Enclave to Urbanity: Canton, Foreigners, and Architecture from the Late Eighteenth to the Early Twentieth Centuries

摘要

Guangzhou is a city of global exchange. Since trade liberalisation in the late 1980s, wholesale trade fairs held there have drawn buying agents from around the world in search of everything from industrial equipment to Christmas ornaments. Yet despite its role as a global marketplace, the backstory of this Chinese city once known as Canton remains largely unexamined. For this reason, Johnathan Andrew Farris's recently published urban history Enclave to Urbanity will be of interest both to specialists in the field of global cities and to a general readership. The book shies away from broad historic narratives, and is by no means a comprehensive architectural history of the city; instead, it assumes the task of chronicling the early modern history of Guangzhou as it played out in the rooms, streets and courtyards where 'foreign' and 'local' engaged and at times clashed. In examining nineteenth-century Guangzhou, Farris probes the intricate ways 'cross cultural relations are spatial relations' (1) in the context of globalised cities.