Historian and author of Empire Made Me (“dedicated and original scholarship” – Sunday Times) returns to Shanghai, one of the most colourful outposts of the British Empire. In this First World War Special, Robert Bickers tells the stories of the largest contingent of Shanghai Britons to fight the Kaiser’s forces in Europe, exploring their contradictions, patriotic fervour and battlefield experiences.

After 1914, between tiffin and a day at the racetrack, the British in Shanghai enjoyed a life far removed from the horrors of the Great War. Shanghai’s status as a treaty port – with its foreign concessions home to expatriates from every corner of the globe – made it the most cosmopolitan city in Asia. The city’s inhabitants on either side of the conflict continued to mix socially after the outbreak of war, the bond amongst foreign nationals being almost as strong as that between countrymen. But as news of the slaughter spread to the Far East, and in particular the sinking of the Lusitania, their ambivalence turned to antipathy.

Robert Bickers is a writer and historian, author of ‘Empire Made Me: An Englishman Adrift in Shanghai’ and ‘The Scramble for China: Foreign Devils in the Qing Empire, 1832-1914’. He has written extensively on Chinese history and is currently Professor of History at the University of Bristol.

The First World War altered the course of the twentieth century, heralding the decline of the great European empires and ending a golden era of optimism. While for many, the Great War was a European war, the war was actually much more wide reaching. Its battles were fought as far away as the Shantung Peninsula in northeastern China, and its legacy continues to reverberate in the modern geopolitical relationships that the world’s biggest rising power has with its neighbour. To mark the centenary of the First World War, Penguin China has assembled a series of Specials by the world’s top China hands that bring a fresh and fascinating perspective to the conflict.