The Making of China?s Post Office: Sovereignty, Modernization, and the Connection of a Nation (Harvard East Asian Monographs)

Tsai, Weipin

ISBN 10: 0674295889 / ISBN 13: 9780674295889

Published by Harvard University Asia Center, 2024

About this Item

Seller Inventory # 397563908

Bibliographic Details

• Title: The Making of China?s Post Office: Sovereignty, Modernization, and the Connection of a Nation (Harvard East Asian Monographs)
• Publisher: Harvard University Asia Center
• Publication Date: 2024
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0674295889
• ISBN 13: 9780674295889
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

The Making of China’s Post Office traces the origins and early development of the country’s modern postal system. Sweeping in perspective, it goes beyond the bounds of institutional history to explore the political maneuverings, economic imperatives, and societal pressures both inhibiting and driving forward postal development. Although its prime mover was Robert Hart, Inspector General of the Chinese Maritime Customs Service, the wider cast of characters includes foreign and native staff, Qing officials, local administrations, commercial interests, and foreign governments.

Drawing extensively on archival material from the Second Historical Archives of China in Nanjing, the Tianjin Municipal Archives, and the Archive of Queen’s University Belfast, Weipin Tsai contextualizes the making of the post office within the country’s long and contested path of modernization, bringing Chinese voices to the fore. Tsai illustrates the extent to which local agency shaped the design and development of the service as it expanded from experimental coastal operation into China’s interior and on to its border periphery, the first nationwide modernization project to directly impact people’s daily lives. Ultimately, the grand spatial reach of the Post Office carried significant symbolic meaning in relation to sovereignty for the Qing government and for later Republican administrations.

About the Author

Weipin Tsai is Senior Lecturer in Modern Chinese History at Royal Holloway, University of London.