REVIEWS

BOOKSForeign Devils in the Flowcl'Y Kingdom,

bll Carl Crow, illustrated bll Esther 8'rockBird. (New Yo'rk, Harper & Bros., 19-60,S-60pp., $S.OO).

Shanghai: City for Sale. by ErMBt O.Hauer. (Ne1u York, Harcow"t, Brace & Co.,lu., 19-60, 82Spp., $S.oo).

The Dutch East Indies, by A1Ilry Vanden­b08ch. (Berkeley amd L08 Angeles, Unive"sity0/ Cali/omi", PreM, 1941, second editiolI,,.,vised, .'-46pp., '4.00).

The first two of the books reviewed deal withthe Bubject of our article "People from FiveSldes"-Shanghai. We have asked two"Foreign Devils" who have spent most oftheir lives in this ertraordinary city, to re­view the books.

• • •The foreigners of Shanghai fondly remember

Carl Crow as a typical efficient AmericanadVllrLIII[ng expert, who [s well Qualified llyhis twenty yeai'll of lif~ in Shsmghlli SInn hismany travels in the interior of China to tellus something about the life of the whit£,man in China. His first book on China, ",00Millio" Customers, was a best-seller, and Ifeel sure tliat l"oreiDIl LJevils 1n tile Fto'We'r"JIKi"l1dom will also be read with pleasure byan who have had any contact with China.

There arc two thin2's, ho\vcvcr, that shouldbe borne in mind when ,-clldin~ tlli" book, c1"cthMc not well acquainted with condit:ons inChina miJtht lI:ain the unfounded imnre!l3ionthat the life of the white population there isthe very easiest. First of all the perioddescribed by Mr. Crow belongs to the past,and secondly his deserintion of the life ofthe foreigners is true, at least during thelast twenty ycnrll, only of Anglo-SAxon circlell,and hardly of tho$e nationalities who after theGreat War bad to build up their existence fromthe very beginning again.

With great ch~rm and much humor thcauthor describes the development of the foreigncommunities and their settlements. It is indeedalmost a miraclc that a city like Shanghai,wbere the interests of the Chinese and theother nationalities do not at all always goin the same direction, could enjoy its unprec­edented development. The common motive thatalways brought everyone together again

wall "business." In small as in largeaffairs "squeeze" plays an importantpart, and the author very amusinglyshows us in some well-known examplesall well as in examples of his own CXTleriencehow the Chinese, usually an employee of thewhite man, is a master in taking care of hisown interests. The Chinese arc never obviousin their "squeeze," but apply it with theirinborn flexibility and delicacy which preventstheir overstepping the borderline where themore temperamental foreign employer wouldlose his temper.

Mr. Crow's book oCten reminds one of thewell-known Dif~rll of a Shanghai Baby, whichdescribes adventures with the Chineseservants of a household from the point of viewof a foreign baby, while the Foreign Devilsretains the lights and shadows, the strengthand weakness in the lives of foreignersin China in the fluent and humorous style ofCarl Crow. Perhaps many of those who havespent their whole life in China think with""A'..et o:f tho disappenrancc of the happy,easy times of the past, for which Carl(jrow bas set up a sympathetic and jollymonument.-C.

• • •Accordln.. to Ernest O. Hauser Shnnt'hai

is dead. It died-after having received thefirst serious warning blow in 1932--in Au(l'llAtU'37, and the Taipans (Chinese name for theheads of large business houses), who, accord­inll' to Hall"..... plannod. " ..catod. And managedShanghai's affairs since 1842, knew thatShlanR'hai had died for good and alwavs. ToQuote Hauser:

"Bombs.-The TaiPRns stood on the roof­tops of their white office buildings and watchedtho not" prrow big""... Death had comc to theSettlement, nnd the Tnipans were there, withtheIr blnocu[ars to watch their city die." (p.310).

"They knew that this was the end-in'any case. If China would ever win this war,if the Generalissimo's armies should pushthe Japanese into the muddy river, theywould push the Taipans along with theJapanese.... If the Japanese should win,there was no hope eithel·. The Japanese hadleft no doubt about their determination to endthe White Man's glamorous career. Shanghai,as the White Man's most successful enterprisein the largest and richest continent of the

THE XXth CENTURY

world, had ceased to exist. Shanghai, and allof China could never ap;ain be a comfortableplace for white men to work. The Taipansknew: it was all over." (pp. 314 and 315).

Hauser's book contains a short hisLory ofShan~hai from the time of its first o<:cupa­tion by British forces in 1842 until 1937,dealinK for the greater part with Shanghai'sdevelopment from 1919 through the lasttwenty years. It contains most of the factsmore or less known to people living in Shang­hai. and is spiced with some amusing 11:0ssipand ironical remarks about the city's leadingset.

Out of these facts, however, the authorweaves a story of sinister plotting and schem­ing by a small and influential group. theTaipans. activated by the so-caUed peculiar"Shllnghai mind" bent on moneY-D1l.1king andunscrupulously robbing "China's poor mil­lions."

To Quote Hauser:"Shanghai was sitting by the river mouth ..

draining the Yangtsze valley with its bound­less wealth. . .. The Shanghai scheme ingen­iously conceived in the days of Palmerston,had begun to work. It was a racket, if youwill, the greatest and most profitable racketever devised by men. Its basic idea wasthat of draining half of a continent withoutmore effort than the upkeep of a single cityrequired."

This sounds interesting, sensationally new,and makes good reading for round-the-worldtourists or propap;anda leaflets. But it isnevertheless fiction and not history. Therehas never been any such thing a~ a schemeor a preconceived plot.

Shanghai's development from a smallforeign trading settlement to a large indus­trial city has run parallel to that of otherlarge European and Chinese cities; the con­trast between capital and labor, town andcountry, industria! and filll8ncial maJt1late andthe peasant/coolie ha. been similar in many.other Chinese and Japanese ports. This con­trast has, as a matter of fact. I!'rown far moreviolent between Chinese on both sides thanbetween foreigners and Chinese. Businessmethods have changed in the course of thelast few decades, and what H'Suser describesas the silk- and opium-rackets of the latenineties have disappeared and with them thepredominant position of the Chinese compra­dore. Not only has sino-foreign co-operation~been introduced in many fields of Shanghai'seconomic life; it is also true that the Chineseelement, acting independently of foreigners,baa thoroujthly invaded and permeated theeconomic system of this city.

It is therefore the underestimation of the·ever-growing Chinese influence upon the de-

velopment of Shang;hai which seems tobe the most objectionable feature of thisbook. The lack of this understandingleads the author (and perhaps some ofits readers) to an entirely false judgmentof ShanJl'hai's history and future. Thosechapters, for instance, which deal with thesilver boom in 1934, or Chiang Kai-shek'sdecision a~inst Russian influence in 1927/28goivc a purely one-llided picture of the eventl.The silver boom and the exodus of China'ssilver from the .:ountry appear, according tothe author, as a gigantic swindle maneuverby foreign banks and their compradores, asort of barceny on a grand scale, an inter­pretation which does not bear a closo analy·sis of all the aspects of that hectic periodof Shanghai's history.

Just as misleading, in our opinion, ill thepicture of sharp contrastll--a painting inblllck and white-of Shanghai's social life: onthe one hand a handful of foreigners withtheir racing. golf, large motorcars. tea-par·ties, gossip (and of course the Russian girlsare not forgotten I), and on the other, "China'scountless millions laboring for the whitedevil and barely earning their daily living."It is true that the wealth of the Chineseupper classes is not as conspicuous in ita out­ward appearance, but whoever has lived herefor even a short time must be well awareof the enormous riches amassed in Chine..hinnds. not only in the upper classes but alaoin the middle dasse_tradesmen, bankers,industrialists, etc. One cannot deny thltShanghai faces social problems of the firstmagnitude, but it shares them with othergreat cities inside and outside of China. andthey arc becoming more and more specificallyChinese problems, just as Chinese as the lindproblem aU over the country or the everlast­inJt controversy between rich and poor inother Chinese provinces far in the interior.

In the political field Shanghai's position ..an international settlement is undoubtedlyunique. It is no secret that its administrationhas not been satisfactorily adapted to themany new problems and needs confrontingthis city during the last twenty years. Thereare in particular two grave errors that bavebeen committed which have without doubtmost adversely affected Shanghai's fate upto the present day: first, the exclusion fromthe administration. on the olle hand of thesmaller foreign Dations enjoying extraterri·toriality, and on the other of those natioM,such as Germany, who no longer have theseriKhts; and secondly the delay and half·heartedness in carrying through a larger rep­resentation of Chinese on the MunicipalCouncil. Both problems are of a very deli.cate political nature, but they could be solvedsatisfactorily, at lenst temporarily, until the

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main problem can be tackled, that is, how toaniala-amate Shanghai with China proper inthe future. This latter question-essentiallya purely Chinese political problem-was muchnearer solution between 1933 and 1937, butthis solution had, for obvious reasons, to bepostponed until China's own Government andpolitical life were stabilized. The mail\ pointto be taken into consideration for a futuresolution of this problem is that ShanA'hai isand has been for very many years a Chinesecity, with enormous Chinese investments inland. buildings, industry, and enterprises.

During the last forty or fifty years, theleadinA' foreiA'n business men of Shanghaihave, it appears to us, been less the mastersover conditions than the tools of the inexo­rable course of economic developments. Theyhave, it is true, enjoyed the peculiar politicalself-government willingly or unwillinglyjt'ranted them by the Governments of Chinaand foreign powers; but they have been act·inlt"', it seems, not on the basis of fixed plansor hard and fast rules but following theirprivate inclinations based on their businessinterests and a considerable amount of commonsense. All in all. they have not been whollylackinA' in a certain feeling of responsibilityfor the problems of this ever-growing city.The shortcomings and mistakes have beenthe result of the political situation, but theywere due more to a lack of continuityin the handling of Municipal affairs ratherthan to the continuous opposition of a close­knit clique. as Mr. Hauser would h:lv€ it.

On the whole the foreign community hasalready adapted itself to ch1anged conditionsduring the recent past, and will continue todo so as long as there is any internationaltrade and cosmopolitan co-operation at all.Instead of accepting the author's dramaticand final verdict on the fate of Shanghai,we beIJeve that it comes nearer the truth tort'zard Shanghai's latest crisis, which beganin 1937, as just another pha~e in a gradualmetamorphosis, the conscientious analysis ofwhich would indeed be a very interestingstudy.

The book is undoubtedly cleverly written,interspersed with sarcastic r~markll and'amusing sidelilthts on such well-known familiesas the Hardoon's, the Sassoon's. etc. Theinterpretation of the facts and trend ofevents, however, is erroneous---a "ShanghaiSaga," perhaps, but certainly not a true pic­ture of Shanghai.-K.

• • •The Netherland East Indian Archipelago

has, for reasons of its economic and politicalimportance. been thrust more and more intothe limelight of Pacific affai rs; hence Dr.

Amry Vandenbosch's book should arouse con­siderable interest. The reader who wishesto study the problems of this equatorial islandworld will not be disappointed.

In the part entitled "The National Awak­ening" the author discusses the steadilygrowing nationalistic movement. Origin'allystimulated and influenced by the similar de­velopment of ideas in neighboring BritishIndia, and further roused by the importationof western ideas in the social and economicaopheres, the Indonesians were torn from theirstlatic calm into the dynamic stream of mod­ern life. Forces were awakened which f01'the time being lay beyond any possibility ofrealization. This was the soil from whichsprung the parties eventually to be repre­sented in the Volksraad. Efforts for an in­dependent East India were launched amongIndonesi:an circles. The growth of the na­tional movement caused the Europeans duringthe last few decades to form political blocswith the aim of preserving the interests ofthe European population and the inviolabil­ity of the empire against what they brandedas the "red" danger, Between the two campsthere is the large group of Indo-Europeans,who in the Netherland East Indies are ra­cially recogonized as Europeans and by rea­son of their numbers considered to be a bul­wark of Dutch strength and loyalty. Ac­cording to the :author's opinion, however,they are slowly beginning to lean toward theIndonesians. Although he touches upon theseQuestions which are so important fur thefuture shaping of the country. Dr. Vanden­bosch refrains from expressing any prognosiswith regard to the possible future of thisproblem.

The political attitude of the NetherlandEast Indies toward t!}e great powers, especial­ly toward those of the Pacific area, is dealtwith under "World Politics." The authorjustifies the AnA'lophile attitude of the coun­try by its strategic situation.

A chapter on the Dutch East Indies andJapan has been added to the new edition ofthe book. Here again the author only sup­plies a factual report on the relations betweenboth countries from the sixteenth century upto the latest developments. One can findnews reports, and reports from heterogeneouscamps; not, however. a critique by the author.

The book closes with Ia short survey onthe economic situation of the Dutch EastIndies in 1939.

The Dutch EfUlt Indies is written by ascientist with a fluid style, and contains live­ly descriptions. To the initiated as well asto the novice it offers a clear picture of theinner and outer structure of the NetherlandEast Indies of the past and present.-R.