Academic literature on the topic 'Shanghai Municipal Police'

The article focuses on the problem of social and economic status of Russian émigrés in Shanghai in 1922–1925, in particular from the arrival of the Siberian flotilla to the beginning of the May Thirtieth Movement. Based on previously unexplored official records from the Shanghai Municipal Archive (SMA), Shanghai Municipal Police Files (SMPF) and the detailed research of the press, the author manages to significantly supplement the portrait of Russian émigrés’ life during the above period. The wider source base of this research, as compared those that are available for an earlier period of 1917–1922, allows us to describe the social and economic status of the émigrés in more precise terms. Statistical information from the Municipal Council of the Shanghai International Settlement evidences a high unemployment rate among the émigrés (according to the police records, it reached 71,4 % among employable men). Obviously, the humanitarian aid from the government and city communities could not satisfy needs of the unemployed. 1) At the end of 1924, Shanghai press reported the case when the Russians were sleeping in the houses without roof near the Chapei railway; 2) Shanghai was able to provide free food only for 2280 Russian refugees. However, according to statistics dated October 9, 1923 and February 1, 1924, the number of unemployed men and women reached 3 500. This means that not all Russians in Shanghai were provided with a minimum of food. As compared to 1917–1922, problems of women and street kids also persisted but due to public support child begging stopped although problems of women continued to exist until the communists came to power in Shanghai. “Russian prostitution” even became part of the Shanghai’s historical memory. A special problem during the period of 1922–1925 was poor sanitation in areas where Russian cadets lived as a result of harsh living conditions and low social and economic status (this situation was not recorded in the anniversary editions of Khabarovsky and Siberian Cadet Corps).

Red-turbaned Sikh policemen have long been viewed as symbols of the cosmopolitan feature of modern Shanghai. However, the origin of the Sikh police unit in the Shanghai Municipal Police has not been seriously investigated. This article argues that the circulation of police officers, policing knowledge, and information in the British colonial network and the circulation of the idea of taking Hong Kong as the reference point amongst Shanghailanders from the 1850s to the 1880s played important role in the establishment of the Sikh police force in the International Settlement of Shanghai. Furthermore, by highlighting the translocal connections and interactions amongst British colonies and settlements, this study tries to break the metropole-colony binary in imperial history studies.

This article focuses specifically on the Soviet factor in The May Thirtieth Movement in Shanghai, including the degree of central and local Soviet authorities' involvement in the preparation and course of the Movement and financial assistance to Chinese strikers. It also examines Soviet intelligence activities in Shanghai during this period. Until May 30 the central organs of the USSR and the RCP(b) were not the initiators of the Movement. The largest workers' movement in Shanghai occurred spontaneously and was not under the control of the Comintern or the Politburo. However, we cannot completely deny the existence of attempts to organize and control the Movement by the Soviet Consulate as early as the first days of the strikes and it has been documented that the practical actions of Soviet agents began even before the Politburo began to pay attention to the Shanghai events. The All-Union Central Trade Union Council represented the "legal" support for the strikers by the Soviet authorities. The arrival of a delegation of Soviet trade unions in Shanghai was open and contained no elements of secret diplomacy. In the field of "secret politics", G.N. Voitinsky was sent to Shanghai to lead the Movement through the CCP. During the May Thirtieth Movement, Soviet intelligence had to work in intensified mode. However, in the Shanghai municipal police files we can only find references to the activities of Soviet spies at the beginning of the Movement. The reason for this is that all police attention in July and August was concentrated on the so-called "Dosser case", which was essentially of a small scale, but was hyped up by the Shanghai press and the Municipal Council of International Settlement. Nevertheless, one should not exaggerate the influence of the Soviets on the May Thirtieth Movement. The Soviets could only control, through the CCP and the General Trade Union, the workers' and partly the students' part of the strikes. The leading role in the May Thirtieth Movement was still held by the Shanghai merchants, not by the Politburo and the Comintern.

AbstractSikh policemen were an indelible part of the landscape of Shanghai in the first decades of the twentieth century, and have left their mark in the ways in which the city is remembered up to the present day. Yet their history has never been told and historians of the period have, at best, simply referred to them in passing. This paper redresses this gap in the literature by accounting for the presence of the Sikh branch of the Shanghai Municipal Police and exploring their role in the governance and policing of the International Settlement. This enriches our understanding of the nature of the British presence in China and the ways in which Indian sub-imperialism extended to China's treaty ports, for on the streets of Shanghai, and not Shanghai alone, British power had an Indian face.

AbstractWhat narratives can be fashioned by the historian from visual documents, and how might this relate to the narrative intention of those who created them? This paper explores the handful of surviving photographs recording the career of a British member of the Shanghai Municipal Police between 1929 and 1943. War and internment destroyed most of the visual records that former coalminer Frank Peasgood had collected during his police service, saving only those that had accompanied letters he had sent home to his family. The narrative he created with these can be clearly presented, and is discussed in the first part of the paper. Clearly, only visual documents could so powerfully demonstrate the transformation undergone by a man coming from his background, and provide the tools for showing that transformation. The photographs are then revisited and a further, complicating, layer of narrative is added, one which puts the policeman back into his place as a colonial subject.