Routledge Australians in Shanghai: Race, rights and nation in treaty port China

In the first half of the twentieth century, a diverse community of Australians settled in Shanghai. There they forged a ‘China trade’, circulating goods, people and ideas across the South China Sea, from Shanghai and Hong Kong to Sydney and Melbourne. This trade has been largely forgotten in contemporary Australia, where future economic ties trump historical memory when it comes to popular perceptions of China. After the First World War, Australians turned to Chinese treaty ports, fleeing poverty and unemployment, while others sought to ‘save’ China through missionary work and socialist ideas. Chinese Australians, disillusioned by Australian racism under the White Australia Policy, arrived to participate in Chinese nation building and ended up forging business empires which survive to this day. This book follows the life trajectories of these Australians, providing a means by which we can address one of the pervading tensions of race, empire and nation in the twentieth century: the relationship between working-class aspirations for social mobility and the exclusionary and discriminatory practices of white settler societies. Review 'A fascinating study of the long, and often misunderstood, relationship between China and Australia. This book raises important questions about what it means to be Chinese, and what it means to be Australian.' ― Jim McAloon, Associate Professor, History, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. 'Much past historical writing, relying on English language sources, has worked within 'national' borders and in the terms of the British Empire. Loy-Wilson's beautifully written book breaks apart those artificial constraints by looking into the complex worlds of the people who moved across borders: Chinese workers returning from Australia, their white Australian wives coming with them to China, the impoverished Australian workers who came to Shanghai seeking work and the many missionaries, traders and teachers who all moved backwards and forwards. […] [The] book's originality draws even more deeply on Loy-Wilson's sophisticated analysis of the tensions in these interactions - the misinterpretations, the confusions and the conflicts - which arise from the histories of each side of this story, the Chinese and the Australian. Shaped by context and time and by the rapidly changing technologies of transport and communication, these interactions were far from simple but they were powerful nonetheless. This is an important book which will change the way the history of both Australia and China can be written in the future.' ― Heather Goodall, Professor of History, University of Technology Sydney 'With great sensitivity, a sharp eye for detail and a keen understanding of the complex interplay of shifting cultural, ethnic and political identities, Sophie Loy-Wilson uncovers one of the least understood aspects of the relationship between Australia and China, the experiences and contributions of Australian Chinese.' ― Lachlan Strahan, author of Australia's China: Changing Perceptions from the 1930s to the 1990s 'Historians love to proclaim a "new" history, but this book really is new. It is a brilliant contribution to Australian, Chinese, and world histories, the kind of cosmopolitan history that makes traditional descriptors, like "Australian history" scarcely adequate. It evokes a world of social, economic, and political exchanges between Australia and treaty port China – tracing the mobile lives of Chinese and other Australians, including entrepreneurs, trade unionists, missionaries, and internationalists. With fascinating detail and beautifully written, it is a pleasure to read, and an important reminder that people in both China and Australia have built a history of connections that influence both countries today.' ― Ann Curthoys, Emeritus Professor of History, University of Western Australia 'Sophie Loy Wilson’s book […] adds a dimension that other books on Shanghai that I have read