Contesting the Modern: River Conservancy in Tianjin, 1897-1937

• In Event: Places of Conflict: Rediscovering Chinese Cityscape through Emerging Cultural Spaces

Abstract

Located on the coast and at a short distance from Beijing, Tianjin has long been the largest port city in north China. Between 1897 and 1937, a series of river conservancy projects was conducted in Tianjin, which had profoundly shaped its environment and society. Meanwhile, Tianjin was a semi-colonial city that was physically segmented into a Chinese administered city and as many as nine foreign concessions. And it also underwent dramatic changes as different governments took turns in the control of Tianjin. Yet no matter how much the policies and governing styles differed from one to another, river conservancy was on the agenda of every regime. My paper examines the transformation of the impetus of the conservancy projects from a coercion that the colonial powers wanted to impose in order to keep Beijing open to the sea, to a consent among Chinese and foreigners that the river ought to be reshaped for Tianjin's prosperity. It argues that the conservancy projects served as a venue for imperialist powers to legitimize their occupation at the beginning of the 20th century, and then were used by the Chinese governments to reclaim sovereignty and challenge the Westerners' authority in modernizing Tianjin into the 1930s. Putting the conservancy projects of Tianjin in a global context of technology transmission, semicolonialism and modernization, this paper is to explore the multiplicity of modernity in a treaty-port setting where imperialist and nationalist agendas were simultaneously embedded in the conservancy projects and together shaped the landscape of Tianjin.

Author

• Kan Li, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities