided through this theoretical itinerary, the reader will rediscover the heterotopic lens as a minor, yet promising, Foucauldian device that allows for a better understanding of heritage and its everyday practices.

This House Is Not a Home: European Everyday Life in Canton and Macao 1730–1830

This House Is Not a Home: European Everyday Life in Canton and Macao 1730–1830 PDF Author: Lisa Hellman
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004384545
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 334

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Book Description
Lisa Hellman offers the first study of European everyday life in Canton and Macao. How foreigners could live, communicate, move around – even whom they could interaction with – were all things strictly regulated by the Chinese authorities. The Europeans sometimes adapted to, and sometimes subverted, these rules. Focusing on this conditional domesticity shows the importance of gender relations, especially the construction of masculinity. Using the Swedish East India Company, a minor European actor in an expanding Asian empire, as a point of entry highlights the multiplicity of actors taking part in local negotiations of power. The European attempts at making a home in China contributes to a global turn in everyday history, but also to an everyday turn in global history.

Sino-French Trade at Canton, 1698–1842

Sino-French Trade at Canton, 1698–1842 PDF Author: Susan E. Schopp
Publisher: Hong Kong University Press
ISBN: 9888528505
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 211

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Book Description
Sino-French Trade at Canton, 1698–1842 presents a rare and lively view of the French experience at Canton, and calls for a reappraisal of France’s role in that trade. France was one of the two most important Western powers in the eighteenth century, and was home to one of the three major European East India companies. Yet the nation is woefully underrepresented in Canton trade scholarship. Susan E. Schopp rescues the French from the sidelines, showing that they exerted a presence that, though closely watched by their rivals, is today largely unrecognized. Their contributions were diverse, ranging from finding new sea routes to inspiring the renovation of hong façades. Consequently, to ignore the French, or to dismiss them as simply “also-rans,” results in a skewed perception of the Canton system. Schopp also demonstrates that while the most distinctive aspect of the French model of company trade was the dominant role of the state—indeed, the French East India Company has been memorably described as a “Versailles of trade”—this did not rule out a place for legitimate, and sometimes surprising, participation by the private sector. On the contrary: France’s commercial relations with China were inaugurated by private traders, and the popularity of the Canton trade spurred the eventual demise of the company model. Backed up by extensive archival work, Schopp’s work demonstrates a remarkable understanding of the Sino-European trade, and her book reveals an unparalleled passion for the role of seamanship in history. “It is shocking how little has been written in any language about French trade in China, so this excellent book fills a tremendous need. It has the potential to become a classic monograph of lasting significance: an outstanding work that will make a strong imprint on the historiography.” —Tonio Andrade, Emory University “Schopp’s valuable study shows that the French ought not to be considered ‘also-rans’ in European trade with China. The French way was, in fact, a ‘distinctive model’ of European trade with China, one different from that of the better-known English East India Company. The author’s comprehensive research takes the reader into the material history of the French trading vessels, the hong, and the personnel involved in the trade.” —Robert Aldrich, University of Sydney

Rural Migrants in Urban China

Rural Migrants in Urban China PDF Author: Fulong Wu
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135095272
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 328

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Book Description
After millions of migrants moved from China’s countryside into its sprawling cities a unique kind of ‘informal’ urban enclave was born – ‘villages in the city’. Like the shanties and favelas before them elsewhere, there has been huge pressure to redevelop these blemishes to the urban face of China’s economic vision. Unlike most developing countries, however, these are not squatter settlements but owner-occupied settlements developed semi-formally by ex-farmers turned small-developers and landlords who rent shockingly high-density rooms to rural migrants, who can outnumber their landlord villagers. A strong state, matched with well-organised landlords collectively represented through joint-stock companies, has meant that it has been relatively easy to grow the city through demolition of these soft migrant enclaves. The lives of the displaced migrants then enter a transient phase from an informal to a formal urbanity. This book looks at migrants and their enclave ‘villages in the city’ and reveals the characteristics and changes in migrants’ livelihoods and living places. Using an interdisciplinary approach, the book analyses how living in the city transforms and changes rural migrant households, and explores the social lives and micro economies of migrant neighbourhoods. It goes on to discuss changing housing and social conditions and spatial changes in the urban villages of major Chinese cities, as well as looking into transient urbanism and examining the consequences of redevelopment and upgrading of the ‘villages in the city’; in particular, the planning, regeneration, politics of development, and socio-economic implications of these immense social, economic and physical upheavals.

War and Revolution in South China

War and Revolution in South China PDF Author: Edward J. M. Rhoads
Publisher: Hong Kong University Press
ISBN: 9888528661
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 219

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Book Description
In War and Revolution in South China, Edward Rhoads recounts his childhood and early teenage years during the Sino-Japanese War and the early postwar years. Rhoads came from a biracial family. His father was an American professor while his Chinese mother was a typist and stenographer. In the late 1930s and the 1940s, the Rhoads family lived through the turbulent years in southern China and Hong Kong. The book follows Rhoads’ childhood in Guangzhou, his family’s evacuation to Hong Kong, his father’s internment and repatriation to the United States, and his and his mother’s flight to Free China. He recalls his reunion with family members in northern Guangdong Province in 1943, their retreat to China’s wartime capital of Chongqing, where his father worked for the American government, and how they returned to Guangzhou after the war. The Rhoads family then witnessed the socioeconomic recovery in the city and the regime change in 1949. The book ends with their departure from China to the United States in 1951, a year and a half after the Communist revolution. The book fills an important gap in the scholarship by examining the impact of the Sino-Japanese War in southern China from the perspective of one family. Rhoads reveals that the war in this region, while often neglected by scholars, was in fact no less turbulent than it was in northern and central China. He combines autobiography with serious historical research to reconstruct the lives of his family, consulting a large number of archival documents, private correspondence, and scholarly literature to produce a rare study that is both scholarly and accessible. “This book is a very timely reminder that one should look at the experience of China during the Second Sino-Japanese War and the Second World War from a regional perspective in order to understand the diverse historical experience of the people from different geographical, ethnic, cultural, and social backgrounds.” —Chi-man Kwong, Hong Kong Baptist University “A pleasure to read and of compelling interest, Edward Rhoads’ book explores the more benign side of the foreign influence in modern China: the introduction of modern educational institutions. The intriguing lens through which we look is his biracial family, their multiple flights across southern China as refugees escaping war, and their eventual expulsion from China.” —Stephen Davies, The University of Hong Kong