Treaty Ports and Modern East Asia

Undergraduate / Graduate

Treaty ports shaped modern East Asia by providing key venues for colonial encounter, commercial expansion, and cultural exchange. This course explores how the (forced) opening of treaty ports in the 19th and early 20th centuries reconfigured the political, social, and spatial order of China and Japan. Focusing on cities such as Yokohama, Nagasaki, Tianjin, and Shanghai, we'll examine how foreign concessions, extraterritoriality, and new institutions of governance met with local practices and resistance. Key topics to be investigated include urban development and administration, transnational networks, racial and ethnic relations, and everyday life under (semi-)colonialism. The course also considers how treaty port legacies continue to influence contemporary East Asia and the wider world.