When discussing special economic zones and free trade zones, scholars of Sino-foreign trade and relations are right to note the historical precedent of the treaty ports. The recent growth in interest in the history of foreign imperialism in China has spawned a wealth of new work, reasserting the importance of diverse foreign influences on Chinese nationalism, politics, society and culture (for an overview of such work, see Isabella Jackson's 2014 article “Chinese colonial history in comparative perspective,” Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History 15.3). China's Foreign Places: The Foreign Presence in China in the Treaty Port Era, 1840–1943 provides an overview of the physical locations of this foreign presence, but fails to engage with new developments in the field.

The introduction provides a traditional, detailed overview of the arrival of foreign traders in China, the forced opening of treaty ports where foreigners were permitted to live and trade, and the expansion of trade and infrastructure through the late Qing and Republican eras. There follow 81 encyclopaedia-style entries, each charting the history of the Western presence in an individual place, interwoven with developments in China more widely, from the self-strengthening movement of the 1860s to the Second Sino-Japanese War. Nield covers not only the few colonies and leased territories (notably Port Arthur [Lüshun]) and most, though not all, of the 92 treaty ports that existed by 1917, but also military stations, consular stations, customs stations (like Kowloon at Hong Kong), hill stations (such as Moganshan), seaside resorts (like Beidaihe) and open cities. Beijing features as a diplomatic station. Lintin (Neilingding) Island is classed as an opium receiving station. Even Sanmen Bay in Zhejiang (wrongly located on the map in Guangdong) is featured for being the brief target of Italian imperialism, although it was never settled by foreigners. Only missionary stations are omitted: Nield was himself an accountant in Hong Kong and his interest, he declares, is in commerce. Nield acknowledges the wide range of foreign powers that enjoyed treaty privileges in China, including not only Europeans and the United States but Peru and the Congo Free State (p. 3). The book's near-comprehensive coverage is impressive and the approach highlights the diversity and reach of the foreign presence in China.

Nield has researched his subject extensively, including archival research especially in the British Foreign Office records and the consultation of many printed primary sources. Yet early 20th-century sources are cited unquestioningly as authorities on the earlier history of treaty ports, with apparently no consideration of the perspective of their authors, themselves direct beneficiaries of the treaty-port system, nor their limited access to earlier sources. Thus we are told about extreme Chinese punishments of foreigners in the early 19th century based on a book written by American journalist Hallett Abend over a century later (p. 13) and that Chinese merchants opposed dredging the Dagu port at Tianjin solely on superstitious grounds, with only a 1925 English-language history of the city to support the assertion (p. 12). We are informed that the British and American Settlements in mid-19th-century Shanghai “were governed by the combined will of their residents” (p. 201), apparently forgetting the facts pointed out earlier in the entry that there was a huge settled Chinese population in these settlements and that Chinese were denied a vote: a result of relying unquestioningly on contemporary foreign accounts. Published memoirs and histories are favoured over official records, so journalist Carl Crow is cited for the proportion of taxation paid by Chinese in the Shanghai International Settlement instead of the Shanghai Municipal Council's finance records, which are readily available. The author's lack of scholarly training as a historian may explain his casual use of sources.

Nield draws on a wide range of scholarship, though he relies more on older and sometimes less scholarly works than the more recent publications that also appear in his bibliography. The functioning of extraterritoriality, whereby foreigners were subject to their own laws rather than Chinese law, is explained with reference to Mary Wright's 1957 monograph on the Tongzhi restoration (pp. 14–15), rather than a dedicated study of the legal system such as Pär Cassel's Grounds of Judgment: Extraterritoriality and Imperial Power in Nineteenth-Century China and Japan (Oxford University Press, 2011). Betty Wei's Shanghai: Crucible of Modern China, an introductory text without footnotes, is cited extensively in the section on Shanghai, despite a wealth of more rigorous studies being available on this city. Journals are almost entirely ignored, with the exception of the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Hong Kong Branch (of which Nield is a former president); scholarly debates and recent developments in the field are consequently absent.

Not a single Chinese-language source, primary or secondary, has been consulted, as though foreigners in China can be understood without reference to the Chinese. There is a huge body of literature in Chinese that would have informed Nield's study, while contemporary Chinese perspectives on the foreign places he examines would be revealing.

The presentation of the book is effective: the well-written entries are arranged alphabetically for easy reference, each including a map of China locating the “foreign place” in question. Persistent use of the old foreign names for Chinese places, with pinyin in brackets, is jarring, but the contemporary maps, illustrations and photographs are visually engaging.

The author succeeds in his aim of providing the most thorough survey to date of places of foreign settlement and trade in late Qing and Republican China, and demonstrates the great scope of foreign encroachment into Chinese territory. This will be a useful reference work for scholars and lay readers requiring a narrative overview of individual ports and bases. Those seeking analysis or an understanding of Chinese developments in this period will have to look elsewhere.