The history of Shanghai has become a vibrant subfield in the study of modern China. Since the early 1990s, on average every other year there has been at least one research monograph on the history of the city published by a major university press in the English-speaking world. In China, research of the city has grown into what is known as “Shanghai studies” (Shanghai xue). Scholars – primarily historians – have studied a wide ranges of topics related to the socioeconomic, cultural and political history of the city from late imperial times to the People's Republic. Curiously, the Shanghai Municipal Council (SMC), which served as the city's main governing body for nine decades prior to 1943 and presided over modern Shanghai during its prime, has not been the subject of a single book-length volume until now. Isabella Jackson's Shaping Modern Shanghai is a long overdue work that will help fill a major gap in the study of modern Shanghai.

The book is derived from the author's PhD dissertation supervised by Robert Bickers at the University of Bristol. Utilizing archival materials, government documents, newspapers, memoirs and various other sources, Jackson has pieced together a comprehensive institutional history of the SMC stretching from its rudimentary operations to its specific tasks and programmes in governing the core area of China's largest and most cosmopolitan city: the International Settlement.

Jackson believes that the field has overcorrected the impact-response paradigm in writing about modern China. As she puts it, “the pendulum swung too far with an attempt to write Chinese history as though there had been no foreign influence on the country.” Her goal in this book, therefore, is to correct the overcorrection by “providing a detailed study of one of the most important colonial authorities in China” (p. 13), and she has achieved this goal beautifully. The SMC was far from representative of the population it governed, its programmes were not always effective, and its power was often limited, yet as Jackson demonstrates, the SMC was a well-structured and well-run administration that navigated the most difficult and turbulent times in recent Chinese history. Jackson delineates the details of numerous aspects of the administration such as the procedures for electing the council, taxation and the budget. Despite its overall laissez-faire attitude in governing (especially regarding the Settlement's Chinese community), under certain public pressure the SMC often responded actively to various social issues with a good amount of negotiation, accommodation and compromise. This included taking action to improve industrial conditions, controlling the use of child labour, coping with poverty, policing social vices, assuming greater responsibility for public health, making progress in the hiring of women (p. 105), and many more. The impact of these undertakings varied. For instance, the SMC's public health management was well developed by the international standards of the time (p. 184), while attempts at coping with the city's rampant poverty proved to be futile. Regardless, Jackson has convincingly painted a faithful picture in which the SMC is not “a caricatured foreign presence” (p. 13) but a responsible municipal administration.

Jackson argues that “Modern Chinese history cannot be fully understood without appreciating how colonialism operated in Shanghai” (p. 21), and she proposes using the concept of transnational colonialism to make sense of the nature of colonialism in China. The SMC started in 1854 as a sort of civil-society type of self-governing body in Shanghai's foreign community to deal with the situation of expanded foreign settlements and a rapidly growing Chinese population there. The nature of SMC evolved over time but this local autonomy remained throughout the existence of the Settlement. It enabled the SMC, when it deemed it necessary, to ignore the national interests of the foreign powers in an “era of competitive imperialism” (p. 190) and put the colony's local welfare first to sustain an environment conducive to business. Although the very existence of the SMC – and for that matter, the foreign concessions in China – were ultimately dependent on Western military might, especially the British navy's presence in the region, the SMC was not, as it has been commonly thought, an Anglo or Anglo-American colonial authority per se.

There is abundant evidence in the book to verify Jackson's point about the transnational nature of the SMC. For instance, the Shanghai Volunteers Corps (SVC), formed in 1853 and acting as the Settlement's “defence force” until 1942, was a mixture of a dozen nationalities, as is reflected in the Chinese name for the corps, “the Militia of the Merchants of Many Nations” (p. 123). Similarly, the Shanghai municipal seal incorporated the flags of 12 nations with interests in Shanghai (p. 7). After the 1911 Revolution, the Chinese were able to use the notion of “no taxation without representation” to fight for their rights in the administration, and finally gained seats in the council in 1928 (p. 76). An intriguing and little-known case involves the issue of compensation for the former SMC employees after all foreign concessions in China were officially ended in 1943. The British government's position was clear: “the SMC had been not British but international,” and hence it refused to accept sole responsibility for paying SMC employees’ pensions (p. 242). Former employees of the SMC continued lobbying for the full payment of the pensions to which they were entitled, and the claims lingered for decades and were not finally settled until 1987.

Jackson's study is an important work, not only for the history of Shanghai or modern China but also for the history of colonialism, the British Empire and urban history. It deserves to be widely read.