Incubator city: Shanghai and the crises of empires

Shanghai’s peculiar status between 1842 and 1943, its sovereignty degraded in key ways, meant that it gave sanctuary to, and spawned a wide range of nationalist activity and counter activity. This essay examines five different layers of activity that the city hosted, and spawned, and explores how they interacted, and touches also on their legacies. It outlines the three key factors which gave shape to the city and to its overt and covert political communities: space, law, and time (or the calendar). The paper explores the interplay of the physical and administrative realms that cut across the city, the restrictions they imposed, and the opportunities they opened up, and shows vividly how nationalism and the urban intersected in this site of multinational imperial power.