Creating a Chinese Harbin

by Carter, James H., M.D.

• ISBN13: 9780801439667
• ISBN10: 0801439663
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2002-05-31
• Publisher: Cornell Univ Pr

Summary

James H. Carter outlines the birth of Chinese nationalism in an unlikely setting: the international city of Harbin. Planned and built by Russian railway engineers, the city rose quickly from the Manchurian plain, changing from a small fishing village to a modern city in less than a generation. Russian, Chinese, Korean, Polish, Jewish, French, and British residents filled this multiethnic city on the Sungari River. The Chinese took over Harbin after the October Revolution and ruled it from 1918 until the Japanese founded the puppet state of Manchukuo in 1932. In his account of the radical changes that this unique city experienced over a brief span of time, Carter examines the majority Chinese population and its developing Chinese identity in an urban area of fifty languages. Originally, Carter argues, its nascent nationalism defined itself against the foreign presence in the city-while using foreign resources to modernize the area. Early versions of Chinese nationalism embraced both nation and state. By the late 1920s, the two strands had separated to such an extent that Chinese police fired on Chinese student protesters. This division eased the way for Japanese occupation: the Chinese state structure proved a fruitful source of administrative collaboration for the area's new rulers in the 1930s.

Author Biography

James H. Carter is Assistant Professor of History at St. Joseph's University.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	xi
Introduction
Basketball Imperialism	1	(10)
Paris of the East?
Harbin before the Russian Revolution	11	(20)
``Harbin's Great Wall''
Deng Jiemin and the Founding of the Donghua School, 1916-1918	31	(35)
Community and Sovereignty, 1918-1920	66	(130)
The ``Sleeping Lion'' Awakes
Chinese Assertions of Sovereignty and Their Consequences, 1920-1926	92	(34)
``A Chinese Place''
Chinese Attempts to Claim Harbin's Physical Environment, 1921-1929	126	(36)
Nationalism Undone
Chinese Nationalists Confront Each Other, 1927-1931	162	(25)
Epilogue: Whose Nationalism?
Harbin, Manchukuo, 1932	187	(9)
Select Bibliography	196	(13)
Index	209