[
    {
        "id": 209423,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1982",
        "page_number": 80,
        "title": "RAS-1982",
        "content_text": "58\n\nJ. H. HAAN\n\nSeventy years later it was complained that \"official business in this important municipality is conducted in secret. Members of the Municipal Council are bound not to disclose matters discussed in meetings and no reporter of a local newspaper has ever attended a meeting of the Council. The Council does issue a so-called Municipal Gazette, probably the dullest official journal in the world, which contains brief reports usually starting out \"Notice is hereby given\" or \"I have the honour to convey\n\netc.\"\n100\n\nNow it is, of course, true that in Western countries with a parliamentary government, meetings of the cabinet or other governing bodies were (and are) not open to the public. But there the rulers were responsible to representatives of the people, be it in parliament or its local equivalent. Nothing of the kind happened in Shanghai, which apart from the other structural and institutional regulations which halted democracy as understood elsewhere, made the whole administrative system come to be looked upon as oligarchic.\n\nSummary\n\nSummarizing this article we might say that the Settlement government rested on a base which became increasingly outmoded in Western countries where democracy allowed ever more people to participate in politics. Franchise according to tax paid was gradually abolished in the West, but in the International Settlement at Shanghai it remained till the last day of its existence. In the beginning, consent of all residents was claimed to be the foundation of municipal government, but as time progressed the administration degenerated into an oligarchy with or without the negative implications which the term suggests. Political interest was low and nobody really tried to change the system. Though Justice Feetham published a massive report about the situation in the Settlement and offered valuable advice in 1931, nothing was done. Only in the heyday of Chinese nationalism were some minor facelifts agreed, without altering any of the fundamentals.\n\nIt was only after the return of the Settlement to China in 1943 and especially after the communist takeover in 1949 that",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 209424,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1982",
        "page_number": 81,
        "title": "RAS-1982",
        "content_text": "59\n\nSerious measures were taken to change the whole social and political structure of the town.\n\nNOTES\n\nPreliminary note:\n\nAlthough the present paper is to a great extent based on fresh research, the following works have been of considerable use as they contain material about the government of the International Settlement:\n\nFeetham, Justice Richard: \"Report to the Shanghai Municipal Council\" 1931-1932.\n\nJohnstone, W.C.: \"The Shanghai Problem\", 1937.\n\nJones, F.C.: \"Shanghai and Tientsin\", 1940.\n\nKotenev, A.M.: \"Shanghai, its Mixed Court and Council\", 1925.\n\nMontalto de Jesus, C.A.: \"Historic Shanghai\", 1909.\n\nPort, F.L. Hawks: \"A short history of Shanghai\", 1928.\n\n1 The International Settlement at Shanghai was formed in 1863 by the amalgamation of the original British Settlement (formed in 1845, but later increased in area) with the so-called American Settlement in the Hongkew area which had grown up without formal establishment in the 1850s, and early 1860s, and which had been formally recognised by the Chinese earlier in 1863. The French Settlement (formed in 1849) always remained separate from the International Settlement. Outside the area of the foreign settlements lay the old Chinese city and suburbs: these remained under Chinese rule, and became subject to the Greater Shanghai Municipality when that was set up by the Chinese authorities in 1927.\n\n* Cf also Treaty of the Bogue, article VII, \"ground and houses, the rent of which is to be fairly and equitably arranged for, shall be set apart by the local officers in communication with the Consul.\"\n\n3\n\nPopulation figures for intermediate years are, 1,666 foreigners and 75,047 Chinese in 1870, and 6,774 foreigners and 345,276 Chinese in 1900. Of the 13,536 foreigners resident in 1910, 4,465 were British, 940 Americans and 3,361 Japanese. Of the 38,940 foreigners resident in 1935 no fewer than 20,242 were Japanese, as against 6,596 British and 2,015 Americans.\n\n+ * Text of the 1845 Land Regulations (LR) is in Shanghai Almanac 1853.\n\nIt is not too fanciful to suppose that persons willing to move to as remote a place as Shanghai in the 1840s were likely to be particularly strongly imbued with the contemporary belief in individualism, with its consequent hatred of despotism and paternalism; this almost certainly assisted in the speedy breakdown of the 1845 Land Regulations to something far more individualistic in tone.\n\n• North China Herald (NCH) 30.7.1853.\n\n* J.H. Haan: \"De opkomst van de International Settlement te Shanghai 1845-1865. Een historisch — politicologische analyse\" (\"The rise of the International Settlement at Shanghai. A historical-political analysis\"), unpublished manuscript University of Amsterdam, 1977; chapter II. Cited as Haan \"Shanghai\".\n\nCf NCH 22.7.1854; text of draft LR in NCH 30.7.1853, 27.8.1853; final version in 8.7.1854.\n\nNCH 22.4.1865.\n\n10 NCH 17.3.1866.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p",
        "rank": 0
    }
]