Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

Empire Made Me: An Englishman Adrift in Shanghai (review)

Empire Made Me: An Englishman Adrift in Shanghai (review) Reviews 25 Robert Bickers. Empire Made Me: An Englishman Adrift in Shanghai. New York: Columbia University Press, 2003. 410 pp. Hardcover $32.50, isbn 0­ 231­13132­1. In Empire Made Me: An Englishman Adrift in Shanghai Robert Bickers, senior lecturer in East Asian and Colonial History at the University of Bristol, argues that "Shanghai puts the confusions of empire practice sharply into focus" (p. 12). Exhuming the life of an ordinary Briton lured to China in 1919 by a recruitment notice for the Shanghai Municipal Police (SMP), Bickers explores the contentious, class-ridden entanglement of colonialist and colonized against the backdrop of China's emerging nationalism. The story of Robert Maurice Tinkler, he writes, "involves all the actors in the tale of empire, opponents, victims and collaborators, those to whom empire was done, and those who did it" (p. 5). In this richly nuanced "biography of a nobody," he traces the career of an unremarkable foreign cop to personalize the impact in China of Britain's empire in decline. An ironmonger's son from England's Lake District, Tinkler signed up for the Shanghai police force at age twenty-one, fresh from the trenches in France, one of two hundred thousand emigrants to leave the British http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png China Review International University of Hawai'I Press

Empire Made Me: An Englishman Adrift in Shanghai (review)

Wakeman, Carolyn.
China Review International , Volume 11 (1) – Jan 18, 2004
Download PDF
3 pages

Loading next page...
 
/lp/university-of-hawai-i-press/empire-made-me-an-englishman-adrift-in-shanghai-review-GEKiQRVF90
Publisher
University of Hawai'I Press
Copyright
Copyright © 2004 University of Hawai'i Press.
ISSN
1527-9367
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Reviews 25 Robert Bickers. Empire Made Me: An Englishman Adrift in Shanghai. New York: Columbia University Press, 2003. 410 pp. Hardcover $32.50, isbn 0­ 231­13132­1. In Empire Made Me: An Englishman Adrift in Shanghai Robert Bickers, senior lecturer in East Asian and Colonial History at the University of Bristol, argues that "Shanghai puts the confusions of empire practice sharply into focus" (p. 12). Exhuming the life of an ordinary Briton lured to China in 1919 by a recruitment notice for the Shanghai Municipal Police (SMP), Bickers explores the contentious, class-ridden entanglement of colonialist and colonized against the backdrop of China's emerging nationalism. The story of Robert Maurice Tinkler, he writes, "involves all the actors in the tale of empire, opponents, victims and collaborators, those to whom empire was done, and those who did it" (p. 5). In this richly nuanced "biography of a nobody," he traces the career of an unremarkable foreign cop to personalize the impact in China of Britain's empire in decline. An ironmonger's son from England's Lake District, Tinkler signed up for the Shanghai police force at age twenty-one, fresh from the trenches in France, one of two hundred thousand emigrants to leave the British

Journal

China Review International – University of Hawai'I Press

Published: Jan 18, 2004

There are no references for this article.