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GLOBAL SHANGHAI, 1850-2010: A History in Fragments. By Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom. London, and New York: Routledge, 2009. xvi, 170 pp. (BàfW photos.) US$39.95, paper. ISBN 978-0-415-21328-8.
The history of modern Shanghai has been regularly reassessed by scholars from new viewpoints. Wasserstrom 's Global Shanghai makes an innovative and refreshing contribution to that huge repertoire of revisionist history. His approach combines a broad historical survey with in-depth case studies and personal experience with analytical vigor. The book starts with the intriguing questions raised by the city's current re-globalization process and then investigates the city's long global legacy. This investigation takes a unique journey through the city's past. As if in a time travel, we visit seven individual years at precisely quarter-century intervals from 1850 to 2000. Wasserstrom 's "snapshots" of these historical moments not only reveal the past in details and fragments but also provide an overview of the city's global profiles in one-and-a-half centuries.
The first chapter deals with the year 1850, which marked the city's change from a port of regional trade to one of global trade. At that time the city's foreign residents or Shanghailanders were optimistic that the city was replacing Canton as China's greatest port. The next snapshot year 1875 saw Shanghai being mapped as...