Shanghai History

Earliest regional settlement dates back to 5900 BC. Shanghai became a key cotton exporter under the Song dynasty. The silting of the Wusong River shifted the regional capital to Shanghai in the 13th century. Growing richer, the town needed to defend itself against marauding Japanese pirates. A 6km long wall with six gates and 20 arrow towers was erected in 1553 during the Ming dynasty. Although meteoric development would later engulf this area, it continues to stand as the Old Chinese City. To increase trade, a customs house was erected in 1685 to sell silk and tea. Its population swelled to 50,000, giving birth to many noted Chinese scholars. One particularly important personage was Xu Guangqi, friend and pupil of the Jesuit missionary and early Western explorer, Matteo Ricci. However, despite such promising international beginnings, in the end, it was by far less diplomatic means that Shanghai finally opened up to the West. Leading up to the colonial period, silk, porcelain and tea was all the rage in Britain and China would only trade it for gold. A massive trade deficit built up and British sought a product they could sell to the Chinese in order to restore the balance of trade. Seizing on opium, produced cheaply in colonial India, Britain entered the China market with narcotics. Though illegal, many Chinese couldn’t resist the forbidden pleasure and the Qing dynasty soon faced a crisis as drugs began flowing in and silver flowed out.

When China finally moved to stop the importation of opium, it was too late. The result of the First Opium War was the 1842 Treaty of Nanjing, first of the many Unequal Treaties. The treaty granted the opening of five ports: Shanghai, Ningbo, Fuzhou, Xiamen and Guangzhou. America would ride Britain’s coattails into Shanghai with the Treaty of Wangxia, giving them the same rights as the British. Unwilling to miss a good party, France joined in and secured a similar deal, giving France a large concession in the southern half of Shanghai. As the Taiping Rebellion swept through the surrounding countryside in the 1850s, peasants fled en masse to Shanghai. Arriving by rafts on the Suzhou Creek, opportunistic businessmen seized the chance to fleece naive peasants. The wealthy purchased large tracts of land and erected tenement housing overnight. They rented these tiny rooms to displaced farmers at grossly inflated rates, thus began the birth of urban Shanghai.

Trade, with opium at the helm, drew some of the world’s largest trading house. Clippers and steamers began to clog the Huangpu Rivers sprawling port. It would be a tough market for the British to hold onto as more traders moved in, making Shanghai a truly international city.

The 1863 formation of the Municipal Council gave Britain, France and America a free hand in administrating and governing Shanghai. That same year, America and Britain solidified their partnership by the formation of the International Settlement, jointly ruling with their own brand of colonial law and order. Meanwhile France continued to develop its own concession.

Legal vagaries gave Shanghai a reputation as a city of adventurers. Missionaries, mercenaries, merchants, grafters, gadflies and gangsters of all stripes flocked here. The population increased from 50,000 to a million by 1900, a mushrooming growth rate of 2,000%. Meanwhile large foreign trading houses began to diversify their interests into textiles, insurance, real estate and shipping. Architects erected stoic building along the Bund, including the green-tower capped Cathay Hotel, the domed Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank and the clock tower crowned Customs House. The champagne ball continued for ex-pats who made Shanghai their home. Film houses began making movies in Shanghai and actors like Charlie Chaplin arrived. Christopher Isherwood, Bernard Shaw and Andre Malreaux came to relish its vibrancy for their writing. Jazz wailed and flappers danced. The streets were clogged by rickshaws pulled by men in rags and loaded with tuxedoed men and gowned debutantes. Aldous Huxley said of the city in 1926, Life itself… dense, rank, richly clotted… nothing more intensely living can be imagined.

Amidst the chaos of drugs, civil strife and colonialism, the young intellectuals of China began to search for the solutions to China’s rampant poverty and subservience to the West. Many looked to Marxism and the victorious Russian Revolution. Several Chinese Marxist groups met in Shanghai and founded the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 1921; among them was future CCP Chairman, Mao Zedong.

Following the power vacuum that ensued after the death of revolutionary hero Sun Yat-sen in 1925, Chiang Kai-shek stepped into the political fore with the secret backing of the Green Gang, Shanghais powerful underground. Under the banner of the Nationalist Party, Chiang began the ambitious Northern Expedition in 1926 to quell the warlords and unite a fractured nation. For the time being, the Nationalists and the Communists cooperated under the aegis of a united front, which would spectacularly rupture in Shanghai.

As Chiang’s Nationalist forces approached Shanghai in 1927, the CCP organized a general strike as a sign of support and solidarity, but once Chiang entered Shanghai, the strike was brutally crushed. Strike organizers were rounded up and executed in the streets and over 5,000 strikers and students were killed. It was the beginning of a ruthless campaign to crush the Communists, one that accelerated when Chiang captured Beijing in 1928 and successfully completed his Northern Expedition.

Though Chiang nominally united China, Japanese imperialism was a constant threat. When Japan invaded northeast China in 1931, the Shanghainese responded by boycotting Japanese shops and goods. Five years later Japan began a general invasion of China and Imperial Japanese planes and warships bombed Shanghai while European and American ex-pats stood on the roof of their exclusive clubs watching the bombardment.

China ended the Second World War as a member of the victorious Allied powers and many flocked back to Shanghai hoping to return to the status quo of easy living and easier profits. But as quickly as one conflict ended, the civil war between the Nationalists and Communists swiftly resumed. Shanghai, once an economic bastion, was reduced to financial ruins as Chiang and his cronies mismanaged the nations treasury and siphoned away public funds into their private accounts. The 1949 liberation of the city by the CCP marked the beginning of a new era for Shanghai. The brothels and opium dens were shut down with the addicts receiving rehabilitation and the prostitutes job training. Child labor was banned, slums eliminated and inflation slowed.