During the long eighteenth century, Canton was a global hub for trade between Asia and Europe. However, this trade was controlled by the Chinese administration in a number of ways, the most striking of which was its spatial restrictions: all foreign traders lived and worked in the small foreign quarters. ...
(Show more)During the long eighteenth century, Canton was a global hub for trade between Asia and Europe. However, this trade was controlled by the Chinese administration in a number of ways, the most striking of which was its spatial restrictions: all foreign traders lived and worked in the small foreign quarters. These lay outside the city walls and were thus cut off from the bustling Chinese metropole of Canton. In addition, these restrictions were gendered: foreign women were forbidden from entering the foreign quarters at the same time as foreign men were banned from meeting Chinese women. For this reason, Europeans writers called the walled city of Canton “the City of Women”.
In their letters and travelogues, the foreign traders shaped discourses of the gendered restrictions and spatial isolation, which in turn helped form how life in port was lived. From the early eighteenth century and until the opium war, the environment in this vibrant hub was continuously shaped by the tension between the global scale of its trade and the smallness in which it took place. Some social activities, for example the masonic lodge or dinner parties, were limited by their local spaces – others practices become unavailable altogether.
In the early nineteenth century, however, Europeans increasingly often transgressed the spatial and gendered bans, and did so as a way to question the local rules. For a woman to enter a certain space, or for a man to enter another, became a way for certain European and North American groups to discuss Chinese control, and to pursue imperial ambitions.
This presentation will detail the gendered and spatial restriction of Canton, the discourses surrounding them, and the practices and conflicts resulting from these restrictions.
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