THE DECLINE OF SOOCHOW AND RISE OF SHANGHAI: A STUDY IN THE ECONOMIC MORPHOLOGY OF URBAN CHANGE, 1756-1894

In China's late Imperial period, between 1756 and the 1850's, Soochow was the second city of the Empire, but by the 1870's the nearby town of Shanghai had replaced Soochow as the leading commercial city of the region, and was rapidly developing into a world metropolis, while Soochow had declined precipitously. The purpose of this study is to identify the economic causes of urban decline and development, and to trace their effects in the spatial morphology of these two cities.;The methodology involves analysis of economic causality and morphological change in the comparative context of western and Chinese urban development. An effort is made to balance the Chinese and western content and source materials. Chinese primary sources, mainly local gazetteers, English sources from Consular and Imperial Maritime Customs Reports, and personal accounts in English and French were consulted, and an extensive survey was made of secondary sources on Chinese and colonial urban and economic history in Chinese, English and other European languages. The study describes "a tale of three cities:" Soochow, at the height of its prosperity between 1756 and the 1840's, and its disastrous decline after 1853; Shanghai as an increasingly important Chinese market and port city before its opening to the west in 1843, and Shanghai as a European treaty port from 1843 through 1894. Emphasis is placed on the Soochow as the epitomy of a Chinese administrative capital; on the previously neglected significance of Shanghai as a major Chinese port increasingly involved in western trade prior to 1843, and on two contrasting phases of that city's development after its opening as a treaty port: the existence of a classic colonial style dual-city between 1843 and the mid-1860's, and the emergence of an uniquely "Mixed City" between 1870 and 1894--an analogy drawn from Shanghai's famous "Mixed Court" of this period. Evaluation of the impact of western intrusions on urban decline and development is an important aspect of this study, which concludes in 1894, just prior to major changes affecting urban structure that were a consequence of the treaties ending the Sino-Japanese war.