Semi-colonialism in Crisis: Shanghai Municipal Police and Urban Governance in the 1920s-1940s

This thesis presents an in-depth study of the Shanghai Municipal Council's grassroots urban governance in the Shanghai International Settlement during the 1920s and 1940s, focusing on its principal policing vehicle, the Shanghai Municipal Police. This period was unprecedentedly demanding for the SMC due to social, economic and moral crises manifested by overcrowding, labour disputes, prostitution and indecency. Moreover, the SMC confronted a legitimacy crisis as social and political bodies, notably the Chinese Communist Party, the Guomindang (Nationalist Party), and the Japanese authorities, vied for intervention in the Settlement's governance. The interactions between the SMP and ordinary Chinese became a primary site of contestation, enabling different actors to intervene in SMC's urban management, disrupt urban order, and undermine the operations of semi-colonialism in China. Concentrating on the SMP's policing activities in four areas: labour disputes, informal settlements, prostitution, and obscenity, the thesis highlights the SMP's flexibility and conciliation in addressing complex urban issues during the crisis of semi-colonialism.
This study offers a nuanced analysis of semi-colonial policing, exploring when, why, and how the SMP strategically de-escalated coercion and adopted flexible tactics in handling urban problems involving grassroots Chinese communities. The thesis argues that the SMP's flexibility was largely due to the resistance and organising of Chinese residents across spheres of urban life. It emphasises the agency of ordinary Chinese who sought to carve out opportunities within the limited options. By examining police work at the lower levels of society, the thesis contributes to the scholarship on the formations and arrangements of semi-colonialism in China. It highlights the vulnerability and limits of semi-colonial authority in the 1920s and 1940s, evident in changing municipal priorities, policies and policing practices, and offers a grassroots perspective on imperial retreat that historians have more often approached through diplomacy and the rise of nationalist parties in China.