The Italian Dream of Empire and Tianjin’s Globalised Identity (1901-2006): from Hyper-Colonial Space to Post-Colonial Place

Maurizio Marinelli

Centre for East Asian Studies, 

University of Bristol

(Inglaterra)

This paper focuses on the only Italian concession in China, which was located in the Hebei district of the modern municipality of Tianjin. With the final Protocol of 1901, following the Boxers’ repression, Italy received an allotment of 5.91% of the Boxer indemnity, extraterritoriality privileges in the Legation Quarter in Beijing, as well as the concession in perpetuity of a small zone on the left bank of the Hai River, in Tianjin, on which to develop an Italian concession.

As an Italian scholar of China, I am particularly interested in investigating the theoretical bases underlying the descriptions of the Italian concession in China, the U.S. and Europe, to interrogate the problem of historical, cultural, and political contingencies that have shaped different modes of colonial knowledge production and post-colonial derivative discourses.

Through an in-depth comparative analysis of primary and secondary sources written in various languages and time periods, I will investigate the historical reasons behind the emphasis placed, in different representations, on specific socio-economic, institutional, and cultural aspects of the Italian concession. I will discuss, for example, the notion of shaping the Italian Concession in Tianjin (1901-1947) as a venue of “Italian character,” especially in terms of space re-presentation and cultural superimposition, which emerges as a constant trait from many Italian sources. I will also analyze the current renovation program of the former Italian concession and the marketisation of this space as an “Italian neighborhood” to attract foreign capital and launch Tianjin as a global city.

My intention is to use the sources in a dialogic way in order to elucidate the reasons for what I argue is often a deliberate informative and descriptive selectivity, revealing contesting “images” of the Italian concession. What will emerge will not be an illusory objective reconstruction of the identity of the Italian concession, but more likely two (or more) types of – often competing and contentious – stories. These narratives are informed by socially encoded and constructed discursive practices, generated by varying socio-political and economic interests, and often time motivated by precise speculative transactions (as in the case of the expropriation of the “filthy Chinese village,” justified by Ambassador Gallina arguing that “all the other powers proceeded to the expropriation as soon as they occupied the area of their concession”).

The mediated representations of “reality” found in selected sources, and its contrast with the current re-development of the “Italian neighborhood”, reveal a fascinating game of power, where the colonizer and the colonized sometimes exchange their roles as agents, victims, and victimizers. With this paper I will shed light on some of the questions that emerged during my preliminary research conducted in Italy, the U.S., and China: To what degree the representations of the Italian concession in hyper-colonial Tianjin were What are the theoretical assumptions which support the narratives produced by the Chinese/Italian/American diplomats and scholars in the different decades of the twentieth century? How much the contentious images are influenced by the sense of national pride, the legacy of an imperial past, and the colonial project of the time? How much were (and perhaps still are) they informed by the search for a new identity both for Italy and China? And finally, looking through the lenses of time, space and lexical evolution, what are the narrative presuppositions which generate the “imagined communities” of the Italian concession in Tianjin in the past and also in the present?

 

About Maurizio Marinelli 

Dr Maurizio Marinelli, Senior Lecturer in East Asian Studies, specialises in contemporary China’s intellectual history. His research investigates how China’s relations with the rest of the world have influenced historical narratives and shaped visual representations within their respective intellectual discourses. His book La Lotta contro la Corruzione in Cina: Tra Mosche e Zanzare, Tigri e Squali (The Struggle against Corruption in China: Between Flies and Mosquitoes, Tigers and Sharks) co-authored with Rogério Diniz Junqueira, will be published in 2006 by Cafoscarina University Press, Italy. He is currently working on the socio-spatial transformation of Beijing and Tianjin.

 

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