Sites of modernity

The Humanities in Asia Wasana Wongsurawat Editor Sites of Modernity Asian Cities in the Transitory Moments of Trade, Colonialism, and Nationalism The Humanities in Asia Volume Editor-in-chief Chu-Ren Huang, Hong Kong, Hong Kong This book series publishes original monographs and edited volumes in the humanities on issues specific to Asia, as well as general issues in the humanities within the context of Asia, or issues which were shaped by or can be enlightened by Asian perspectives The emphasis is on excellence and originality in scholarship as well as synergetic interdisciplinary approaches and multicultural perspectives Books exploring the role of the humanities in our highly connected society will be especially welcomed The series publishes books that deal with emerging issues as well as those that offer an in-depth examination of underlying issues The target audience of this series include both scholars and professionals who are interested in issues related to Asia, including its people, its history, its society and environment, as well as the global impact of its development and interaction with the rest of the world The Humanities in Asia book series is published in conjunction with Springer under the auspices of the Hong Kong Academy of the Humanities (HKAH) The editorial board of The Humanities in Asia consists of HKAH fellows as well as leading humanities scholars who are affiliated or associated with leading learned societies for the humanities in the world More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/13566 Wasana Wongsurawat Editor Sites of Modernity Asian Cities in the Transitory Moments of Trade, Colonialism, and Nationalism 123 Editor Wasana Wongsurawat Faculty of Arts, Department of History Chulalongkorn University Bangkok Thailand ISSN 2363-6890 The Humanities in Asia ISBN 978-3-662-45725-2 DOI 10.1007/978-3-662-45726-9 ISSN 2363-6904 (electronic) ISBN 978-3-662-45726-9 (eBook) Library of Congress Control Number: 2016934959 © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2016 This work is subject to copyright All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made Printed on acid-free paper This Springer imprint is published by Springer Nature The registered company is Springer-Verlag GmbH Berlin Heidelberg Contents Introduction Wasana Wongsurawat Teaching Civilisation: The Role of a French Education in the Development of Modernity in Shanghai Alexander Major Scientific Institutions as Sites for Dissemination and Contestation: Emergence of Colonial Calcutta as a Science City Deepak Kumar 33 Management of ‘Public Spaces’: Case-Study of Roads in Bangkok in the Reign of King Rama V Nontaporn Youmangmee 47 A City-State as Migrant Nation: Singapore from the Colonial to the Asian Modern Hong Lysa 65 Whose Home? Cultural Pluralism and Preservation of Japanese Colonial Heritage in Taipei City Hiroko Matsuda 85 Home Base of an Exiled People: Hong Kong and Overseas Chinese Activism from Thailand 103 Wasana Wongsurawat Bangkok: From an Antique to a Modern City 119 Udomporn Teeraviriyakul v vi Contents Nationalism in Indian Architecture: A Modern Trajectory in Twentieth-Century India 137 Madhavi Desai and Miki Desai 10 From the Demolition of Monasteries to the Installation of Neon Lights: The Politics of Urban Construction in the Mongolian People’s Republic 161 Balazs Szalontai Contributors Madhavi Desai Centre for Environmental Planning and Technology, CEPT University, Ahmedabad, India Miki Desai Centre for Environmental Planning and Technology, CEPT University, Ahmedabad, India Deepak Kumar Department of History, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India Hong Lysa Singapore, Singapore Alexander Major Department of History, University of Montreal, Montreal, Canada Hiroko Matsuda Faculty of Humanities and Sciences, Kobe Gakuin University, Kobe, Japan Balazs Szalontai Department of International Studies, Kwangwoon University, Seoul, South Korea Udomporn Teeraviriyakul Naresuan University, Phitsanulok, Thailand Wasana Wongsurawat Faculty of Arts, Department of History, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand Nontaporn Youmangmee Department of History, Prince of Songkhla University, Songkhla, Thailand vii Chapter Introduction Wasana Wongsurawat There is definitely much to be said about the timing of this project, both intended and, perhaps more interestingly, the unintended The nearly four-year span between the date of the workshop (then titled ‘Sites of Modernity: Asian Cities and their Evolution through Trade, Colonialism, and Nationalism’) in July 2011 and the time in which the revised manuscript could actually enter publishing process in January 2015, could definitely change one’s outlook on the world and, in turn, the editor’s perception towards the collected manuscript in rather significant and surprising ways.1 The idea behind the workshop in Bangkok in the summer of 2011 was to look at the rise of Asian modernity in broad strokes—the evolution of a geographically wide span of cities from Tokyo to Mumbai through the long yet eventful time period of the 19th and 20th centuries Oppositions to such a project were swift and plentiful from the onset What novel discovery could be made of such an academic exercise? Modernity in Asia through the 19th and 20th centuries appears to have already been completely exhausted as an area of investigation Sites of Modernity: Asian Cities in the Transitory Moments of Trade, Colonialism, and Nationalism could not have materialized without the generous support of many individuals, organizations, and institutions The international workshop ‘Sites of Modernity: Asian Cities and their Evolution through Trade, Colonialism and Nationalism,’ which was the pioneer of this collection was generously funded by Thailand Research Funds, Chula Global Network and the research section of the Faculty of Arts, Chulalongkorn University The selection of articles and revision of the manuscript for publication was generously supported by the Faculty of Humanities, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, the Hong Kong Academy of the Humanities and Springer Press W Wongsurawat (&) Department of History, Faculty of Arts, Chulalongkorn University, Bangkok, Thailand e-mail: wwongsurawat@hotmail.com © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2016 W Wongsurawat (ed.), Sites of Modernity, The Humanities in Asia 1, DOI 10.1007/978-3-662-45726-9_1 W Wongsurawat What else could come out of such a workshop aside from the same old Orientalist conclusion that Asia was ushered into the modern era through the forceful hands of European traders and colonizers (Cohen 2010)? Of course, most of the cities included in this collection did come into being, first and foremost, as colonial trading posts Even when the time period of our investigation was extended to cover the 20th century and the entire Cold War period, the same Western-centered narrative would still hold—what was not modernized by European colonizers were then modernized through American neo-imperialism throughout the Cold War era (McKinnon 2011) Of course, I disagreed with such foreboding critiques, even way back in 2011 I think the rather premature conclusion that the study of ‘colonial modernity’ in Asia is necessarily Eurocentric, in fact, stems from a rather Eurocentric perception that modernity itself is a Western concept regardless of where or in which form it is produced My explanation of the interesting and potentially useful aspect of the project back in the summer of 2011 was that too little has been done in this area in non-Western-centered terms There are a few important premises in studying the rise of urban modernity in Asia in the 19th and 20th centuries that should not be taken for granted, yet at the same time, could not yet be completely overruled First and foremost among these premises is the fact that impact from western aggression and interference in Asia both during the colonial and Cold War periods have a definite and, in some aspects, defining influence upon the development of Asian socio-political and economic entities contemporaneous of such times This is not to say that the West ‘ushered in’ the era of modernity in the Far East with the forceful hands of colonial and Cold War interferences Instead, the idea of my main argument behind the Sites of Modernity workshop in 2011 was that Western influence and interferences in the Far East both during the Colonial period and throughout the Cold War had contributed, rather fundamentally, to the destabilization of the region both politically and economically Such destabilizing effects resulted in the emergence of crucial windows of opportunities in which unusual circumstances in East, Southeast, and South Asia allowed local agents to expand their imagination to new realms of possibilities and experiment with a wealth of new ideas, new systems, new structures, and all together a new way of life that came with the possibility of this mental expansion The ‘newness’ of this mass discovery, however, should not be necessarily interpreted as something new only to Asia In other words, the new experiments and discoveries that arose from the socio-political impacts caused by Western Colonial and Cold War influences were not simply some old Western ideas to be learned anew by the Orientals The newness that came about in Asia during these periods were the results of the resourcefulness and inventiveness of local agents in creating and incorporating brand new institutions and social structures to satisfy the demands of European standards of modernity and civilization while allowing some degree of normalcy and familiarity of the local traditional way of life to carry on so as to preserve and develop some form of their own cultural identity— something that has become so prized and cherish in the modern world of the 19th and 20th centuries (Lee 1998) ... these modern aspects of life in these first three sites of modernity were far from being simple reproductions of European modernity from a century earlier Instead, much of the developments that... definition of modernity in his 1863 essay, “The Painter of Modern Life,” as “the transitory, the fugitive, the contingent” (Baudelaire 1995) In the spirit of Baudelaire, Sites of Modernity: ... could be made of such an academic exercise? Modernity in Asia through the 19th and 20th centuries appears to have already been completely exhausted as an area of investigation Sites of Modernity: