Isabella Jackson, Shaping Modern Shanghai: Colonialism in China’s Global City

Abstract

Known popularly as the “Paris of the Orient,” late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Shanghai has fascinated scholars with its idiosyncratic blend of Chinese and Western cultures. Out of its unique cultural milieu arose a distinctive “Shanghai style,” encompassing literature, architecture, cinema and fashion. It is via the latter of these that readers have commonly associated Shanghai with the notion of modernity. Most writing on the city has focused on the lifestyles of different class...