Making concessions in Tianjin: heterotopia and Italian colonialism in mainland China

Abstract

Between 1860 and 1945, the Chinese port city of Tianjin became the site of up to nine foreign-controlled concessions, functioning side by side. Ruth Rogaski has argued that Tianjin's distinctiveness deserves the appellation 'hypercolony', a term which reflects Tianjin's socio-political intricacies and the multiple colonial discourses of power and space. This article focuses on the representations of the ex-Italian concession in Tianjin, a site which is currently renegotiating its identity between reinvention of the past (1901-45) and property-led regeneration. The article employs the concept of heterotopia to explore 'semi-colonial', 'hypercolonial' and 'globalizing' representations of Tianjin's built form. * The research for this article was made possible thanks to a grant from the Universities' China Committee in London and a small research grant awarded by the British Academy. My grateful thanks to the editor Prof. Simon Gunn for his thought-provoking comments and suggestions. The paper has also benefited from advice and insightful comments received from two anonymous peer reviewers.

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