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Intermediary Elites in the Treaty Port World: Tong Mow-chee and His Collaborators in Shanghai, 1873–1897

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 April 2015

KAORI ABE
KAORI ABE*
Affiliation:
Nanyang Technological Universitykabe@ntu.edu.sg
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Abstract

This article examines the functions of Chinese and foreign intermediary elites in the commercial and political world of Shanghai, an international city in the nineteenth century mainly consisting of British, American, European and Chinese residents. Specifically, it focuses on the formation of the socio-economic network of Tong Mow-chee (Tang Maozhi 唐茂枝) (1828–1897), a well-known Chinese comprador-merchant serving the British firm Jardine Matheson & Co. and other anglophone and Chinese figures, including William Venn Drummond and Tong King-sing who supported Mow-chee's commercial and political activities. My research mainly draws on English and Chinese sources and enables a deeper understanding of the unofficial figures who contributed to the management of the international society of Shanghai in the late nineteenth century, offering new insight into social roles of the middlemen operating in an area of Britain's informal empire in China.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society , Volume 25 , Issue 3 , July 2015 , pp. 461 - 480
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 2015 

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References

1 This article represents an extended version of a paper I presented at the China Postgraduate Network (CPN) Annual Conference 2012 (University of Edinburgh) on 18 June 2012 and at the workshop, Modern China's Internationalizations and its Legacies (University of Bristol) on 11 January 2013. I would like to thank Andrew Hillier for sharing his family materials with me.

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Mow-chee obtained the report about the hunting of stray dogs by police from colleagues of Jintzetang Charitable Institution.

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51 NCH, 25 November 1885, p. 608; The Shanghai Literary and Debating Society also voiced their opinion to the newspaper. NCH, 10 February 1886, p. 145.

52 Shenbao 申報, 8 December 1885, (Guangxu 光緒 11/11/3), cited in Shanghai yuanlinzhi 上海园林志 (History of gardens in Shanghai], pp. 711–712.

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70 falu huodong ji yingxiang” 略論近代上海外籍律師的法律活動及影響 [Brief sketch of foreign lawyers’ legal activities and influence in modern Shanghai]”, Shilin 史林, III, 2005, pp. 32–38.

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73 North China Daily News. “The Late Mr. W. V. Drummond”, 24 March 1915.

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81 Motono, Conflict and Collaboration, pp. 94, 104.

82 See, Motono, Conflict and Collaboration, Chapter 4, “Conflict over the opium trade”, especially, pp. 102–107.

83 The British officials continued discussing and investigating the Swatow Opium Guild case into the early 1880s. National Archives, Kew (London): FO 228/985, Chinese Enclosures (Shanghai), 1879–1883, Acting Viceroy Wu to Consul Davenport, 8 March 1880, p. 97.

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