Favoured by the exceptional economic circumstances of the First World War and the immediate post-war years, Chinese entrepreneurs made their mark by modernising and establishing themselves as a business bourgeoisie. Focusing upon Shanghai, this study explores the astonishing growth of Western-style industry, commerce and banking during the Republic's first decade. Marie-Claire Bergere analyses how the bourgeoisie gradually constituted itself as a specific and coherent social class, with its own ideology and type of political action, built upon family solidarities and regional links; and she examines the relations between this class and the State, the Revolution and the West.
Prologues; Part I. Preludes; Part II. The Emergence of a Bourgeois Class; Part III. The Bourgeoisie and the Quest for Power and Modernity; Notes; Bibliography; Index; Series List.
Overview
Favoured by the exceptional economic circumstances of the First World War and the immediate post-war years, Chinese entrepreneurs made their mark by modernising and establishing themselves as a business bourgeoisie. Focusing upon Shanghai, this study explores the astonishing growth of Western-style industry, commerce and banking during the Republic's first decade. Marie-Claire Bergere analyses how the bourgeoisie gradually constituted itself as a specific and coherent social class, with its own ideology and type ...