Abstract

Shanghai, a treaty port open to foreigners after the Nanjing Treaty, has been the subject for many studies not only for its abundant archives and research materials, but also its important role as the economic centre of China and a unique international platform where different cultures and political or social practices met and interacted.

Due to the existence of three different jurisdictions in the city (Chinese municipality, French Concession & International Settlement) with each following an individual trajectory in terms of institutional development, social regulation, and policing, Shanghai constitutes a very interesting place to observe the processes-and tensions, negotiations or compromises therein-that sustained the confrontation between ‘state’ and society, between competing ‘state’ powers, between China and colonizing powers.

The police in the French Concession was a police institution under the direct control of the French Consul in Shanghai. It was an important force designed to protect French interests in Shanghai and in China. It not only influenced modern Chinese politics but also played a significant role in constructing the urban space and culture of Shanghai.

The first chapter studies the legal bases of the police in the French Concession and the special context of Shanghai. By analyzing the relevant articles of Treaty of Nanjing, the Treaty of Whampoa, the Treaty of Tientsin, the Land Regulations and Règlement d’organisation de la Concession Française, the book establishes that the existence of police forces in the French Concession were not planned under the basic articles that regulated the foreign settlements in China and that the police came into existence at a time when Chinese local authorities were paralyzed during the Taiping and Small Sword rebellions in the city. The police came into being as a fait accompli. Shanghai witnessed rapid urbanization and population growth along with industrialization at the beginning of the twentieth century. As Shanghai became an important metropolis in China and beyond, many problems arose, including the rise of criminality, which brought new challenges to the police. The French police in Shanghai was also placed in the context of the French imperial network, as Shanghai became the most important French asset in China. Its police personnel came to be integrated with French colonial personnel, technology and information flows.

The second chapter concentrates on the evolution of police organization during the first three decades of the twentieth century. The French police went through several reforms under the leadership of Mallet, Fiori and Fabre, the three most important police chiefs in the French Concession. Mallet’s reform laid down the basic organization of the police, its militarization and the introduction of Vietnamese soldiers into the force. His far-sighted establishment of judicial identification in the Concession helped the French to synchronize with modern police techniques. During W.W. I, as most French policemen were mobilized and went back to Europe, the police went into a period of stagnation. The lack of European policemen led to the rise of Chinese policemen within the force. Fiori inherited this situation in 1919 and tried to take advantage of the Chinese connections between the police and the organized crime, which led to the controversial ‘pact with the devil’ and ultimately his forced departure in 1932. However during his eleven years of service, he upgraded police organization to cope with the new challenges in Shanghai and succeeded to reorganize the police into a more professional force by 1930. His successor, Fabre, cleaned up the ‘bad’ elements of the police and made several adjustments on the basis of the organization left by Fiori. The political functions and crime fighting abilities of the police were reinforced. At the end of this process, the police of the French Concession was fine and complex modern police force.

The third chapter examines the policemen themselves. The police were composed of officers from several nationalities, the four most important being French, Russian, Chinese and Vietnamese. Through a comparative study of recruiting conditions, training courses, salaries, welfare and job turnover, I establish that the police was a hierarchal institution based on a differentiated treatment according to race and nationality. The French policemen stood at the top of the pyramid, with the least number of heads, but the most influential powers as all the superior officers, chiefs and deputy chiefs had to be French. The French also enjoyed the best salaries and welfare conditions. The Russians were cheap white labor forces compared to the French and other foreign policemen and constituted the second highest class of the police. The Vietnamese and Chinese policemen are at the bottom of the pyramid and constituted the majority of the policemen in the Concession. The Vietnamese policemen were soldiers before entering police service and their military qualities and discipline were brought to the police defense abilities. They were also a double security to defend French interests in Shanghai in case Chinese nationalism spread to the Chinese policemen. The Chinese policemen were the lowest class in the police and enjoyed the lowest level of salaries and welfare. They lost their jobs very easily and their career as a policeman was quite short and unstable compared to the other nationalities.

The fourth chapter studies the Political service. From the 1920s to the 1930s, three historical currents swept over China—nationalism, communism and Japanese expansionism. All these three forces met in Shanghai and led up to the creation and development of the Political Service of the French police force. In 1927, after the rupture of the Chinese Communist Party and the Guomindang, the political police was formally instituted as a specific police department. It was reformed in 1930 and 1932 not only to take care of collecting information about the political, military, economic and social dynamics in China, but also to make arrests and deal in exchange of mutual interests. An agreement signed in 1914 with the Beiyang Government to extradite and arrest the individuals suspected of political crimes or offences helped the French Concession to obtain its last and largest territorial expansion. Suppressing the activities of the Guomindang in the French Concession at the request of local Chinese authorities in 1926 was a continuance of the 1914 agreement and a tactic for the French Concession to maintain good relationships with the local powerholders. When the Guomindang came to power, a close cooperation developed between the Chinese police and the police of two foreign settlements to hunt down at an unprecedented pace the underground communists. The Korean revolutionaries became a problem when the Japanese authorities asked the authorities of French Concession to take actions against them in 1925. The problem was solved to the advantage of Japan in exchange for Japanese cooperation over the Vietnamese revolutionaries in Japan.