This book delves into the lives of three Scottish private traders—George Smith of Bombay, George Smith of Canton, and George Smith of Madras—and uses them as lenses through which to explore the inner workings of Britain’s imperial expansion and global network of trade, revealing how an unstable credit system and a financial crisis ultimately led to greater British intervention in India and China.
Foregrounding the entangled history of China and the Philippines, Guingona brings to life an array of understudied, but influential characters, such as Filipino jazz musicians, magnetic Chinese swimmers, expert Filipino marksmen, leading Chinese educators, Philippine-Chinese bankers, Filipina Carnival Queens, and many others. Through archival research in multiple languages, this innovative study advances a more nuanced reading of world history, reframing our understanding of the first half of the twentieth century by bringing interactions between Asian people to the fore and minimizing the role of those who historically dominated global history narratives. Through methodologically distinct case studies, Guingona presents a critique of Eurocentric approaches to world/global history, shedding light on the interconnected history of China and the Philippines in a transformative period. This title is part of the Flip it Open Programme and may also be available Open Access. Check our website Cambridge Core for details.
Commander Ralph Binney (1888-1944), Royal Navy, was an active watercolourist specialising in painting ships (invariably battleships) and harbours/ports. Binney joined the navy in 1903 and served tghrough World War One. There’s more on Binney’s naval career here. In 1929 he obviously visited Hong Kong and painted this scene of Aberdeen Harbour…
The latest in my occasional series of old Shanghai signage (use the search box and type ‘signage’ if you want to see other examples). Here a Shanghai Municipal Police (SMP) injunction not to turn right…
For Portuguese readers – Quando o noir chegou a Macau – my bimonthly column for Macao’s Paragrafo (the arts & lit supplement to Macao’s Ponto Final newspaper) – on 1953’s Tony Curtis/Joanne Dru Macao-set noir, Forbidden…. click here…
An online book talk that takes us to China’s wild northeast, a place even wilder in the 1930s than now, as foreign countries tussled for control and characters bristled with intrigue. Harbin’s then Jewish community of twenty thousand is the context of Scott Seligman’s latest book, a thriller based on the unsolved murder of Semyon Kaspé.
Wednesday Jan. 17, 2024 from 8-9 PM Beijing Time
Scott D. Seligman discusses his new book on an unsolved murder in China in the run-up to WWII, “Murder in Manchuria – The true story of a Jewish virtuoso, Russian fascists, a French diplomat, and a Japanese spy in occupied China.” The story unfolds against the backdrop of a three-country struggle for control of Manchuria — an area some called China’s Wild East, and an explosive mixture of nationalities, religions, and ideologies. Part cold-case thriller and part social history, the tragic saga of Semyon Kaspé is told in the context of the improbable tale of twenty thousand Jews who called Harbin home at the start of the twentieth century. Seligman recounts the events that led up to their arrival and their hasty exodus – and solves a crime that has puzzled historians for decades.
MORE ABOUT THE SPEAKER: Scott D. Seligman is a national award-winning writer with special interests in both Jewish and Chinese history. A former corporate executive, he spent much of his career in Taiwan, Hong Kong and China, is fluent in Mandarin and reads and writes Chinese. He headed the Beijing office of what is now the U.S.-China Business Council shortly after normalization of diplomatic relations between the U.S. and China, and has worked as a legislative assistant to a member of the U.S. Congress, managed a multinational public relations agency in China and served as spokesperson and communications director for United Technologies, a Fortune 50 company. He holds an undergraduate degree in American history from Princeton and a master’s degree from Harvard. He has written four books on early Chinese-American history, and his first Jewish-themed book, “The Great Kosher Meat War of 1902”, won gold medals in the 2021 Independent Publisher Book Awards and the 2002-21 Reader Views Literary Awards and was a finalist in the 2020 National Jewish Book Awards. His website is www.seligmanonline.com
HOW MUCH: Free for RASBJ members, RMB 50 for members of partner branches in London, Shanghai, Hong Kong and Seoul. RMB 100 for non-members. You may find payment via Alipay easier than via WeChat. Interested in becoming an RASB member? Join us at http://rasbj.org/membership/
HOW TO JOIN THE EVENT: Please click “Register” or “I will attend” before Jan. 15 and follow the instructions. After successful registration you’ll receive a confirmation email with a link to join the event online. If you seem not to have received it, please check your spam folder.
