The deadline for submission of the application and supporting documents is 31 July 2010.
Within the general research program of the Virtual Shanghai Project, we are opening up a new research topic: “Wars in Shanghai”. It will cover a broad time span, from the mid-19th century to 1950, but the Ph.D. may focus on a more specific period. In methodological terms, we shall approach this topic from the angle of ‘spatial history’ and work it out through the tools of the Virtual Shanghai platform.
The Virtual Shanghai Project is seeking a candidate in the following disciplines: History, Historical geography, Geography, or Chinese studies. The candidate will have a solid training in at least one of these fields of scholarship, a good knowledge of the Chinese language with a certified capacity to read and process documents in Chinese. A solid command of English is also expected, including writing skills. As the Virtual Shanghai Project relies very much on new technologies, a familiarity with Internet and computer software will be an asset.
A full presentation of the fellowship, as well as the application form is available on line on the following page.
As part of a five-episode documentary film on “The Bund”, actually on the modern history of Shanghai, the China Central Newsreel & Documentary Studio (中央新聞紀錄電影製片廠) has been conducting interviews with Chinese and foreign scholars. On May 19, a team headed by producer Zhao Jia traveled to Lyon to meet with Christian Henriot for a taped session of conversation about Shanghai’s historical trajectory. The event caused some excitement at the Lyons Institute of East Asian Studies.
Previously, the CCNDS team had also interviewed Prof. Robert Bickers at Bristol University and Prof. Marie-Claire Bergère in Paris. “The Bund” is scheduled to be released by the end of June 2010. It will be broadcast on various channels in China and abroad.
In its own terms, the UKHO “is part of the Ministry of Defence. Its mission is to meet national, defence and civil requirements for navigational and other hydrographic information in the most efficient manner. The UKHO holds a rich library and archives collected over 200 years.” In particular, scholars will find large numbers of maps, both current and historical, of the China coast, including maps of harbors.Although the work of the Hydrographic Office centered on coast lines, depending on the local configuration, but also on the period, its maps may include substantial portions of urban areas.
In the case of Shanghai, the UHKO holds very unique cartographic items. The main concern of naval officers was the safety of their ships traveling upstream from the mouth of the Yangzi River over the Huangpu River to Shanghai. The very first task they performed was surveying the course of the Huangpu River and the depth of its bed. This turned into the earliest map of the Huangpu River — by then called Woo-sung River — and representation of the walled city.
This is still a crude map that distorts reality (note the north-south direction of Wusong he/Soochow Creek). The survey of the riverbed stops at the level of the walled city and presents a limited number of points. Yet this is a fairly faithful record of the course of the river and the surrounding territory (though it appears as blank). The knowledge of the local terrain improved over time, both in terms of the river itself and the settlements and installations along its banks. By 1858, for instance, the river had been surveyed in great details, with a complete representation of the urban area.
Thereafter, the same series came under the title of “Shanghai Harbour”. Maps were regularly and continuously updated. Usually a full survey was performed on a given year, with various updates and corrections in the subsequent year, until a new completed survey was decided. While the initial surveys were carried out by the naval officers on duty in Shanghai, the later ones were in the hands of the agents of the Whampoo Conservancy Board, the agency in charge of managing and maintaining the port of Shanghai.
The Virtual Shanghai platform has collected a complete series of maps of “Shanghai Harbour” between 1842 and 1936. They provide a formidable basis for an examination of the development of the city and that of the banks of the Huangpu River. For a direct access to these maps:
The U.K. Hydrographic Office holds more similar maps, but one needs to travel to their premises to check the finding aids. The staff is very helpful and friendly and the research environment just perfect. Since it is based in a military compound, however, one needs to make contact in advance and arrange for an appointment to get access to the facilities. The application process is smooth and easy.
The oldest known map of the British Settlement at Shanghai is an 1855 map representing the basic street layout, cadastral lots and even buildings. This rare map can be found at the U.K. National Archives as well as the Shanghai Municipal Archives.
The initial survey that served as the basis for the drawing of the 1855 map is a manuscript map entitled “Shanghai – English quarter“. This document was produced in the U.K., most probably at the Hydrographic Office of the Admiralty. A hand-written note says “Traced from drawing received from Commander Sanderson, 21th May 1855″.
The initial survey was done by an officer of the British Navy at a time when there was hardly any form of municipal administration in the British Settlement. More data must have been provided to produce the final 1855 map, although the actual process of elaboration is not known. This original manuscript map is available at the archives of the UK Hydrographic Office at Staunton.
Histoire de la Concession française de Changhai by Ch.-B. Maybon and Jean Fredet was published by Plon in 1929. This book represents a reference for the history of the French Concession in Shanghai. It covers only the early phase of the establishment and development of the concession, from 1848 to 1875. It is written from the perspective of French officials, in a language that undoubtedly reflects the patronizing attitude of French nationals in Shanghai. The reader needs to have this context in mind when examining this narrative of the French Concession.
Yet the book also offers a wealth of information and factual data about the history of the concession, and more broadly of Shanghai. It is based on a documentation no longer available for the most part, especially the archives of the French Municipal Council (only partially available at the Shanghai Municipal Archives) or the collections of the North China daily News. This history was the first part of a long-term project that was never completed. A Chinese translation of this book was published many years ago, which offers a useful supplement to the French version, especially for Chinese proper names (in French “pinyin” in the original).
The present version is not just a pdf image file. It is a full text searchable version. This book is no longer available on the market, except as a collector or bibliophile item. We make this digital version available with the intention and hope to serve the scholarly community with an easy access to this unique source for Shanghai history.
This book represents a reference for the history of the French Concession Shanghai. It covers only the early phase of establishment and development of the concession, from 1848 to 1875. It is written from the perspective of French officials, in a language that undoubtedly reflects the patronizing attitude of French nationals in Shanghai. The reader needs to have this context in mind when examining this narrative of the French Concession.
Yet the book also offers a wealth of information and factual data about the history of the concession, and more broadly of Shanghai. It is based on a documentation no longer available for the most part, especially the archives of the French Municipal Council (only partially available at the Shanghai Municipal Archives) or the collections of the North China daily News. This history was the first part of a long-term project that was never completed. A Chinese translation of tis book was published many years ago, which offers a useful supplement to the French version, especially for Chinese proper names (in French “pinyin” in the original).
The present version is not just a pdf image file. It is a full text searchable version. This book is no longer available on the market, except as a collector or bibliophile item. We make this digital version available with the intention and hope to serve the scholarly community with an easy access to this unique source for Shanghai history.
A new version of the Shanghai Commercial Guide (上海市行號路圖錄) volume devoted to the French Concession in 1939 is now available on “Live Maps”. Apart from a more accurate georectification, this version offers a fantastic degree of clarity. Names can be read down to the smallest shop (provided the original was legible). Details on the internal layout of city blocks allow the “visitor” an unsurpassed view of the structure of the city, of its residential quarters, shops, offices, parks, etc. This is a most amazing tool for research (or simply for wandering through the area) for all those involved in locating places in the former French Concession. New upgrades will be introduced in the coming weeks. To see the new version, go to “Live maps” and check the “1939 – French Concession Commercial Guide” box in the map list on the left hand side.
A new raster layer has been georectified and uploaded on the Virtual Shanghai GIS platform. This new layer, which can be found on Virtual Shanghai in the Source Maps section under ID199 or on the Virtual Shanghai GIS platform under “1939 Shanghai City Aerial view ID199″ is made up of two photographs that were pasted together. This is a complete aerial view of Shanghai from the southernmost section of the city along the Huangpu River to the Jiangwan area that was acquired thanks to Osaka City University (Department of geography).
Between 28 July and 17 August 1927, the British military in China surveyed the Shanghai area by plane and produced a systematic coverage of the Shanghai area through aerial photographs. This unique document is probably one of the earliest photographic records of Shanghai viewed from the sky. Two copies of the document exist at the Royal Geographical Society in London. It is made up of many photographs that were patiently cut and pasted together. Yet the document itself comes into 24 sheets that each cover different locations with a slight overlap. The RGS kindly authorized the digitizing of the 24 sheets that we subsequently stitched together with Photoshop. With very little distortion, the 24 sheets fit together almost perfectly. The reconstructed document (200 x 300 cm) can be found on Virtual Shanghai in the Source Maps section under ID727. As there was no related document, there is to no way to ascertain why the British military did this survey at the time. We may assume that since it was a period of heightened tension in China, with the Northern Expedition unfolding in Central China and challenges to foreign settlements, the British military made preparations for the defense of Shanghai. Marks and circles were added to the original view that may refer to locations with military significance. At this stage, however, this is a mere hypothesis.
The 1932 Sino-Japanese conflict was the first instance of modern war in the midst of a large metropolis. It left thousands of military and civilian casualties and turned a vast number of neighborhoods into ruins. While the fighting lasted only a few weeks beginning at the end of January 1932, a ceasefire agreement was signed only on 5 May after protracted negotiations through the mediation of Western powers. Attached to the agreement was a set of 14 maps that showed the area of fighting and various post-war dispositions. The maps must be read in connection with the text of the agreement.
I found a partial set of the original maps (8/14) signed by the Chinese and Japanese delegates, as well as by the official witnesses to the agreement at the U.K. National Archives. These are valuable documents as they show the local topography at a scale of 1/5000, including a unique cover of the Zhabei area. An assemblage of the available maps can be found on Virtual Shanghai (Map ID 774). Individual maps are also available under Map ID 765-772. One easy way to find the whole set is to search under “Hu bei dixing zongtu” in the search box for ‘Transliteration’.
The missing maps must be somewhere in the vaults of the U.K. National Archives that holds a huge collection of maps (11 million items). Unfortunately, large numbers have not yet been catalogued. Further research should lead to their eventual retrieval.
An international workshop on history and visual documents is to be held on October 7-9, 2009 at Santa Lucia di Talla (Corsica). The workshop is part of a series of meetings held over the years on the issue of history and the use of visual documents. This initiative taken by Prof. Yeh Wen-hsin (History Department, UC Berkeley) and Prof. Christian Henriot (Institut d’Asie Orientale, Institut Universitaire de France) followed their initial involvement in the creation of a databank of historical photographs of Shanghai funded by the France-Berkeley Fund.
The October 2009 workshop will encourage participants to tackle a bit more issues of methodology and narrative. Its broad theme — Visual, Representations, Materiality and Narratives — however is meant to suggest an open exploration of the various dimensions visual sources entail for historical knowledge. The historical discipline is rooted in the careful analysis of textual documents through elaborate methods crafted by generations of historians. The pre-eminence of the written world has found its manifestation in the reliance on archives as the primary material of the historian. These foundations have been shaken by post-modern critics who argued that archives were like all other historical documents, a form of narrative that offered no more guarantee of objectivity than other productions such as the press or even literary texts. This challenge has redefined the way historians ‘think’ and mobilize their sources in the reconstruction of the past.
The study of visual documents goes beyond the field of history, of course. It is a complex field that takes all forms of visual production and representation as its targets of investigation. The production and circulation of visual documents generate for any given period a particular visual culture that sets the environment within which individual documents (whatever their nature) has to be approached. Who does what and when and how does it become visual, in what historical relations do specific images stand to others, what is the social life of an image, what is the relationship between a social actor and the image? Thus the visual offers itself as both material and representational. It is to understand this duality and its implications and to find answers to these types of questions that scholars will get together at the 2009 workshop on history & images.
Virtual Shanghai is a research and resource platform on the history of Shanghai from the mid-nineteenth century to nowadays through the combined use of various sets of documents, NTIC and GIS technologies. The Virtual Shanghai Blog will open a new forum of exchange and information for the users of the VS platform. It is meant to facilitate and expand contributions to the project by a wider community of scholars and students.