| This work is a description and analysis of the city of Tientsin in the late imperial period. It is divided into two parts: The Traditional City and The City Transformed.;The second part, the City Transformed, describes the city during the Boxer Rebellion and its immediate aftermath. The fourth chapter is a narrative of the month-long siege and battle of Tientsin. It describes Chinese and foreign military activities as well as the sufferings of the civilians and the material destruction. The last chapter describes the activities of the Tientsin Provisional Government which ran the city for the twenty-five months between July 1900 and August 1902. It physically transformed the city, installing a wide range of urban amenities, including a new transportation system, an electric lighting system, as well as sewage and water supply systems. A brief set of conclusions explains why Tientsin was, after 1902, a city sui generis. It was not the traditional city described in part one and was different from every other Chinese treaty port. It was evolving into a Sino-foreign city. It also suggests future areas of fruitful research into Tientsin's history.;The first part, The Traditional City, consists of three chapters. The first chapter describes and evaluates the major analytical approaches that have been used to examine cities in China. It concludes with a brief description of recent scholarship on Tientsin. The second sketches the city's place in the administrative hierarchy of North China and describes the geography of the immediate area. It concludes with a synthetic picture foreign travellers have given of Tientsin and the surrounding region. The third chapter, using a police census compiled in 1842, presents the county and city as they appeared to local officials. It is unique and valuable not only because it describes the population of the settlements in the county, but also records the occupation of every head of household. It is thus possible to discover the incidence of occupations in every settlement in the county and in the city. |
