This book offers an intimate portrait of early twentieth-century Harbin, a city in Manchuria where Russian colonialists, and later refugees from the Revolution, met with Chinese migrants. The deep social and intellectual fissures between the Russian and Chinese worlds were matched by a multitude of small efforts to cross the divide as the city underwent a wide range of social and political changes.
Using surviving letters, archival photographs, and rare publications, this book also tells the personal story of a forgotten city resident, Baron Roger Budberg, a physician who, being neither Russian nor Chinese, nevertheless stood at the very centre of the cross-cultural divide in Harbin. The biography of an important city, fleshing out its place in the global history of East-West contacts and twentieth-century diasporas, this book is also the history of an individual life and an original experiment in historical writing.
This book offers an intimate portrait of early twentieth-century Harbin, a city in Manchuria where Russian colonialists, and later refugees from the Revolution, met with Chinese migrants. The deep social and intellectual fissures between the Russian and Chinese worlds were matched by a multitude of small efforts to cross the divide as the city underwent a wide range of social and political changes.
Using surviving letters, archival photographs, and rare publications, this book also tells the personal story of a forgotten city resident, Baron Roger Budberg, a physician who, being neither Russian nor Chinese, nevertheless stood at the very centre of the cross-cultural divide in Harbin. The biography of an important city, fleshing out its place in the global history of East-West contacts and twentieth-century diasporas, this book is also the history of an individual life and an original experiment in historical writing.
List of Illustrations
Introduction
1. Of Ethnicity and Identity
2. Beginnings
3. Intermediaries and Channels of Communication
4. A Chinese-German Flower
5. Daily Life in a Mixed City
6. Trials and Endings
7. Russians and Chinese under Japanese Rule
8. Kharbintsy and Ha’erbin ren
Epilogue: The General and the Particular
Notes
Glossary of Chinese Terms
Bibliography
Index
Mark Gamsa is an associate professor in the School of History at Tel Aviv University.
"The book is a masterful analysis of the consequences that
traumatic shifts in power relations could have for the life of
individuals."
*Slavonic and East European Review*
"This is a fascinating and well-researched exploration of the
Russian [and] Chinese cultural encounter in Harbin, based on the
extensive use of sources in both Russian and Chinese."
*H-Soz-Kult*
"Specialists will draw much eclectic material about Harbin from
Gamsa and enjoy the author’s often insightful ideas about
cross-cultural contact and more."
*Slavic Review*
"There are many reasons to like this book. The writing is elegant,
with frequent memorable turns of phrase. The research in Russian,
Chinese, and European-language sources is deep and rich, and
Gamsa’s feel for his subject is remarkable. One senses on every
page his balanced affection for Harbin and even for Budberg,
despite his frankness about their many shared imperfections."
*Journal of Modern History*
“The book builds on impressive research, contains stimulating
discussions of the relationship
between biography and general history, and thus deserves to be read
not only as the story of a remarkable man but also, more broadly,
as a fascinating attempt to understand the life of an individual in
the context of his multicultural environment.”
*H-Net Reviews*
“Harbin: A Cross-Cultural Biography is a remarkable feat of
research across multiple languages and archives, as well as a
compellingly original, stylishly written, and surprisingly intimate
book.”
*Twentieth-Century China*
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