Shanghai JORISS Workshop

April 14-15, 2017 East Normal University

Policing port cities during the “colonial era” : Tianjin & Shanghai : interaction between Western and Chinese police forces, 1860-1945

First Workshop : Circulation of men and police knowledge in Contemporary China organized by Christine Cornet, Professor at Sciences‐Po Lyon and Ruan Qinghua, professor at East China Normal University.

The study of the police forces in Chinese cities, especially those established and run by foreigners, represents a new field of Chinese urban history. Over the last past years, the question of social control and public order in the cosmopolitan treaty ports has received more attention. This workshop opens a new approach of policing the Chinese Treaty Ports in exploring influence and conflict between foreign and chinese police forces. Influence means hybridization between local and external practices of social order. Influence of foreign model police in China began at the end of the XIX century with the german police system exported to Japan Meiji and « reproduced » in China. But the presence of British, French and American in China offered new model for policing the cities. The ambiguous status of treaty ports cities divided into several municipalities institutions (administration, law, police, urbanworks, health, transport, education), modified the nature of social control and public order. But before the arriving of Westerners China had its own traditional system of social control. The reform of the police is part of the general process of institutional reform during the late Qing period and it is also embedded in the army modernization.

Programme (日程安排)