Wartime Shanghai and the Jewish Refugees from Central Europe: Survival, Co-Existence, and Identity in a Multi-Ethnic City

Abstract: This course explores the history of early-modern and modern China, from the seventeenth century to the present. We will examine the rise and fall of China’s last empire, the emergence of a modern nation-state, the sources and development of revolution, and the implications of complex social, political, cultural, and economic transformations in the People’s Republic of China. Course materials include scholarly monographs, a memoir, primary sources, and visual and material artifacts that offer diverse perspectives. We will meet twice a week for a combination of lectures, discussion, and viewing of visual texts.

Abstract: This thesis traces the mobilization of Canadian associations helping refugees during the Second World War. The study of this collective mobilization - the refuge - sheds light on Canada's willingness to help in the face of the dangers and persecutions threatening refugees between December 1938 and October 1945. Based on the sources of the two main refugee actors in the refuge - the Canadian National Committee on Refugees (CNCR) and the committees of the Canadian Jewish Congress (CJC) - the thesis provides an intermediate perspective on Canadian assistance and reception throughout the conflict, between the history of migration policy and the study of population movements. By following the rhythm of the refuge, the thesis retraces the complex structure of collective mobilization made up of about ten organizations opposed by ideological, political and territorial rivalries. By pulling the threads out of this "associative knot bag", the study of the refuge highlights the categorization of the refugee in a Canada that does not distinguish them from traditional migrants. Faced with the government's refusal to admit refugees to Canada, collective mobilization does not remain isolated from the rest of the Canadian population and seeks its support to open Canada's borders to persecuted people. The shelter then developed two propaganda messages reflecting internal collaboration in collective mobilization, notably between the CJC's fundraising committee - the United Jewish Refugee and Relief Agencies - and the CNCR. Faced with the restrictive policy of the Canadian government, the shelter develops remote relief, participating in humanitarian aid carried out by American organizations, and determines an assistance strategy based on discretion. Its purpose is to bypass Canadian migration rules and prepare for the reception of potential refugees. The arrival of the refugees then appears as the highest point of the refuge.

Abstract: Title of Document: “AN UNCERTAIN LIFE IN ANOTHER WORLD”: GERMAN AND AUSTRIAN JEWISH REFUGEE LIFE IN SHANGHAI, 19381950” Elizabeth Rebecca Hyman, Master of Arts, 2014 Directed by: Professor Marsha Rozenblit, History Between 1938 and 1941, 20,000 Eastern and Central European Jews fled to Shanghai. Through a close examination or memoirs and oral histories, I argue that the manner in which the refugees experiences the approximately twelve years (1938-1950) they spent in Shanghai was informed by their nationality, gender, and age. Further, I argue that the twelve years they spent in Shanghai eroded the refugee’s behavioral, material, and emotional connections to their old lives in Germany and Austria until all they had left was language and memories. “AN UNCERTAIN LIFE IN ANOTHER WORLD”: GERMAN AND AUSTRIAN JEWISH REFUGEE LIFE IN SHANGHAI, 1938-1950

Abstract: The arrival of about 1000 Polish Jews in Shanghai in 1941 has remained one of the footnotes of the Holocaust, even though most survived the War, unexpectedly trapped in the city. This article argue...

Abstract: This course explores the history of early-modern and modern China, from the seventeenth century to the present. We will examine the rise and fall of China’s last empire, the emergence of a modern nation-state, the sources and development of revolution, and the implications of complex social, political, cultural, and economic transformations in the People’s Republic of China. Course materials include scholarly monographs, a memoir, primary sources, and visual and material artifacts that offer diverse perspectives. We will meet twice a week for a combination of lectures, discussion, and viewing of visual texts.

Abstract: L'A. examine la transformation de la perception de la Mandchourie comme frontiere indifferenciee en une region geographique particuliere a l'epoque Qing. Mettant en evidence l'imaginaire geographique et les differentes approches de la dynastie Qing par rapport a cette zone frontaliere, il montre comment les differents points de vue adoptes ont genere une identite politique et geographique specifique pour cette region. Soutenant que cette invention de la Mandchourie, en tant que lieu, s'est operee des le 17 eme siecle, le pouvoir chinois mandchou identifiant ce territoire a la terre natale de la dynastie Qing, il explore, apres une introduction sur les ambiguites de la terminologie geographique, quatre moments historiques de ce processus : les visites imperiales ritualisees des Qing en territoire mandchou ; la description de la Mandchourie dans l'Ode a Mukden, poeme de l'empereur Qianlong ; la definition du statut administratif du territoire ; la cartographie. En conclusion, l'A. propose quelques reflexions sur l'instrumentalisation politique de la geographie en Asie et sur la relation entre l'identite spatiale des Qing et de la Chine moderne.

Abstract: PERSPECTIVES ON THE TREATY SYSTEM The unequal treaty system was set up in China at a time when the Chinese common people did not participate in a national political life. In the middle decades of the nineteenth century they were still schooled in the traditional ways of Confucian culturalism: government was an affair of the emperor and his officials, supported by the local elite. A modern type of nationalism received little expression under this old order. Instead, the Ch'ing regime was primarily concerned to retain the loyalty of the Chinese landlord-scholar ruling class and with its help to suppress any disorder or anti-dynastic rebellion that might arise among the rural populace. In this context the pacification of British rebels on the seacoast was at first a marginal, relatively minor problem. The Ch'ing aim in the late 1830s had been simply to stop an evil, the Anglo-Indo-Chinese opium trade. This trade, constantly supplied by the British government opium manufacture in India, was to have a life of more than a century, until given up in 1917. The most long-continued and systematic international crime of modern times, it provided the life-blood of the early British invasion of China. For the first war the leading opium traders not only helped Palmerston work out the aims and the strategy, they also supplied some of the wherewithal: opium vessels leased to the fleet, captains lent as pilots and other staff as translators, hospitality always available as well as advice and the latest intelligence, and silver from opium sales exchanged for bills on London to meet the army and navy expenditures.