Comparative/World
the analysis stalls at times in an unexceptional conceptual framework driven by the standard explanations of
"vertical" and "horizontal" integration, leaving less
space for further discussion of labor, the global middle
class drawn to nicotine, and the fascinating history of
pioneering advertising in the heart of rural China and
India.
SUDIPTA SEN
Syracuse University
ROBERT BICKERS. Britain in China: Community, Culture
and Colonialism 1900-1949. (Studies in Imperialism.)
New York: Manchester University Press; distributed
by St. Martin's, New York. 1999. Pp. xii, 276. Cloth
$79.95, paper $29.95.
This mature and insightful volume could be considered
under various rubrics: British history; Chinese history
(was the knockoff British Raj in China a small scale
successor to Mongol and Manchu regimes?); history of
imperialism; and cultural history-not to mention
"readable books to recommend to friends and students." The focus is not on institutional or diplomatic
history, although there is substantial use of the literature in these fields, nor yet on political imperialism as
such, although that context is also well sketched.
Instead, we look at how the British cultural and
political "presence" in China worked. Territorially,
this presence comprised two British-dominated international settlements (Shanghai and Tianjin), the
crown colony of Hong Kong, two leased territories, six
concessions, and diverse outlying commercial or missionary networks reaching from Manchuria to Burma.
The settler community of Shanghai was the spiritual
capital, and "Shanghailanders" developed sweet selfimportant dreams of their own significance for Britain,
China, and civilization, all to be defended by pomp and
force. By the 1920s, however, Shanghai was caught
between Chinese nationalism and British national
interest, neither of which could tolerate a racist,
blinkered Shanghai-stan whose constabulary fired into
Chinese crowds, endangering sales, imperial prestige,
and diplomacy. Ironically, Shanghailanders and testy
anti-imperialists shared heroic myths of a roaring
imperial lion that respectively either woke or raped the
sleeping dragon. Robert Bickers's story carefully shows
how fleeting and circumstantial was the effect of this
"mock Raj" (p. 219).
The introduction nimbly places the study in the
context of "studies of imperialism," the title of the
distinguished series in which it appears. The second
chapter, "China in Britain, and in the British Imagination," enterprisingly surveys popular British and
American journalism, plays, and novels to show how
they reflected, inflected, and reinforced the cultural
basis of Shanghailand in distance, difference, and
oppositeness. Shanghailanders also lifted many notions from the Raj of India, Burma, and Malaya; its
consciously exotic vocabulary (some of it even taken
into Chinese, such as "coolie," "amah," "typhoon,"
AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW
165
and "mandarin") signaled that here was an autonomous place that was not Britain but not China either.
Chapter three, "Britons in China: A Settler Society,"
turns more social and political, describing recruitment,
socialization, and boundary maintenance of Shanghai
culture, as well as challenges and changes in the
Shanghai Municipal Council, the governing body of
the International Settlement-and in passing deflates
the urban legend about the sign on the Shanghai Bund
proclaiming "no dogs or Chinese allowed." Bickers
examines various constituencies: "settlers" with an
"illusion of permanence" and a primary allegiance to
an imagined autonomous Shanghai; "expatriates" who
worked for global enterprises or the government, who
could and did move on, regarding Shanghai as a useful
and exotic base, but not a home; and missionaries, who
saw themselves as responsible to a higher power and
lived among their constituents in the boondocks.
When the Chinese state attempted to project its
power into Chinese society and control Shanghai in the
1920s, the London Foreign Office focused on their
"settler monster" (p. 162). Bickers's fourth chapter,
"Dismantling Informal Empire," and chapter five,
"Staying On: the Localisation of British Activity in
China," analyze in telling detail how savvy big business
and liberal missionary enterprises prudently started to
decolonialize. They indigenized, expanded inland, integrated, and co-opted educated Chinese professionals; in the process, they become more efficient, modern, and profitable. The fresh recruit to Shanghai was
now more likely to read Pearl Buck's The Good Earth
(1931) or even Edgar Snow's Red Star over China
(1938) than Colonel Blimp's memoirs, presaging the
passage of the imperial torch to the Americans. The
final chapter, "Mter Colonialism," aligns Bickers with
those historians who see classic treaty port imperialism
not as sovereign, unidirectional, and coherent but as
particular, joint, and evolving; he agrees with those
who argue that commercial success in China depended
more on market sensitivity than on treaty power and
that British communities were "cooperative Sino-British ventures" (pp. 219-20). Acknowledged but less
distinct are the Chinese participants who, Bickers
points out, paid the price for but also profited most
from the British presence-sometimes as scavengers,
compradors, or running dogs, at other times variously
as hosts, opportunist investors, backstage controllers,
silent partners, eager students, and inheritors.
CHARLES W. HAYFORD
Northwestern University
BARBARA BUSH. Imperialism, Race and Resistance: Africa and Britain, 1919-1945. New York: Routledge.
1999. Pp. xviii, 394. Cloth $75.00, paper $24.99.
Barbara Bush's book examines the many strains of
thought and action regarding colonialism and white
supremacy in Britain and parts of Britain's empire in
Mrica, from the end of World War I to the end of
World War 11. Mter a general assessment of the state
FEBRUARY 2002
166
Reviews of Books
of the African empire after the Great War, she provides three substantial chapters on West Africa (mostly Nigeria and Gold Coast/Ghana), three more on
South Africa, and three on Britain itself ("into the
heart of empire"). She therefore takes on large chunks
of territory indeed, both literally and in subject matter.
In her terms, colonial and white supremacist "dreams
of power" evoked countervailing "dreams of freedom";
there ensued an ongoing dialectic between the two,
with reformulations of one leading to reconfigurations
in the other. In itself this is obvious enough; as Bush
acknowledges disarmingly, she "make[s] no claims to
any path-breaking approaches" (p. xii). Still, the outlines of this dynamic are useful as historical survey; I
can imagine assigning chapters of this book to undergraduates, for instance.
The real value of the volume lies in the details. Bush
has read widely, as her topic demands-particularly in
secondary literature, but also in some revealing private
paper collections. (Her bibliography runs to some
thirty-two pages, and her endnotes to fifty-six.) She has
culled from these sources some quite revealing and
occasionally fascinating material on moments, situations, and, especially, personalities. Some of the last
are well known-Leonard Woolf, Lord Hailey, Clements Kadalie, George Padmore, Margery Perhamand some less so. In particular, Bush, who devotes
considerable attention to gender aspects of colonialism, racism, and dissent, introduces us to some remarkable and largely forgotten women. Eslanda
Goode Robeson, for instance, was married to the
legendary Paul Robeson but was a quite formidable
figure on her own, and as an African-American woman
travelling and studying in Africa wrote about it in ways
quite outside of the era's mainstream. Winifred
Holtby, the English liberal and feminist, devoted enormous energies to critiques of colonialism and support
for its victims. And Nancy Cunard, the hard-living
shipping heiress who scandalized Britain as a "negrophile," emerges as a scintillating original.
This can be a difficult, even irritating book to read,
mainly because of some regrettable stylistic and editorial weaknesses. Bush rarely gives us so much as a full
sentence quotation from a source; instead she constantly injects a quoted word or phrase-often several
in a single sentence-into her own composition. The
result is not only a feeling of disruption and lack of
flow, but the reader wonders which terms are being
quoted ironically-or were meant that way by the
original authors. There are too many typographical,
spelling, or minor factual errors. The scholar Jan
Nederveen Pieterse, for example, is refered to
throughout the book, including the bibliography, as
"Pietersie." At one point, the Nigerian nationalist
Nnamdi Azikiwe-already mentioned properly several
times-is rendered, jarringly, as "Azkikiwe Nnaindi."
General Hertzog is given as Herzog, and King Sobhuza
of Swaziland is given twice, as Sobhenza. Finally, in the
book's latter stages Bush uses the qualifier "arguably"
with astonishing frequency. The word appears four-
AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW
teen times between pages 236 and 247; four times on
page 245, three times each on pages 250, 255, and 269.
Not only is this unacceptably repetitive, it reflects a
certain tentativeness in presentation.
Nevertheless, the book is a legitimate guide to the
many shades of ideology and practice that both underpinned and undermined colonialism and white supremacy in the period. Although the empire clearly
survived the period intact, Bush analyzes the growing
stresses on it, some due to world events (competition
with fascism, for instance), some to rethinking the
imperial mission in the metropole, and some to rising
opposition at home and abroad. Bush examines the
tensions and overlaps between liberalism, Marxism,
and pan-Africanism with subtlety. In some ways, the
most satisfying part of the book is a brief closing essay,
where Bush reflects on the meaning of her story in
today's era of globalization. The contemporary world
may be postcolonial, but it is hardly a place where
questions of national and corporate power, race, and
resistance are irrelevant.
KENNETH P. VICKERY
North Carolina State University
DOUGLAS A. BORER. Superpowers Defeated: Vietnam
and Afghanistan Compared. Portland, Oreg.: Frank
Cass. 1999. Pp. xxiii, 261. $57.50.
For Douglas A. Borer, history matters. The origins of
American defeat in Vietnam and Soviet failure in
Afghanistan can be traced in large part to questions of
legitimacy of the local regimes, and these can be traced
to the history of the two countries. Given their notions
of a "civilizing mission," the French in Vietnam and
later the Russians in Afghanistan imposed on themselves a burden of assimilation that made it almost a
certainty that they would fail. The British Empire
ruled India, he reminds us, with about 3,500 administrators. The French needed many more to rule Indochina "their way." The United States inherited the
problem the French created and tried to find a way out
of the dilemma in Vietnam. But the more it sought to
preserve democracy and stop communism, the more it
committed itself to an increasingly anti democratic
regime. The Russians went into Afghanistan in the
Soviet era, he suggests, out of pride and opportunity,
and became entangled in propping up a communist
regime that had willy-nilly grown out of military aid
programs.
Borer also suggests that by the very act of extending
large-scale military aid to the Vietnamese regime of
Ngo Dinh Diem, the American government encouraged the Soviets to help Ho Chi Minh-the very
reverse of the stated objective of limiting communist
opportunities. For the Russians, Vietnam was on the
periphery of its geopolitical map of the world-until
the American intervention. For the Americans, Afghanistan was of little interest-until the Soviets
signed a massive arms agreement with Kabul in 1955.
Thus did Cold War competition produce (and seduce)
FEBRUARY
2002