Navigating Semi-Colonialism; Shipping, Sovereignty, and Nation-Building in China, 1860-1937 by Anne Reinhardt (review)

Recently, maritime history has become an increasingly popular and prominent topic of inquiry in Chinese studies. The rise of the steamship is increasingly seen as a microcosm for the transformation of economic and trading environments in modern China, as the arrival of steamships certainly contributed positively to the economic and infrastructural development in modern China. The expansion of steam navigation in China since the 1860s has received renewed academic attention from researchers looking into Mercantile Capitalism,¹ economic rivalry, and most recently semicolonialism and imperialism in China's modernization process. Anne Reinhardt's Navigating Semi-Colonialism, Shipping, Sovereignty, and Nation-Building in China, 1860-!937 provides a new perspective and historical context of this narrative of China's struggle to enter the modern world.

Reinhardt, currently a chair and professor of history at Williams College, is an expert on modern Chinese economic and colonial history. She holds a BA in history from Harvard University (1990), an MA in Asian studies from the University of California (1994), and a PhD from Princeton University (2002) under Susan Naquin. She views steam navigation as a wider arena comprising intertwined political, economic, social, and cultural elements and steam navigation as a case study through which to understand semicolonial China. The scope of Reinhardt's historical inquiry includes foreign imperialism through the treaty port system, China's partial sovereignty, economic development, and the social space of the steamship. While her investigation covers the period between 1860 and 1937, the introduction and conclusion outline relevant developments before and after those dates. Reinhardt conducted research in China, Taiwan, Japan, Britain, the United States, and India, and subsequently uses a diverse range of primary sources as well as draws from the work of various shipping history experts internationally. Semicolonialized nation-states such as China existed alongside India, the British Empire's crown jewel. Through detailing the development of steam shipping and enterprise, Reinhardt argues that China's experience is both unique and connected to other contexts and global processes. The book defines colonialism and semicolonialism by showing how international influences in modern China differed from those of countries under colonial rule.

Reinhardt's book contains seven chapters following chronological order (1860-1937), an introduction, and a conclusion. Conclusions within each chapter contain a comparison with British India that strengthens her argument concerning the uniqueness of the Chinese experiences and the challenges that confronted China as part of a wider global trend. She begins by outlining the "semi-colonial conundrum" historians face in defining China's unique experience with colonialism. China's sovereignty was limited by unequal treaties imposed by foreign powers, particularly Britain, with a degree of collaboration by the Qing dynasty. She chooses the term "collaboration" as semicolonialism occasionally benefited both the Qing rulers and the foreign powers.

Chapter 1 describes the existing shipping activity prior to the introduction of steam transport in the 1860s. As foreign vessels established their place in Chinese waters through the Treaty of Nanjing in 1842, the carriage of Chinese cargoes in foreign vessels along the coast became a profitable trade, which attracted the attention and commercial participation of Western steamship owners, such as Russell & Co., who brought vessels to China.² As in India, however, in addition to import/export trade, foreign vessels became a substantial part of domestic trade. The coastal trade involved selling a vessel's service to Chinese merchants and trafficking cargoes between China's treaty ports. The coastal trade was formally recognized in the 1860 Treaty of Tianjin, which also saw the Qing government put Chinese ships of Western design under the same conditions as foreign powers', thus relinquishing some of their sovereign rights. After i860, there were treaty ports connected to one another. But at that time, the Chinese waters were not developed. For example, steamboats could not reach Chongqing. However, the best way to obtain a promising trade route to Chongqing was to open the Hubei port of Yichang.³ Then, foreign shipping began to expand into China's internal waters. The growth of steam-powered ships occurred as the Chinese...