Acknowledgments

Canton, since 1918 better known as Guangzhou, is a city that I have visited innumerable times since the late 1970s, for both work and leisure. In many ways it encapsulates the modern history of China, from the nineteenth century onwards. Charting the many changes on a frequent basis, stemming from an almost continuous process of regeneration and contemporary insertions within older patterns of urbanization, has in itself been a means of appreciating the prevailing urban character of the city.

As stated in the Introduction, a contemporary view of history, like much of the urbanism we experience in the city today, is a matter of both reference and reconstruction, helping to infuse our perspective on the past with our knowledge of the present. The latter draws on much that is available before our eyes in the modern city that has grown and changed so much over the past forty years. For knowledge of the past, I have drawn on a number of valuable references that I sourced for a previous book, The Urban Design of Concession, on the Chinese treaty ports, published in 2011. A number of distinguished authors and commentators have provided a wealth of historical detail, intelligence, and insight into events during late nineteenth and early twentieth century China.

John Fairbank’s Trade and Diplomacy on the China Coast provided exceptional scholarly insight into many of the circumstances surrounding the Western presence in China, the unequal treaties and the early settlement patterns and activities that emerged, covering the period from 1842 to 1854. G. William Skinner’s The City in Late Imperial China was a valuable source of detail on the prevailing administrative and economic systems prior to foreign intervention in China. The English in China by J. B. Eames, first published in 1909 and republished in 1974, similarly contains considerable research of historical events in striking and enlightened detail. Grasso, Corrin, and Kort’s Modernisation and Revolution in China provided a comprehensive overview from the first treaty settlement through the spiraling sequence of events in the late nineteenth century. Frederick Wakeman’s Strangers at the Gate, Chesneaux, Barstid and Bergere’s China from the Opium Wars to the 1911 Revolution, and Rhoads Murphey’s The Treaty Ports and China’s Modernisation also provided scholarly analysis of this same period in terms of tradition and gradual transformation of the port cities. These and many more are set out in the following end notes. I am also greatly obliged to Jonathan Wattis of Wattis Fine Art in Hong Kong for supplying antique maps and plans of the Pearl River Delta.ORO Editions

I would finally like to record my appreciation to Gordon Goff, publisher of ORO Editions, and to Jake Anderson, managing editor of ORO, for his assistance with the publication and for

his valuable editing skills from which the book has greatly benefitted. I would also like to thank Pablo Mandel for the graphic layout and design, overcoming the challenges of reconciling text with illustrative images.

In conclusion a big thank you to my long-time friends and colleagues at URBIS for their constant help and support. I am particularly grateful to my assistant Lily Tam for her invaluable help in typing and coordination of manuscript drafts and her patient and prolonged assistance with the compilation and editing process.