The Scramble for China…in Shanghai…Twice

Posted: May 15th, 2011 | No Comments »

To chances to see Robert Bickers talk about his book in Shanghai next week….

The Scramble for China:

Foreign Devils in the Qing Empire, 1832-1914

RAS LECTURE

Tuesday 17^th May, 2011 at 7:00 p.m.

Tavern, Radisson Plaza Xingguo Hotel 78 Xing Guo Road,Shanghai

兴国宾馆 上海市兴国路78号

ROBERT BICKERS

THE SCRAMBLE FOR CHINA

Foreign Devils in the Qing Empire, 1832 – 1914

From 1832, when British ships sailed into forbidden Chinese waters, China suffered a century of national humiliation.  It is a grand narrative of infamy, in which China’s development was skewed by impositions from foreign imperialists, craven collaborators, decadent, feudal Manchu emperors, warlords and bureaucratic capitalists, and it is a story repeatedly told in modern China.  Yet for the outside world, this traumatic period is a matter of history, done and dusted.

The Scramble for China is an epic, dynamic account of a century of Sino-foreign interactions, confrontation and confusion.  Told from both the Western and Chinese point-of-view, Robert Bickers’ book examines how events such as the opium wars or the Boxer uprising have impacted upon China’s relations with the world.  For, as China resumes its central place on the world stage, we cannot understand the country’s resurgence and its sometimes quiet, sometimes raucous anger at the world unless we understand first this dark, complex phase of its modern history, the memory of which is embedded in the state’s very articulation of itself.

Bickers seeks to tell this story from the inside, through missionary records, Customs files, court reports, consular correspondence, scandalous diaries and fantastical memoirs, as well as tickets, dance cards, menus – incidental traces of otherwise lost moments in another realm.  For, he argues, mere history matters in modern China, and the past is unfinished business.  The Scramble for China is a highly original account of this time when two equally arrogant and scornful civilisations clashed.  It is a tale of squalor, romance, brutality and exoticism, and it changed the world.

Robert Bickers is the author of the highly-acclaimed Empire Made Me: An Englishman Adrift in Shanghai.  He has written extensively on Chinese history and is currently Professor of History at the University of Bristol.  To write The Scramble for China he travelled at length, visiting many of the haunting sites scattered across China that feature in the book.

Entrance: RMB 30 (RAS members) and RMB 80 (non-members) those unable to make the donation but wishing to attend may contact us for exemption, prior to the RAS Lecture. Membership applications and membership renewals will be available at this event.

RSVP: to RAS Enquiry desk enquiry@royalasiaticsociety.org.cn

Saturday, May 21, 4pm

M on the Bund, Glamour Bar

RMB 65, includes a drink

Robert Bickers tells the epic, dynamic account of a century of
Sino-foreign interactions, confrontation and confusion.
Told from both the Western and Chinese point-of-view,
The Scramble for China examines how events such as the opium wars
or the Boxer uprising have impacted upon China’s relations
with the world as China resumes its central place on the world stage.

Bickers, Professor of History at University of Bristol and the author of
Empire Made Me: An Englishman Adrift in Shanghai, tells this story from the inside,
through missionary records, customs files, court reports, consular correspondence,
scandalous diaries and fantastical memoirs, as well as tickets, dance cards, menus
– incidental traces of otherwise lost moments in another realm.
History matters in modern China, and the past is unfinished business.
The Scramble for China is a highly original account of this time when two equally
arrogant and scornful civilisations clashed.
It is a tale of squalor, romance, brutality and exoticism,
and it changed the world.

---