Over the past millennium, Shanghai transformed from a relatively insignificant market town and county capital into a major global metropolis. A combination of technical advances in agriculture, waterway management, and the natural changes in the course of some rivers and the silting of others led, in 1292, to the founding of the county capital Shanghai. The town went through alternate periods of growth and stagnation, but by the mid-19th century, it was an international trading hub with a population of a quarter of a million people. One of the turning points in its history came in 1842, the year that the Treaty of Nanking was signed by the Qing Empire and the United Kingdom and the Treaty Port of Shanghai opened up. Over the following century, Shanghai was divided into three main sections, each operating under its own laws and regulations: the International Settlement, the French Concession, and the Chinese city. In the 1930s, the fate of the city fell into the hands of yet another foreign power: Japan. After Japan’s surrender on 15 August 1945, Chinese nationalists and communists continued their struggle for control of the city for another four years until the People’s Liberation Army “liberated” Shanghai on 25 May 1949.
Article
Leela Fernandes
Water-related disputes in India have been a fraught area of contestation between state governments in the post-colonial period. Since the late 20th century, much of this conflict has been centered on mechanisms of legal adjudication both through the centralized state machinery of tribunals set up by the central government and by legal suits brought by states before the Supreme Court. Formal records of tribunal and court judgments provide skeletal accounts of legal claims, technical evidence, and judiciary responses between unitary state governments with hardened positions and conflicting interests. Tamil Nadu, a lower riparian state is reliant on water-sharing arrangements and the shared management of water-related infrastructure with its three neighboring states of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, and Kerala. The water-related agreements that link Tamil Nadu with its neighbors vary in significant ways in terms of the scope of the agreements, the kinds of issues under contention, the political dynamics of the agreement, and the outcome and implementation of each of the agreements. Political, institutional, and agential dimensions of state action are both shaped and constrained by historical structures of political economy. Both centralized structures of the colonial state and the political economy of India’s planned developmental state shape this set of interstate water negotiations and disputes that weigh on the states that share water resources and infrastructure in Southern India. While historical processes have produced the structural conditions that have shaped such disputes, recent policies of liberalization have intensified conflicts over water. For instance, processes of urbanization and city-centric models of growth have increased pressures on water resources in India. Social scientific scholarship that has focused on the politics of economic reforms and on the ways in which reforms have been shaped by India’s federal structure has tended to treat states as discrete entities. Such scholarship has analyzed the impact of India’s federal structure on reforms through a focus on relationships between states and the central government. While this has produced a heightened focus on the significance of federalism in the post-liberalization period, such work has paid less attention to relationships between states. The focus of such social scientific scholarship on particular sectors of the economy (such as telecom, electricity, and land/real estate) that are visibly associated with reform policies has compounded this analytical gap. Unlike such sectors, water is not contained within the territorial boundaries of states. A historical perspective on water disputes provides a means for unsettling the conventional analytical boundaries of political scientific conceptions of federalism in the post-liberalization period.
Article
In India, as in much of the world, the 19th century witnessed the emergence of urban capitalist classes, effected by the rapid growth of global mercantile capitalism and, later, industrial manufacturing. As a colonial city, Bombay—like its eastern counterpart, Calcutta—developed two connected, but distinct business communities: one, a European community with foreign, imperial connections, and the other, an Indian community with roots in long-standing regional networks. In Bombay, the latter took the form of a class known as the “Merchant Princes,” who capitalized on long-standing commercial traditions in western India and their ability to command both Indian and colonial networks to establish themselves as commercial powerhouses. These commercial networks and patterns of behavior, established before the arrival of the British, had an indelible impact on the character of Indian business in colonial Bombay. The business community brought such traditions with them when they migrated to Bombay at the end of the 18th century and used them to build the famous mercantile firms of the early 19th century.
The Indian business elite likewise built collaborative links within their own community to expand their business interests; when barriers erected by the colonial establishment sought to limit their expansion, Indian businessmen used the resources at their disposal (both in the Indian hinterland and within the city itself) to circumvent them. Class identity similarly began to emerge as they cooperatively campaigned for particular agendas, intended to improve the fortunes of the entire community. They fought for greater influence in the Bombay government—in line with the wealth they then commanded—and used their financial resources to mold the physical and intellectual landscape of the city in their favor.
Article
Tim Dyson
When composed of hunter-gatherers, Asia’s population numbered perhaps 1–2 million. But the emergence of agriculture saw population growth, and it appears likely that by 1 CE the continent’s population exceeded 100 million. For China and Japan, there are data which shed light on their population histories during pre-modern times. Moreover, both countries experienced rapid demographic transitions in the 20th century—substantially limiting the associated extent of population growth. For the Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia, there are almost no population data prior to the late 18th century, although what happened subsequently is better recorded. Both these diverse regions experienced fairly protracted modern demographic transitions and substantial population growth. West Asia’s population is thought to have been of similar size in 1900 as in 1 CE. During the 20th century, however, most countries in West Asia experienced late birth-rate declines and very substantial population growth. Throughout history, the level of urbanization in Asia has generally been extremely low. Nevertheless, the continent contained most of the world’s most populous cities, though that situation changed temporarily in the 19th and 20th centuries. That said, after 1950 mortality decline fueled urban growth. As a result, by 2020 Asia once again contained most of the world’s largest cities, and about half of the continent’s people lived in urban areas. The population history of Asia has generally involved very slow population growth. The main explanation has been that death rates were high, marriage was early and universal, fertility was uncontrolled, and so birth rates were high too. However, research has increasingly suggested that in some areas the levels of fertility and mortality which prevailed in pre-modern times are better described as “moderate” rather than “high.” Moreover, as in Europe, there were regulatory mechanisms which helped to maintain a degree of balance between human numbers and the resource base.
Article
Southeast Asia’s colonial ports often supplanted early trading emporiums within Asia, and by the 19th century a number of ports played important roles in European imperial networks, making them significant hubs not only regionally but also in global networks. Such ports included the British-administered Straits Settlement of Singapore, Penang, Malacca (now more commonly referred to as Melaka); the Dutch-administered Batavia, Semarang, and Makassar (in the Java Sea); the French-administered Saigon; and the Spanish (later American) administered Manila (in the South China Sea). Importantly, some of these ports had earlier histories as trading emporiums, but reached a highpoint of connectivity with global networks in the 19th and 20th centuries. These colonial port cities were not only hubs for trade and travelers but served as gateways or imperial bridgeheads connecting maritime centers to the peoples and economies of the port hinterlands, drawing them into a global (imperial) economy.
The economic, political, and technological frameworks in colonial ports served to reinforce European control. Colonial port cities also played a role in knowledge circulations and the introduction of technologies, which changed transport and modes of production and urban planning. The colonial port cities of Southeast Asia were also important in terms of the strategic defense of European interests in the region. Regarded as entry points for technology and colonial capitalism, and often modeled with elements of European aesthetics and design, port cities could also be sites of urban development and planning. The development of residential enclaves, ethnic quarters, and commercial districts served to shape the morphology of the colonial ports of Asia.
Colonial port city communities were oftentimes regarded as important sites of cultural exchange and hybridity. These port cities were often built on existing indigenous trading centers or fishing villages. Cosmopolitan in nature, and open to the movement of trading diasporas, port cities served as entry points for not only commercial communities, but in the 19th century saw the increased movement of European colonial administrators, scientists, writers, and travelers between ports. Another important influx was labor (convict, indentured, and free) throughout Southeast Asia’s ports.
By the early 20th century, colonial ports were sites of new intellectual and social currents, including anticolonial sentiment, in part driven by the circulation of news and press and also, by diasporic community influences and interests. Following World War II, many colonial ports were revived as national ports. By exploring the colonial port cities of Southeast Asia along a number of themes it is possible to understand why scholars have often described the colonial port city as a “connecting force” (or bridgehead) linking ports and port communities (and economies) to the European imperial project and the global economy.
An examination of the colonial port city of Southeast Asia offers scholars the potential to bridge numerous historical fields including, but not restricted to, imperial history, Southeast Asian history, maritime history, urban and sociocultural histories, and economic and labor histories.
