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ITALY'S INFORMAL IMPERIALISM IN TIANJIN DURING THE LIBERAL EPOCH, 1902–1922*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 March 2016

SABINA DONATI
SABINA DONATI*
Affiliation:
Pierre du Bois Foundation for Current History, Geneva
*
Pierre du Bois Foundation for Current History, The Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, PO Box 136, 1211 Geneva 21, Switzerlandsabina.donati@graduateinstitute.ch
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Abstract

This article examines the notion of ‘informal imperialism’ in East Asia and extends the related historiographical debate to the Italian case-study by focusing on liberal Italy's concession at Tianjin city port from 1902 through 1922. By doing so, it provides a fresh perspective on Italy's sole concession in China as well as offering specific theoretical insights and historical details that have not been sufficiently discussed in the literature pertaining to Italian expansionism in the liberal years. Within the context of an Italian informal imperial structure at its inception, the study carries out an historical investigation by using the economic lens on the one hand, and the political-administrative one on the other. In this way, it advances the current discussion about informal imperialism(s) in Tianjin by surveying issues pertaining not only to Italian trade, finance, and investments in imperial settings but also to foreign self-government and the establishment of an Italian Municipal Council as tools of imperial power relations. Based on a variety of Italian-language historical sources, archival material, and related academic works, the analysis is further enriched with comparisons drawn from the English-language scholarship on the British and the Japanese informal empires.

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The Historical Journal , Volume 59 , Issue 2 , June 2016 , pp. 447 - 468
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

By the autumn of 1922, when Benito Mussolini was offered the premiership by King Vittorio Emanuele III, the Italian flag was waving in a number of territories: the colony of Eritrea, annexed during the late nineteenth century; Italian Somalia, under direct administration by the first years of 1900; Cyrenaica and Tripolitania, invaded by the Italian colonizers in 1911; the Ottoman Dodecanese islands, occupied militarily within the context of the Italian–Ottoman war for the possession of Libya; and an Italian concession in the Chinese treaty port of Tianjin, granted in lease by the Qing dynasty in 1902. The multi-faceted expansionism of liberal Italy, a late colonial power, was therefore characterized by a mixture of both ‘formal’ and ‘informal’ empire – a theoretical aspect that has not been fully discussed yet in the literature pertaining to Italian imperialism and expansion in Africa, in the East Mediterranean, and in China.Footnote 1

Leading studies have addressed the general notions of formal and informal imperialism from a theoretical and historical perspectiveFootnote 2 as well as provided insightful discussions and details on the informal empires of Great Britain, Japan, and Germany.Footnote 3 Also, historical examination of the sui generis case-study of the International Settlement in Shanghai has enriched academic debates with further imperialist aspects.Footnote 4 Building upon this renowned English-language scholarship, and inspired by the meticulous research of Italian scholars Andrea Francioni and Nicola Labanca,Footnote 5 this article extends the discussion about the Italian historical experience, and by focusing on liberal Italy's informal imperialism in the Chinese treaty port of Tianjin, it aims to raise further points of reflection.

The tiny, and interesting, Italian concession – half a square kilometre of Chinese territory – has already attracted academic attention from a variety of historical angles. For instance, thanks to Maurizio Marinelli's investigations, pages of Italian history have been written on the genesis of the concession within the context of Italy's foreign policy in East Asia;Footnote 6 on the different representations of the Italian concession, as they have been produced in China and Europe from 1900 through the present day;Footnote 7 and on the use of Foucault's interpretative paradigm of ‘heterotopia’, to examine Tianjin as a hyper-colonial space, characterized by a juxtaposition of apparently contradictory elements co-existing side by side.Footnote 8 Also, alongside Aglaia De Angeli's article pertaining to sales of land plots by auction in Tianjin,Footnote 9 the work of Luigi Nuzzo provides readers with a juridical-historical account of the concession through an analysis of legal agreements and related jurisprudential culture.Footnote 10 Finally, whereas Jewish history, Italian expansionism, and the post-colonial perspective have inspired the edited volume Gli ebrei in Cina e il caso di Tien Tsin,Footnote 11 one of my recent publications sheds light on issues of citizenship, national identity, and minorities in historical perspective by focusing on the micro-history of the Italian concession during the first two decades of the twentieth century.Footnote 12 Fruitful and growing as this historiographical debate is, it has nonetheless overlooked the specific issue of liberal Italy's informal imperialism. Hence, this study aims to make a fresh contribution.

The inquiry first examines the notions of ‘informal’ and ‘formal’ empire to set the terminological, conceptual, and historical parameters of the debate. It then details and discusses liberal Italy's informal imperialism in the concession area from the economic vantage point, followed by an analysis from a political-administrative perspective. In this way, the use of the economic lens on the one hand, and of the political-administrative one on the other, will help us to provide a more comprehensive examination and to elaborate not only on the factors of economic expansion (i.e. trade, finance, and investment issues) but also on the political-administrative organization of the area brought into the orbit of the expansive society (with the inclusion of self-government issues, local voting entitlements in imperial settings, and the establishment of an elected Italian Municipal Council). In the course of the discussion, a number of comparative references are also made to the imperial traditions of Great Britain and Japan: the British, as ‘inventors’ of informal imperialism;Footnote 13 the Japanese, as tardy entrants into informal empire, and ‘imperialist aggressors’ after being ‘imperialist victims’.Footnote 14 Ultimately, by focusing on the imperial years of liberal Italy before Mussolini took power in Rome, this investigation offers theoretical points and historical elements that, it is hoped, will stimulate further research on the continuities and discontinuities between Tianjin under Italian rule during the liberal epoch and Tianjin under fascist domination during the Ventennio.

I

The expression ‘informal imperialism’ has first been applied to nineteenth-century British expansionism overseas, and refers to the fact that beside expanding their existing colonial possessions (i.e. their ‘formal empire’), the British were the first to build ‘a formidable empire without colonies’ through a system of treaties of free trade imposed upon weakened states.Footnote 15 Decaying Ottoman Turkey and Qing China were, for instance, primary targets of this British imperial technique, as these countries were not able to resist British economic demands and were also too vast to make full territorial conquest possible. The specific term ‘informal’ has been given authority by English historian Charles R. Fay in his contribution to The Cambridge history of the British empire, and then fully discussed as a concept in the classic essay of John Gallagher and Ronald Robinson pertaining to the imperialism of free trade.Footnote 16

As a particular form of expansionism, informal empire in China was a trading relationship forced on Beijing and defended by the presence of British (and other imperialist countries’) gunboats on the Chinese coasts, without actual annexation of territory. So, contrary to formal empire – that is those colonies of formal dominion, annexed in the strict constitutional sense, and ‘coloured red on the map’, to use Gallagher and Robinson's expression – informal imperial expansion did not involve complete territorial subjugation with full colonial control.Footnote 17 Also, one should bear in mind that the political lien between the expanding metropole and the overseas territory could well be flexible and that in certain cases a region might have passed from informal to formal status according to context and diverse conditions, so as to make the difference between formal and informal empire ‘not one of fundamental nature but of degree’.Footnote 18 In any case, informal empire allowed the imperialist state to avoid the political and economic burdens of a full war of conquest and the subsequent costs of having large military garrisons stationed on the spot.

This being said, it is pertinent to acknowledge a certain ambiguity in the use of the concept of ‘informal control’ and to argue, together with scholar Peter Duus, that what distinguished informal imperialism from ‘non-imperialistic trading relationships’ was the use of coercion or the willingness to use coercion.Footnote 19 In other words, British trade and investment in nineteenth-century Belgium, to take but one example, would not be called imperialistic because they were based on mutual consent and also because the Belgians welcomed them; by contrast, British trade in post-Opium War China would be defined as imperialistic as it was forced on the Chinese, was not welcomed by the Qing government, and would not have been realized without the British willingness to use coercive methods and gunboat diplomacy.Footnote 20 Finally, it is important to mention that the development of informal control and intrusion in China came to acquire a Western ‘co-operative/collective’ character in the sense that it was sustained by ‘a multi-lateral treaty structure’ and based on the principle according to which the gains by any one Power were automatically shared by all through the most-favoured-nation clause. Thus, informal imperialism in East Asia was in most cases a sort of ‘shared imperialism’ or ‘collective imperialism’, maintained through a balance-of-power approach.Footnote 21

In practice, this multi-lateral treaty structure (also known as the unequal treaty system) shaped in fundamental ways a number of aspects pertaining to life, residence, and trade in so-called treaty ports – some ninety-two places in total by 1917.Footnote 22 More particularly, following the 1842 Treaty of Nanking (between China and Great Britain) as well as the subsequent treaties (between China and the other Powers), foreigners could reside with their families in these treaty ports, own property, and engage in business. They also enjoyed the right to live under the consular jurisdiction of their country of origin, and therefore be tried in their own national courts and according to their own national laws in the name of extraterritoriality.Footnote 23 Alien merchants had access to free market and trade with whatever persons they pleased – as opposed to trading with an official trade monopoly – and were taxed according to certain privileged tariff rates. Finally, the foreign Powers asserted the prerogative to administrate these areas with power of taxation and the right to maintain a police force; and, as already pointed out, foreign warships were in Chinese coastal and riverine waters alongside a number of troops sent on Chinese soil.Footnote 24 The treaty system was basically seen by the imperialist states as a powerful means to secure economic opportunities and commercial penetration; for a weakened China, on the contrary, it was an instrument to appease the foreign countries while setting precise treaty-based limits to the aliens’ activities and therefore try to keep the ‘ocean devils’ (‘yang guizi’, European trouble-makers) under control.Footnote 25 The result was a continuous erosion of Chinese sovereignty, although the latter never came near to being vanquished as rightly underlined by a number of past and contemporary scholars.Footnote 26 Also, and most importantly, the outcome was ‘a special brand of imperialist domination of the world’ which, as a form of exploitation and aggressive expansionism, was most effective and by no means inferior to, or gentler than, other classical forms of direct colonial rule.Footnote 27 Italy was not to be a mere spectator of this world phenomenon.

II

Liberal Italy (1861–1922) – concerning us in this study – joined the club of the imperial powers in China in 1866, even though, as Marinelli reminds us, the Italian–Chinese encounter has a much longer history and has often been narrated in a celebratory way by making reference to the illustrious experiences of Venetian traveller Marco Polo and the Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci.Footnote 28 In 1866, after elaborate negotiations with Beijing for the signature of a treaty of friendship, commerce, and navigation, the Italian government acquired treaty power status and obtained trading rights and extraterritorial privileges as other countries already enjoyed on Chinese territory.Footnote 29 Subsequently, following the Boxer Uprising, the victory of the Eight-Power Allied expeditionary force, the Boxer Protocol of 1901, and the Sino-Italian agreement of 1902, Rome was granted additional privileges in the Legation Quarter in Beijing, a percentage of the Boxer indemnity, as well as an exclusive concession in Tianjin. The latter was a small enclave located next to seven other foreign-controlled settlements that were under British, French, Japanese, German, Russian, Belgian, and Austro-Hungarian flags respectively.Footnote 30 Later than other imperialist countries, liberal Italy was not only struggling to create a colonial empire in Africa, as fully examined and discussed by Labanca,Footnote 31 but also taking part in the scramble for trade privileges and concessions in East Asia through an informal imperial strategy.

The motives behind Italy's expansion in that ‘lontan paese’ (‘distant country’), to quote the Italian erudite style of diplomat Daniele Varè in remembering China in his memoir,Footnote 32 can be briefly summed up with two inter-related concepts: politica di potenza (great power politics) and ricerca di prestigio (search for prestige) at the international level.Footnote 33 These are the two main principles that guided liberal Italy's diplomatic decision to embark on the Chinese adventure, bearing also in mind that the Italian humiliation by the Chinese ‘No’ in the Sanmen Bay incident had somehow to be revenged.Footnote 34 With this general background in mind, and focusing on the specific Italian concession, it is pertinent to ask in what ways Italy – ‘the least of the Great Powers or the first of the small ones, depending on the angle of observation’Footnote 35 – sought to practise informal imperialism in Tianjin during the two post-Boxer decades under study. To answer and discuss this question, we shall use our first lens of analysis (i.e. the economic one). This will allow us to portray the presence and influence of Italian trade and business firms, Italian bank and financial activities, as well as Italian private investments, as they slowly developed in the concession area by the early 1920s. The purpose is to sketch and examine liberal Italy's informal empire in Tianjin by looking at it from an economic angle first.

With regard to Italian trade and business firms, especially in the import–export fields, it is important to remark that Italian authorities in China attempted to emphasize in different ways the economic and commercial potentials of Tianjin treaty port for interested Italian traders and entrepreneurs, as one can appreciate in reading, for instance, two reports of 1904 and 1909 sent to Italy's Ministry of Foreign Affairs by the Italian Royal Legation in Beijing.Footnote 36 Obviously, the fact of holding now an exclusive territorial concession – the only one in the Italian case – provided Rome with the opportunity of making Tianjin the ‘physical centre’ of an East Asian policy which could have attracted the various interests of Italian businesspersons from the metropole but also from other treaty ports, especially Shanghai.Footnote 37 Yet, these diplomatic efforts do not seem to have been so successful and one can emphasize that the presence and influence of Italian trade remained modest in Tianjin throughout the liberal age.

For example, speaking in September 1910 at the Conference of Orientalist Geographers organized in the Italian town of Macerata, Italian lawyer and contemporary observer Elio A. Perogio argued that the ‘made in Italy’ was basically a myth in the whole of Asia.Footnote 38 Statistics are also revealing. In fact, while acknowledging serious archival lacunas on data collections pertaining specifically to the Italian concession, it is certainly useful to know that China's total imports and exports with Italy amounted to 11,334 Hk.T (Haikwan taels) in 1910, 6,544 Hk.T in 1914, and 8,369 Hk.T in 1922, and that the commercial exchanges between the two countries basically remained marginal through this period, especially if we consider China's total foreign trade in the same years: 857,386 Hk.T in 1910, 940,436 Hk.T in 1914, and 1,629,926 Hk.T in 1922.Footnote 39 Bearing this in mind, it is also important to underline that it is only in January 1920 – towards the end of the liberal decades – that the Italian Chamber of Commerce (Camera di Commercio Italiana), operating in Shanghai since 1903, was able to open a small northern branch in Tianjin. This northern section, though, closed very soon, by February 1923, because it could not reach the minimum number of members.Footnote 40 Finally, it is again in January 1920, after the Great War, that the trade company Compagnia Italiana d'Estremo Oriente was established in the concession area with the objective of facilitating the distribution of Italian products in China, and enhancing business and commerce between the metropole and its Asian territory in lease.Footnote 41

A major obstacle to Italian commercial development was first of all the absence of a regular Italian shipping line which would link the major Italian ports with those of East Asia, including Tianjin. In a 1904 report mentioned earlier, Count Carlo Sforza highlighted the fact that Italy lacked a direct line of navigation to China.Footnote 42 In fact, for years, no Italian shipping line was set up to service Italian cargoes of goods, and therefore Italian trade companies had to use foreign ship liners at very disadvantaged conditions. Once more, it is by the end of the First World War, in October 1919, that a monthly service was established with the Italian maritime company Lloyd Triestino (former Lloyd Austriaco of the defeated Austro-Hungarian empire, to be ceded to Italy with the annexation of Trieste).Footnote 43 Most importantly, the emergence and development of a sound Italian trade, business, and commercial presence were to be hindered and delayed in the Italian concession between 1902 and 1922 because of the difficulties in transforming a territory of marshy lands and salt deposits into an area comprising the necessary infrastructural framework;Footnote 44 because of lack of a substantial community of Italian settlers in the concession;Footnote 45 and because of a general immobility of Italy's successive governments vis-à-vis the realization of a coherent export programme and economic-commercial strategy in China.Footnote 46

Moving now to Italian overseas banks and financial activities in the Italian concession, further details can be discerned. The territory lacked for many years a well-established national banking institution that could be the instrumentality for the servicing of commerce and for the involvement of Italian capital in Chinese enterprises and loans. The Filiale Bancaria della Società Coloniale Italiana – operating in Shanghai and only for a short period (i.e. 1901–9) – dealt mainly with China's indemnity payments. Also, two further Italian financial companies active in Asia – the Società Bancaria Manzi and Società Bancaria Milanese – held some shares in the Belgian Compagnie d'Orient but the Italian financial role remained modest in scale and strength.Footnote 47 As noted in a 1903 Italian military report, sent from Tianjin to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Rome, the concession's revenues, mainly generated through local taxes, were deposited on a monthly basis at the Hong-Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation.Footnote 48 This situation lasted for almost two decades. And it is only in February 1920, after repetitive requests from several Italian diplomatic and commercial institutions in China, that the government in Rome gave its authorization and support for the creation of a joint enterprise: the Banca Italo-Cinese (the Sino-Italian Bank).Footnote 49 This new financial institution was established in Tianjin (not in the Italian concession, though, but in the French site, rue de France n. 38), and with branches in Shanghai and Beijing.Footnote 50 Founded with Italian and Chinese capitals, it aimed at stimulating the expansion of commercial relations between the two countries, and at providing a direct link with the banks in Italy so as to deal more profitably with the exchange in Italian lire. Lionello Scelsi and Shu Shi Ying were the two chairmen of the board of directors.Footnote 51 Clearly, similar to trade, liberal Italy's banking system made its first tentative moves in Tianjin slowly and only towards the 1920s when the post-First World War settlement was having an impact not only in Europe but also in East Asia.

Finally, to complete our economic portrait by moving to Italian private investments, one may remark a few additional points about Tianjin. Italian capital was a major absentee for years. In a sharp report of August 1910, criticizing the indifference of the Italian government in anticipating the necessary funds, and proposing to return the territory to China rather than keeping it in such a desolate condition, an Italian navy commandant mentioned the fact that in Tianjin there was not only a small number of Italians but also an ‘absolute absence’ of wealthy co-nationals and of Italian capital.Footnote 52 Three Italian businessmen – D'Amelio, Bianchini, and Gilardi – had actually been interested in investing in the Italian concession even before that half square kilometre of Chinese territory was officially granted to Italian governmental authorities by the Qing dynasty. More particularly, we know that in January and March 1901, these three entrepreneurs wrote to the Italian ambassador in Beijing Giuseppe Salvago Raggi showing their interest and foreseeing several business opportunities, including infrastructural projects and the possible expansion of the railway from Dagu port to Tianjin and then to Beijing. However, it seems that their proposal was not pursued any further, most probably for the uncertain political and military situation on the ground, lack of full commitment, and bureaucratic delays.Footnote 53 Furthermore, when the Italian government tried to encourage Italian capital flows by organizing several land auctions in 1908, these attempts were complete fiascos as the auction sale failed four times, demonstrating that no Italian capitalist seemed to be willing to risk investment in this Asian territory.Footnote 54

In contrast to the Italian case-study, the example of the neighbouring Japanese concession in Tianjin stands out within a comparative perspective. In fact, in the area that was under the Japanese flag, Japanese commercial activities thrived and the Japanese community prospered during the decades under study, despite the fact that the concession had looked so unpromising at the outset like the territory under Italian rule. Thanks to the research of Mark R. Peattie,Footnote 55 we know that under the direction of the Japanese government in Tokyo and through the initiatives of major private enterprises, the Japanese concession was transformed into a bustling area not only with the construction of an embankment along the river, the creation of streets, and the building of the first governmental offices, but also with the development of grocery stores, restaurants, great commercial shipping firms, banking houses, and factories. The presence and growth of the Japanese settler population was remarkable: there were no more than fifty Japanese before the concession was granted to Tokyo in 1898; by 1903, this number had risen to about 1,300 Japanese nationals; and by 1921, to 5,000.Footnote 56 Emigration of Japanese from their home country to the concession had followed in most cases Japan's military triumphs in Asia. In effect, the successive flows of settlers into the treaty ports were particularly significant after the suppression of the Boxer Rebellion and in the decade following the Russo-Japanese War. Encouraged by the Japanese government, and supported by a strong consular presence that was composed of the best-informed diplomatic representatives, the Japanese settler population in Tianjin expanded along with Japanese trade, commerce, and industry. Indeed, in a few decades Japan made up for its tardy participation in the international competition for influence and presence in East Asia.Footnote 57 The Japanese government was an active promoter of trade in China due to the crucial importance of this neighbour to Japan's economic well-being; Italy's liberal governments were not, their attempts were much more timid, their success much more limited. Certainly, geography, economic history, and security concerns shaped and made the difference between the Italian and the Japanese examples.

So, by looking through our first lens of analysis – the economic one – we see that an Italian informal imperial structure remained circumscribed and at an initial stage in Tianjin. Economic and financial activities were not totally absent, but most of them started operating and developing only after the Great War when the Italian liberal period was approaching its end, and a new fascist era was about to begin. There was therefore limited attainment by Italian liberal governments in the extension of an informal empire in China through an official concession at Tianjin city port. Italy's domestic situation in those years alongside its foreign policy priorities in the Near Levant (prossimo Levante), more than in the Far East (lontano Oriente), explain this situation.Footnote 58 Yet, even though Italy's commercial and financial influences were neither broad nor profound in Tianjin, what mattered ultimately for the central government in Rome was not to be excluded from the ‘Chinese banquet’: to participate in the partition of highly substantial indemnities and to keep basically a place within the international concert of powers in East Asia.Footnote 59 Italian consul and administrator of the concession Vincenzo Fileti was also quite explicit on this last point.Footnote 60 In fact, in the early years, and as previously remarked, some Italian authorities actually proposed to give the concession back to China on account of the area's disconsolate settings; but in the end, this was not done because Ambassador Salvago Raggi and several other dignitaries, including Fileti, considered this negative strategy as ‘an act supremely detrimental to the prestige of Italy in the Orient’.Footnote 61 The Italian flag was waving in Tianjin, symbolizing a European country's international status as an expansionist state. And it was important for the relatively weak metropole that the Italian flag not be removed.

Besides, even if marginal, the Italian economic and financial relations in Tianjin were part of the larger mosaic of foreign establishment in China and related extraterritorial system; therefore, an additional insult to Chinese sense of nationalism and an additional erosive component of Chinese sovereign power. In this last respect, we may extend Fewerwerker's general arguments on foreigners in ChinaFootnote 62 to the Italian case-study, and emphasize that no matter how tiny liberal Italy's economic presence was, Italian individuals and firms were subjected only to the laws of their own consular courts; hence, due to the extraterritorial umbrella, Chinese authorities were unable to restrict, regulate, license, or tax them directly. Also, Italian banks and other foreign financial institutions enjoyed similar extraterritorial privileges so that their issuance of currency could not be fully controlled by the Chinese. In other words, the last of the Great Powers or the first of the less important ones ‘was there’ to get a slice of the ‘Chinese melon’ – regardless of how thin that portion was. And alongside the other flags over Tianjin, the Italian one certainly added further colours – though a bit faded – to the multi-faceted mosaic of European informal imperialist approaches.

Having explored the economic facet of Italy's informal imperialism in Tianjin, we shall set aside the economic lens and take the political-administrative one in order to discuss another fundamental aspect of the treaty system, namely the prerogative of foreign self-government in the concession areas. This is a factor that deserves full investigation bearing in mind that Tianjin was and remained the sole Chinese territory where Italy was granted the right to establish an Italian Municipal Council (IMC) for the local administration of the area. Still insufficiently studied in the scholarship pertaining to the Italian case, this political-administrative dimension will add food for thought on the academic table and allow extension of a debate which so far has mainly been limited to the work and activities of the Municipal Council in the Shanghai International Settlement,Footnote 63 to the Municipal Council of the British settlement in Tianjin,Footnote 64 and to self-government issues in the Japanese concessions.Footnote 65

III

The imperial administration of the various concessions in China – something historically unique in comparison, for instance, with the colonial political-administrative structures in Africa – was not to be identical in the numerous Chinese treaty ports. As Europeans and other foreigners came to enjoy consular immunities and unilaterally asserted rights to self-government under the shield of extraterritoriality, some concessions became fully self-governed lands administrated by an elected body of residents (i.e. an elected municipality); other concessions did not have any elected municipal office but created a collective organ that was appointed by the consular authorities on the spot; finally, a third group of imperialist states just administrated the land in lease through their own consulate pending the creation of such future collective bodies.Footnote 66

The concession of liberal Italy can be put into this third basket. In fact, the issue of establishing an Italian Municipal Council that would administrate the area had to be continuously postponed during the first two post-Boxer decades because the group of Italians living there was just too small and therefore the concession would risk being ruled by non-Italians (i.e. foreigners of other nationalities).Footnote 67 This was a concern that, explicitly or implicitly, was constantly in the mind of the Italian authorities and officials who discussed such important administrative matters. For instance, in 1906, Consul Fileti argued that it was ‘too early’ to contemplate the institution of a municipality because in the Italian settlement the members to compose such a body were ‘not yet’ there – implying a sufficient number of Italian co-nationals.Footnote 68 Also, in discussing or mentioning the creation of an ‘Italian’ municipal organ, Italy's officialdom very often used the future tense, as in a 1902 report;Footnote 69 or explicitly referred to the intention of creating a collective body ‘later on’ whenever this would be ‘convenient’, ‘opportune’, and ‘possible’, as reiterated in the 1907 and 1913 regulations.Footnote 70 So it was a project whose full completion had to be repeatedly deferred during the liberal years.

The result is that until 1922 the administration remained provisionally in the hands of the Italian consulate, under the control of the Italian legation in Beijing, and was never transferred to an Italian municipal body (either elected or appointed).Footnote 71 Put simply, Italian consuls governed the area with the power to lay and impose taxes, as well as with the right to maintain an Italian police force in loco. Additionally, within this administrative regime, the consul had the authority to implement regulations pertaining to roads, lighting, hygiene, and so forth. This interim administrative configuration was obviously assisted by a number of Italian elements who served at the consulate or under its aegis. Interestingly for historical analysis, it also included four Chinese nationals since the early period. Archival documentation tells us, for example, that in 1906 two Chinese citizens worked as tax collectors, with one of them also being employed as interpreter; another Chinese national served under the supervision of the head of the Italian police and was in charge of the information service; a fourth native, called il letterato (the lettered), dealt with Chinese correspondence, reception of the inhabitants’ petitions, translation of the Chinese press, and transcription of Italian official decrees.Footnote 72 With regard to the Italian police, our findings show that it was organized as a corps of municipal guards and made of eight royal Carabinieri under the authority of a Maresciallo. As a patrol unit, this force also comprised a group of thirty-six indigenous guards (eighteen Shimpoo or day sentinels, and eighteen Kanfoo or night sentries) who fulfilled duties for the maintenance of public order.Footnote 73 Clearly, the image of the native being employed by the Italian consulate in Tianjin or patrolling the local streets with the uniform of the Italian police force reminds the historian that Italy's imperial administration in China, as other European case-studies, was also based on the complex and multi-faceted notion of collaboration. As Labanca pertinently argues in his discussion about Italian colonial expansion in Africa, no imperial power could do without the various collaborators of the local society, including notables, indigenous troops, interpreters, house servants, and so forth.Footnote 74

To expand the current discussion about Italy's consular administrative regime, it is apposite to consider a further aspect. As observed earlier, the establishment of an Italian Municipal Council had to be put on hold in the course of the liberal age, and remained therefore a ‘future project’ for this period. In fact, it is only in September 1922 – at the very end of the liberal epoch – that the Italians introduced a municipal statute which, approved in January 1923 when the fascists were already in power back home, transferred the administration of the concession to an elective IMC, under the presidency of the Italian consul.Footnote 75 Yet, even though this municipal collective organ remained a mere project for liberal Italy, it was often discussed by Italian officialdom throughout the decades under study in relation to voting entitlements and foreign self-government arrangements that deserve to be fully elucidated within the framework of Italy's informal empire. This investigation, never attempted before, will allow us to examine the discourses, debated propositions, designed norms, and general outlooks of the Italians so as to add points of reflection on the imperial cultural imaginaire of liberal Italy as well as on the values and principles of Italian imperial rule overseas. More specifically: How should the Municipal Council be formed? Who should vote in the Italian concession for the election of the council representatives? Should the indigenous population have a say in the running of the municipality? What about the foreigners holding other nationalities? To answer these questions, we shall survey the regulations of 1907, 1913, and 1922 as well as enrich our analysis with additional considerations that were raised at that time, especially when Tianjin was discussed at the Second Congress of Italians Abroad.

The 1907 rules are actually silent on these issues, and it is in 1913 that the question of voting entitlements was first regulated in a formal way. According to these norms, the (future) Italian municipality was to be elected by a group of voters, and these electors were to be the Italians living in the concession (with or without property) as well as the subjects of the other foreign Powers (only if property-owners). Since nothing was said about the indigenous Chinese, this silence is eloquent because it means that the natives were excluded from the electorate; otherwise, next to the rules pertaining to Italians and other foreigners, one should have found those regulating the Chinese as well.Footnote 76 So, the nationality of the individual as well as property considerations shaped theoretical concepts and imperial norms on voting rights during the liberal years. Also, and most importantly, these principles were combined with concerns about power relations and the determination to give priority to the Italian element – thus giving form to an imaginary hierarchy of nationalities whose contours, inclusions, and exclusions were slowly being defined. For this reason, all Italians could vote (propertied or property-less) whereas only European foreign owners had the same right; moreover, Chinese were entirely excluded (either with or without property). Obviously, the particular local context of treaty port life, the presence of different nationalities within a small area of half a square kilometre, the ideology of imperialism, and the liberal notion of private property fashioned these colonial voting issues.

Subsequently in 1922, more detailed rules about suffrage and voting rights were introduced with the aforementioned municipal statute that slightly revised the previous juridical guidelines.Footnote 77 In particular, according to these new norms the concession was to be administrated by an elected Municipal Council composed of five consiglieri (councillors) – to be increased to seven, in the future, when the number of Italian and other foreign electors would have been more than 100. Not surprisingly, the proportion of the nationalities represented on the Council was, once more, in favour of the Italian element; the councillors had to be Italians, and only one of them could have been a foreigner holding another nationality. Also, as regards the electorate, a similar hierarchy was in place. In fact, electors were the resident Italians in Tianjin (with or without property in the concession) as well as foreigners (either property-owners or resident in the Italian-controlled area from at least one year and paying a monthly rent of thirty Mexican dollars). These citizenship arrangements concerned only Italians and foreigners holding the nationality of another imperial Power. So, the Chinese did not have the right to elect or to be elected in this Municipal Council.Footnote 78

The natives’ exclusion, though, was not total as in the 1913 regulations. In fact, in 1922, Italian authorities sanctioned some Chinese participation, though the latter was limited on the basis of important tenets, and only permitted within a consultative body. More particularly, only Chinese property-owners in the concession or those who were resident there at least for one year and paid a monthly rent of thirty Mexican dollars enjoyed voting entitlements to elect and to be elected in a Comitato Consultivo Cinese. This was a Chinese committee composed of three natives, and having only consultative capacity in the examination of local taxes and budget issues. So, there was to be no direct political participation of the Chinese population in this Italian Municipal Council, and only a limited consultative status.Footnote 79

Italian officialdom, dealing with these administrative and electoral issues in an imperial setting, turned very often, and since the beginning of the Italian period, to other neighbouring settlements in order to consider which system to introduce in the Italian-controlled area. Emulation was basically the rule. For instance, the British settlement in Tianjin was looked at for inspiration on several occasions, especially upon Italian arrival; the English system being praised by Italy's authorities for its long imperial experience and efficient results.Footnote 80 However, later on, it was the Austro-Hungarian concession at Tianjin city port that came to be thoroughly studied and debated by the Italians. This is evident if we look at the discussions made by Italian academics, members of parliament and consular authorities at the Second Congress of Italians Abroad held in 1911, as well as at a number of coeval publications including Enrico Catellani's monograph and a previous article authored by Emo Querci.Footnote 81

Thanks to these historical sources, we know that when the issues under study were being reported at the aforementioned congress, university professor and participant Catellani made an interesting point: due to local demographic statistics, and in order to make sure that the Italian concession would not acquire in the future a ‘European character’ different from the Italian one, it would have been more appropriate to use the indigenous element, as had been the case in the neighbouring Austro-Hungarian settlement since 1908.Footnote 82 Vienna's concession in Tianjin was in fact administrated by a Municipal Council of eight to ten members: four Austro-Hungarians, four Chinese, and two chosen from other nationalities. In other words, Chinese representation was not in a minority status. Also, all councillors were chosen by the consul for one year; so they were appointed and not elected. Finally, the secretariat of the municipality was assisted by a commission of eight Chinese notables, nominated by the consul and meeting once a week. Thus, in the Austro-Hungarian settlement, the Chinese element enjoyed direct participation in the appointed Municipal Council and in the administration.Footnote 83 This is indeed an interesting historical point to emphasize, though we also know that the system was suspended in 1915 due to some repetitive disturbances occurring in that area.Footnote 84

Now, moving to the Italian concession within his speech, Catellani argued in favour of introducing an Italian Municipal Council composed of four Italian nationals, four Chinese, and two of other nationalities, so as to make the number of Chinese councillors not a minority but equal to the number of Italians, and actually higher than the number of members holding other European citizenships. This system was the most appropriate, according to him, because of the peculiar demographic situation of the Italian concession, and also because the Chinese population, by far the majority, was paying taxes to Italian local authorities. It was therefore right and just to admit the Chinese to full participation in the administration, in line with the tenets enshrined in the national legislation that was in force in the Italian peninsula.Footnote 85

Catellani's proposition, though, was not at all welcome, nor shared by any other Italian representatives speaking at that congress – an aspect that adds further articulated elements in our historical investigation. Indeed, for the consular authorities, MPs, and Italian entrepreneurs attending this 1911 conference, Catellani's argument sounded too open and ultra-democratic vis-à-vis the natives. Speaking on 16 June 1911, Italian participant Egidio Marzoli argued in favour of an autonomous municipal administration made only of Italian citizens resident in the concession – with the exclusion of the Chinese ‘whose interests [were] antithetical to the Italian ones’.Footnote 86 Marzoli – a long-time resident of Tianjin and owner of the construction company that by 1919 was to build the neo-Renaissance villa housing the Italian Municipal Council buildingFootnote 87 – repeatedly insisted on excluding the Chinese element from the municipality.Footnote 88 This was a point that another speaker also defended on the same day, doubting about the incorporation of the Chinese population in the municipal administration, and saying that one could not understand why it was Italy that should have included the Chinese, when this was not the case in many other concessions, and when Italy could have been harmed the most by doing so.Footnote 89 Joining the discussion, Luigi Valli appreciated Catellani's ‘ultra-democratic sentiments’ but in Valli's view these democratic feelings should not have been followed because of the ‘psychology of the Chinese people’ and the fact that the inclusion of the natives would have led to ‘very serious risks of obstructionism’ so as to impede the development of the concession area.Footnote 90 As a result, Catellani's suggestion was eventually modified, and the final document that the congress unanimously approved did not make any reference to the incorporation of Chinese citizens in the municipal administration of the concession and actually added that the future municipality would have been constituted of ‘European elements’.Footnote 91

This came to be reflected in the 1913 regulations which, as we saw, did not contemplate any Chinese representation. Subsequently, though, the 1922 statute kept the rule about Chinese exclusion from the Municipal Council, but tolerated a limited indigenous consultative status. So, throughout the two decades under study, we may notice that Italian formulation of norms, related discourses, and general outlooks were shaped in different ways by the imperialist concern about power relations in China. This crafting of regulations alongside officials’ thinking and talking reveal a complete prohibition for the indigenous inhabitants vis-à-vis direct representation – with only Catellani's isolated voice against such interdiction. And they also suggest a gradual and minor acceptance of Chinese participation by Italy's authorities only towards the last years of the liberal era and only in reference to consultative organs. The actual norms explored in these pages were never effective during the liberal decades because the full municipal organization of the Italian concession, including the functioning of an elected IMC, was achieved only in September 1922 and put in force the following year when Mussolini was in power. Yet, historical analysis pertaining to these political-administrative aspects and to related discourses of the liberal age is certainly useful to delineate the imperial structure and racial exclusions that the Italians had in mind within their informal imperial strategy. By the early 1920s, we can grasp how Italy's imperial imagination had come to focus, among other factors, on the way that Asian region should be administered and put more effectively under Italy's informal control.

By moving now to the Japanese concession in Tianjin during the same period, we can bring in some further comparative details of historical importance. On the basis of Peattie's work,Footnote 92 we know that a 1905 Japanese law provided for the formation of a Residents’ Corporation in the concession – a type of constituency that would in turn elect the members of the legislative and executive organs of the concession administration. Membership in this Corporation was limited to adult Japanese males who resided in the Japanese-ruled area and who paid a minimum amount in annual assessments; to Japanese business within the concession; and to a few Chinese and Western foreign owners whose property was valued above a certain amount. The Residents’ Corporation was basically the electorate of the concession: by secret ballot, it elected six or seven of its members to be part of a Municipal Council which was the executive body enacting the resolutions of the Corporation. Unsurprisingly, the greater share in the administration and control of the municipality was in Japanese hands. Also, as we can see, the Chinese were not entirely excluded if they owned property, and contrary to the natives who lived in the neighbouring Italian concession, those in the Japanese-controlled territory actually voted and did not have a limited consultative status.Footnote 93 Obviously, each concession enjoyed its own specificity and went through particular historical developments, according not only to the local context but also to the political tenets, racial thinking, imperialist designs, and administrative experience of the nation that had a specific Chinese territory in lease. So, the patterns observed through the use of our second lens of analysis – the political-administrative one – indicate obvious parallels within the general phenomenon of informal empire as well as variations shaped by local, national, and foreign factors.

The Italian Municipal Council met for the first time in November 1923.Footnote 94 The inauguration took place in that neo-Renaissance palazzo which was located, as Fileti recalls, in Corso Vittorio Emanuele III, opposite the Italian consulate and adjacent to the Italian police station.Footnote 95 This, though, is the beginning of another history – the history of the Italian concession in Tianjin during the fascist epoch.

By linking the micro-history of Tianjin city port during the liberal period to the macro-processes of the broad historical movement of informal imperialism in China, this article has offered reflections on the way recently unified Italy attempted to create an embryonic form of informal empire within a context of international competition for influence and colonial prestige in East Asia. Focusing on the Italian concession between 1902 and 1922, the study has explored Italian imperial strategies from an economic perspective as well as from a political-administrative viewpoint. From both angles of observation, we saw that everything was ‘working in progress’ in that area during the liberal age. Italian trade and financial presence and influence remained marginal. The administration of the concession was left in the hands of the Italian consulate for the entire period, and the imperial project of establishing an Italian Municipal Council had to be deferred due to contingent reasons. Even if it lacked solidity and depth, Italian initial imperial framework was characterized by interesting historical details which, taken together and surveyed in these pages, have allowed extension of the historiographical debate on European informal imperialism(s) in Tianjin.

The general discussion about informal empire was enriched at the beginning of this article with references to the British imperial experience. Subsequently, a number of parallels and contrasts were made between the Italian and Japanese concessions. Italy's drive to East Asia on the whole and to Tianjin in particular were certainly Lilliputian when compared with other Great Powers’ imperialisms. However, the latter shared similar fundamental characteristics and intents with the Italian case.Footnote 96 Also, no matter how embryonic and in the making Italy's informal imperial structure was during those liberal decades, the presence of the Italian flag on Chinese soil certainly reminded Beijing of China's military weakness, of Chinese financial and economic dependency, and of foreign powers’ imperial appetite. Italy's flag, waving in the concession, was a glaring symbol of foreign aggressiveness which together with other Great Powers’ parallel tactics of control and interference could not but draw the wrath of Chinese nationalism. The presence of liberal Italy in Tianjin was undoubtedly another galling fly irritating the Chinese elephant. In October 1922, Mussolini was to arrive on the stage.

Footnotes

*

I wish to express my gratitude to the two anonymous referees for their useful comments in advising improvements to the final version. This study is dedicated to Professor Andre Liebich, exemplary teacher and mentor; and to the dear memory of Hayat.

References

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11 Gian Marco Cavallarin and Barbara Henry, eds., Gli ebrei in Cina e il caso di Tien Tsin: convivenze nella Cina moderna (Livorno, 2012).

12 Sabina Donati, ‘Citizenship and identity issues in the Italian concession of Tientsin, 1902–1922’, in Jaci Eisenberg and Davide Rodogno, eds., Ideas and identities: a Festschrift for Andre Liebich (Bern and Oxford, 2014), pp. 43–62.

13 Peter Duus, ‘Japan's informal empire in China, 1895–1937: an overview’, in Duus, Myers, and Peattie, eds., Japanese informal empire, p. xiv.

14 Robert Bickers and Christian Henriot, ‘Introduction’, in idem and idem, eds., New frontiers, p. 4.

15 Jürgen Osterhammel, Colonialism: a theoretical overview, trans. Shelley L. Frisch (Princeton, NJ, 1997), pp. 18–21; Duus, ‘Japan's informal empire’, pp. xiv–vii.

16 See Charles R. Fay, ‘The movement towards free trade, 1820–1853’, in John Holland Rose, Arthur P. Newton, and Ernst A. Benians, eds., The Cambridge history of the British empire (8 vols., Cambridge, 1929–59), ii, p. 399; Gallagher and Robinson, ‘Imperialism of free trade’, pp. 1–15. The latter seminal work has given rise to a dynamic academic dialogue on various accounts of European imperialisms: see, for instance, Forbes, ‘German informal imperialism’, pp. 384–98; Henri L. Wesseling, ‘Imperialism and empire: an introduction’, in Mommsen and Osterhammel, eds., Imperialism and after, pp. 1–10; Jürgen Osterhammel, ‘Semi-colonialism and informal empire in twentieth-century China: towards a framework of analysis’, in Mommsen and Osterhammel, eds., Imperialism and after, pp. 290–314; Locher-Scholten, Elsbeth, ‘Dutch expansion in the Indonesian archipelago around 1900 and the imperialism debate’, Journal of Southeast Asian Studies, 25 (1994), pp. 91–111CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17 Gallagher and Robinson, ‘Imperialism of free trade’, p. 1.

18 Ibid., p. 7.

19 Duus, ‘Japan's informal empire’, pp. xv–vi.

20 Ibid. As John K. Fairbank reminds us, the term ‘gunboat diplomacy’, shaping the entire historical context of informal imperialism in East Asia, refers to ‘the technique of supporting allegedly legitimate demands for one's treaty rights by the threat of using naval force’. It was characterized by very visible and symbolic actions, as the foreign Powers would demand redress to recalcitrant Chinese authorities by sending a gunboat to the port and threatening to use military and naval force. John K. Fairbank, ‘The creation of the treaty system’, in John K. Fairbank, ed., The Cambridge history of China (15 vols., Cambridge, 1978–2015), x, p. 232. Also, for a discussion on how gunboats and steamships became not just the instruments but also the very symbols of European power in Asia, see Headrick, Daniel R., ‘The tools of imperialism: technology and the expansion of European colonial empires in the nineteenth century’, Journal of Modern History, 51 (1979), pp. 231–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at pp. 234–44.

21 Osterhammel, ‘Semi-colonialism’, p. 300; Duus, ‘Japan's informal empire’, pp. xviii–ix.

22 This figure is taken from Albert Feuerwerker, ‘The foreign presence in China’, in Fairbank, ed., Cambridge history of China, xii, p. 129.

23 On the formation, developments, and working of extraterritoriality as a legal and historical concept, see the detailed study of Pär Kristoffer Cassel, Grounds of judgment: extraterritoriality and imperial power in nineteenth-century China and Japan (Oxford, 2012).

24 See Fairbank, ‘Creation of the treaty system’, pp. 216–17, 259–60; Feuerwerker, ‘Foreign presence in China’, pp. 128–9, 150–5; Catellani, Enrico, ‘I “settlements” europei e i privilegi degli stranieri nell’ estremo oriente: parte II – sviluppo dei “settlements” e loro ordinamento giuridico’, Atti del Reale Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, 62 (1902–3), pp. 395–405Google Scholar; Santi Romano, Corso di diritto coloniale (2 vols., Rome, 1918), i, pp. 94–6.

25 Fairbank, ‘Creation of the treaty system’, pp. 218–27. The general Chinese nickname of yang guizi (ocean devils) is emphasized in Chung's discussion, ‘Unequal treaty system’, p. 24.

26 Romano, Corso di diritto coloniale, i, pp. 94–9; Gennaro Mondaini, La legislazione coloniale italiana nel suo sviluppo storico e nel suo stato attuale, 1881–1940 (2 vols., Milan, 1941), ii, pp. 896–7; Nuzzo, ‘Italiani in Cina’, pp. 264–8.

27 Chung, ‘Unequal treaty system’, pp. 11–16.

28 Marinelli, Maurizio, ‘The encounter between Italy and China: two countries, multiple stories’, Journal of Modern Italian Studies, 15 (2010), pp. 491–501CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at pp. 491–2.

29 On the various diplomatic interventions leading to this treaty, see Corradini, Piero, ‘Italia e Cina: dalle prime relazioni consolari al trattato di pace del 1947’, Mondo Cinese: Rivista Trimestrale, 76 (1991), pp. 7–48Google Scholar, at pp. 8–11; as well as the thorough analysis of Francioni, Il ‘banchetto cinese’, pp. 16–33.

30 Marinelli, ‘Genesis’, pp. 536–7; idem, ‘Making concessions’, pp. 399–400. Also, for a vivid historical portrait of Tianjin as divided into multiple foreign settlements, see the social and urban history of Gail Hershatter, The workers of Tianjin, 1900–1949 (Stanford, CA, 1986), ch. 1. We remind the reader that between 1860 and 1945 the total number of foreign settlements and concessions reached the maximum of nine, as a small area was also identified for the United States. This piece of territory was formally added to the British settlement as its southern extension in 1902. See ‘Colonialism in comparative perspective: Tianjin under nine flags, 1860–1949’, co-directed by Robert Bickers (University of Bristol) and Nicola Cooper (Swansea), at http://www.bristol.ac.uk/tianjin-project/, updated 8 Oct. 2015.

31 Labanca, Oltremare.

32 Daniele Varè, Il diplomatico sorridente, 1900–1940 (Verona, 1941), p. 104.

33 See Labanca, Oltremare, pp. 94–9; Marinelli, ‘Genesis’, pp. 538–9.

34 Labanca, Oltremare, pp. 94–9; Marinelli ‘Genesis’, pp. 538–9.

35 Richard J. B. Bosworth, Italy, the least of the Great Powers: Italian foreign policy before the First World War (Cambridge, 1979), as well as Claudio G. Segré, ‘Il colonialismo e la politica estera: variazioni liberali e fasciste’, in Richard J. B. Bosworth and Sergio Romano, eds., La politica estera italiana, 1860–1985 (Bologna, 1991), pp. 121–46.

36 Carlo Sforza, report Notizie economiche sulla Cina del nord in relazione agli interessi italiani, Oct. 1904, published in Bollettino del Ministero degli Affari Esteri (BMAE), 303 (Dec. 1904), pp. 3–18; as well as the archival document ‘Relazione per il Ministro 1909’, as discussed by De Angeli, ‘Italian land auctions’, pp. 566–8.

37 See Bertinelli, Roberto, ‘Note sulla presenza economica italiana in Cina dal 1900 al 1922’, Atti della Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei. Rendiconti: Classe di Scienze Morali, Storiche e Filologiche, 39 (1984), pp. 199–212Google Scholar, at p. 200.

38 Elio A. Perogio, ‘Italiani e governo in Cina’, in Atti e memorie del convegno di geografi-orientalisti, Macerata, 25–27 settembre 1910 (Macerata, 1911), p. 48; as well as Marinelli, Maurizio, ‘Finding the imagined motherland in China: the Italian experience in Tianjin’, Provincial China, 3 (2011), pp. 80–110Google Scholar, at p. 85.

39 These statistical data, issued by the Chinese Maritime Customs, are taken from Liang-lin Hsiao, China's foreign trade statistics, 1864–1949 (Cambridge, MA, 1974), pp. 23–4, 153–4. Additional figures can also be found in Frank M. Tamagna, Italy's interests and policies in the Far East (New York, NY, 1941), pp. 78–9. In particular, we know that Italian trade with China amounted to 1.88 per cent (imports) and 0.44 per cent (exports) of total Italian trade in 1910, to 1.93 per cent (imports) and 0.26 per cent (exports) in 1914, and to 0.87 per cent (imports) and 0.22 per cent (exports) in 1922. Tamagna, Italy's interests, p. 78.

40 Bertinelli, ‘Note sulla presenza economica italiana’, pp. 204–5.

41 Ibid., p. 209; Guido Samarani, ‘The Italian presence in China: historical trends and perspectives, 1902–1947’, in Marinelli and Andornino, eds., Italy's encounters, p. 61.

42 Sforza, Notizie economiche, pp. 14–15.

43 Bertinelli, ‘Note sulla presenza economica italiana’, pp. 205–7; Corradini, ‘Italia e Cina’, p. 36.

44 For a discussion on the spatial transformation of the concession area and the infrastructural works done during the Italian imperial period, see Marinelli, ‘Making concessions’, pp. 406–12, 416–17; idem, ‘Italian “neighbourhood”’, pp. 97–102; De Angeli, ‘Italian land auctions’, pp. 559–65.

45 The group of Italians amounted to four individuals in 1911 and to fifty-one by the end of the liberal decades. By contrast, the Chinese population, always a majority and far outnumbering the Western residents, was roughly 13,800 in 1903 and 9,900 by 1918. Foreigners holding other European nationalities were about 120 by 1918. Donati, ‘Citizenship and identity issues’, pp. 46–8.

46 This factor was criticized, for example, by a number of industrial, economic, and financial circles of northern Italy at the two ‘Congresses of Italian exporters in the Orient’, organized in Venice in October 1909 and in Milan in November 1910. For further details on these two congresses, see Giancarlo Monina, Il consenso coloniale: le società geografiche e l'Istituto coloniale italiano, 1896–1914 (Rome, 2002), pp. 200–6.

47 De Antonellis, Giacomo, ‘Una banca per la Cina nella prima metà del secolo sostenuta dal Credito Italiano’, Mondo Cinese: Rivista Trimestrale, 91 (1996), pp. 1–8Google Scholar, at p. 2.

48 Archivio Storico Diplomatico del Ministero degli Affari Esteri, Rome (ASDMAE), Fund Serie Politica ‘P’ 1891–1916 (FSPP), box 426, file 360, report by Navy Lieutenant Michelagnoli, Relazione sullo stato della concessione italiana di Tientsin, 24 Dec. 1903.

49 As rightly emphasized by Gabriella Giusti in her research, these repetitive requests were made by Italian authorities who were attentive to the new opportunities created by the vacuum left in East Asia by the disappearance of the defeated Central Powers and of their related commercial relations with China. See Giusti, Gabriella, ‘La penetrazione straniera in Cina nei primi decenni del XX secolo: il caso della “Banca Italiana per la Cina”’, Rassegna Economica: Pubblicazione Trimestrale del Banco di Napoli, 58 (1994), pp. 41–83Google Scholar.

50 Bertinelli, ‘Note sulla presenza economica italiana’, pp. 201–3; De Antonellis, ‘Una banca per la Cina’, p. 2.

51 Bertinelli, ‘Note sulla presenza economica italiana’, p. 203. The Chinese participation in the Sino-Italian Bank was to end in January 1924 when the Chinese stock-holders were paid off and the bank was reorganized under the new name of Banca Italiana per la Cina (Italian Bank for China). See Giusti, ‘La penetrazione straniera in Cina’, pp. 64–5.

52 ASDMAE, Archivio di Gabinetto 1910–20, box 21, file 137, report by Navy Commandant Casanuova, Copia del rapporto del comandante la regia nave ‘Calabria’, 24 Aug. 1910.

53 Bertinelli, Roberto, ‘La presenza italiana in Cina dal 1900 al 1905’, Rivista degli Studi Orientali, 57 (1983), pp. 185–229Google Scholar, at p. 223; Marinelli, ‘Genesis’, pp. 542–5.

54 De Angeli, ‘Italian land auctions’, pp. 557–9.

55 Mark R. Peattie, ‘Japanese treaty port settlements in China, 1895–1937’, in Duus, Myers, and Peattie, eds., Japanese informal empire, pp. 178–81.

56 Ibid., p. 181.

57 Ibid., pp. 178–81.

58 This point is also stressed by Giusti, ‘La penetrazione straniera in Cina’, pp. 60–1, 82.

59 For a full discussion, see Francioni, Il ‘banchetto cinese’.

60 Vincenzo Fileti, La concessione italiana di Tien-Tsin (Genoa, 1921), p. 17.

61 Ibid.

62 Feuerwerker, ‘Foreign presence in China’, pp. 150–1.

63 See Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom, ‘Questioning the modernity of the model settlement: citizenship and exclusion in old Shanghai’, in Merle Goldman and Elizabeth J. Perry, eds., Changing meanings of citizenship in modern China (Cambridge, MA, and London, 2002), pp. 110–32; Robert Bickers, ‘Citizenship by correspondence in the Shanghai International Settlement, 1919–1943’, in Yves Chevrier, Alain Roux, and Xiaohong Xiao-Planes, eds., Citadins et citoyens dans la Chine du XXe siècle: essais d'histoire sociale (Paris, 2010), pp. 227–62; idem, ‘Shanghailanders’, pp. 165–75; idem, Britain in China, pp. 123–37.

64 Bickers, Britain in China, pp. 137–9.

65 Peattie, ‘Japanese treaty port settlements’, pp. 189–92.

66 Catellani, ‘I “settlements” europei’, pp. 422–31.

67 Romano, Corso di diritto coloniale, i, pp. 97–8; Mondaini, La legislazione coloniale italiana, ii, pp. 900–1.

68 ASDMAE, FSPP, box 427, file ‘Concessione di Tientsin – 1906’, report by Fileti, Concessione italiana in Tientsin, 15 Nov. 1906.

69 Ibid., box 426, file 361, report Breve studio sulla concessione italiana di Tientsin, Sept. 1902.

70 See Regia Concessione Italiana in Tientsin (RCIT), Regolamento generale, published in BMAE, 358 (Jan. 1908), p. 19; and RCIT, Regolamento fondamentale, 4 July 1913, in Appendix ii of Enrico Catellani, La penetrazione straniera nell'estremo oriente: sue forme giuridiche ed economiche (Florence, 1915), pp. 476–9.

71 Mondaini, La legislazione coloniale italiana, ii, pp. 900–1.

72 See ASDMAE, FSPP, box 427, file ‘Concessione di Tientsin – 1906’, report by Fileti.

73 See ibid., box 426, file 360, report by Michelagnoli; as well as Sforza, Notizie economiche. Figures pertaining to the indigenous guards vary slightly in the Italian archival documents as the number of Chinese nationals working for the Italian police might certainly have changed throughout the years. For instance in one of Fileti's reports mentioned earlier we can read that there were thirty Shimpoo and sixteen Kanfoo in 1906, ‘chosen within the best elements of the concession’. ASDMAE, FSPP, box 427, file ‘Concessione di Tientsin – 1906’, report by Fileti. Also, thanks to a coeval publication, we know that by 1918 the Chinese garrison increased to fifty-six guards in total. Romano, Corso di diritto coloniale, i, p. 98.

74 Labanca, Oltremare, pp. 385–90.

75 See Statuto municipale e regolamento per la sua applicazione (Tianjin, 1923). Also, Mondaini, La legislazione coloniale italiana, ii, p. 91.

76 See RCIT, Regolamento fondamentale, art. 1.

77 See Statuto municipale.

78 Ibid., artt. 1–24. As a community body, ruling the concession area of an imperial state, the Italian Municipal Council was to function under the supervision of the Italian consulate in Tianjin (the consul was in fact the president), and to govern under the control of the Italian Royal Legation in Beijing and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Rome. On the statute, see Mondaini, La legislazione coloniale italiana, ii, pp. 901–5.

79 On Chinese citizens’ voting rights in the Italian concession, see Statuto municipale, artt. 25–30.

80 See, for example, ASDMAE, FSPP, box 426, file 361, report by Biancheri, Lo stato attuale e l'avvenire della concessione italiana di Tientsin, 7 Aug. 1902; ibid., box 426, file 362, letter n. 362/67 by Salvago Raggi to Italian minister of foreign affairs, 18 June 1901; ibid., box 426, file ‘Settlement a Tientsin e Hankow’, letter by Biancheri to Italian minister of foreign affairs, 27 Nov. 1902.

81 See Istituto Coloniale Italiano, Atti del secondo congresso degli italiani all'estero, 11–20 giugno 1911 (2 vols., Rome, 1911), i, pp. 119–35, and ii, pp. 86–90; Catellani, La penetrazione straniera nell'estremo oriente, pp. 226–9; Querci, Emo, ‘I “settlements” stranieri nella Cina e quello italiano in Tientsin’, Rivista di Emigrazione, 6 (1913), pp. 129–39Google Scholar, at p. 135.

82 Istituto Coloniale Italiano, Atti, i, pp. 127–8.

83 Ibid., pp. 126–8; Catellani, La penetrazione straniera nell'estremo oriente, pp. 226–7; Querci, ‘I “settlements” stranieri’, p. 135.

84 Catellani, La penetrazione straniera nell'estremo oriente, pp. 226–9.

85 Istituto Coloniale Italiano, Atti, ii, p. 89; Catellani, La penetrazione straniera nell'estremo oriente, pp. 226–9.

86 Istituto Coloniale Italiano, Atti, ii, p. 87.

87 Marinelli, ‘Colonial Italy’, pp. 135–6; idem, ‘Making concessions’, p. 411.

88 Istituto Coloniale Italiano, Atti, ii, pp. 88–9.

89 Ibid., p. 89.

90 Ibid. This emphasis on Chinese ‘attitude’ and Chinese ‘psychology’ echoes the words of Italian diplomat and later ambassador of Italy in Beijing, Giuseppe Salvago Raggi, who was in China from 1897 through 1901, and who also highlighted this aspect in his memoirs. More particularly, Salvago Raggi referred to the Chinese as having a ‘mentality’ analogous to their political institutions: that is, stagnant, lacking evolution and disregarding any change or renewal. See Giuseppe Salvago Raggi, Ambasciatore del re: memorie di un diplomatico dell’ Italia liberale (Florence, 2011), p. 132.

91 Istituto Coloniale Italiano, Atti, ii, p. 521.

92 Peattie, ‘Japanese treaty port settlements’, pp. 189–92.

93 For further details on the Residents’ Corporation, discussed in reference to settler–state relations in the Japanese concession, see Dryburgh, ‘Japan in Tianjin’, pp. 19–34.

94 Mondaini, La legislazione coloniale italiana, ii, p. 901.

95 Fileti, La concessione italiana, p. 63.

96 Here we are borrowing the use of ‘Lilliputian’ from Webster's analysis of Italian imperialism in the Balkans and the Ottoman Empire before the First World War. Webster, Industrial imperialism, p. 4.