New Approaches to Old Shanghai

The study of Shanghai has become an increasingly prominent, international, and topically diverse sub-field within Sinology. Though much of the most interesting work has focused on the period from 1843 through 1943, when Shanghai was a subdivided treaty port, scholarship since the 1950s has seen important changes in theme and methodology. The availability of new archival materials in the 1980s had a dramatic effect on the analysis of the city's past,and a more comparative approach of late has placed Old Shanghai into a broadly international perspective.