Immingrants in Shanghai 

Article by Zac O’Brien. Edited by Duncan Robinson. Additional Research by Kathy Stein.

During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries when Shanghai was a treaty port she faced high immigration. The city was never part of the formal British Empire, but rather a part of the informal Empire – a place where Britain had influence but never formally controlled. In fact Britain colonised only two places in China which were Hong Kong and Weihaiwei. Treaty ports like Shanghai became a place where foreigners went because they had special extraterritorial privileges. Foreigners could not be tried under a Chinese Court but had to be face trial by their own country, even when the crime was against a native person. Shanghai became popular because it had a reputation of being multicultural, safe and a place where one could get rich quick. 

The get rich quick reputation attracted not only foreigners but also natives. Prior to becoming a treaty port Shanghai was barely a speck on the map, but the creation of an international port caused an economic boom that attracted people from all over the world. Shanghai was segregated like many colonial cities. The non-Chinese lived a small section of the city known as the International Settlement, whereas the Chinese lived in the older walled part of the city. Originally, both groups favoured this segregation as both foreigners and the Chinese saw it as a way of preserving their cultures. The International Settlement was not just inhabited by the British but from a wide variety of nations including British, American, French, German and Japanese. This meant that the culture in Shanghai was different from other colonial cities like Delhi and Singapore as it was more multicultural. 

The city was also viewed by natives and foreigners as a place of refuge. During the Taiping rebellion thousands of Chinese people fled to the city as they believed that the international presence there made the city less likely to be attacked. Similarly Jews fled to Shanghai to escape persecution from the Nazis. The reason some 20,000 Jews fled to Shanghai was because unlike almost every other city in the world, Shanghai did not require any passports or documentation to enter. 

Shanghai like many colonial cities was dominated by males. This is because for a male to travel to a new location alone was not an uncommon occurrence, however, females normally only moved location when they were accompanied by other members of their family such as their husbands or fathers. Some native women did move to Shanghai alone, they did this mainly because they were promised that they could make their fortune there, however, many upon entering the city were soon forced into prostitution. 

Although Shanghai housed lots of foreigners, 97 percent of the people in the city were Chinese. The increase in immigration was caused by the wealth that the international presence in the city had. It also must be noted that neither Britain nor the other nations in the city ever ran Shanghai; the land was always Chinese and the area that foreigners lived was only one section of the city. However people such as Mao Zedong as well as historians have described the city as semi-colonial. Shanghai has earned this status because it was part of the informal Empire and foreigners had special privileges there, but it was never formally colonised. Shanghai attracted people from all walks of life, from both in China and from abroad. They came for a variety of reasons, from seeking economic prosperity to escaping persecution. Yet despite attracting a wide variety of people the city still had two very different cultures which coexisted within the city: native and international culture. Although treaty port Shanghai was a multicultural city, the various cultures never fully integrated together.

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