Ethnic Ghettos and Transcultural Processes in a Globalised City: New Research on Harbin

Abstract

Harbin was founded in 1898 by the Russians along the tracks of the Chinese Eastern Railway, an extension of the Trans-Siberian railway towards Vladivostok. In just a few decades it developed rapidly into a globalised city in the middle of socalled Manchuria, a semi-colonial region in northeast China. The articles in this special issue deal with the history of Harbin and Manchuria in the first half of the twentieth century, with one exception focusing rather on the aftermath of Harbin's history in the present day. The contributors focus in particular on transcultural processes, namely the interplay between the various ethnic groups that inhabited the city. Key concerns include voluntary or forced interaction and the transgression of boundaries between the different parts of Harbin society and the consequences of these transgressions. The articles convey an impression of how Harbin's varied communities dealt with ongoing political instability, language differences, cultural clashes, conflict resolution, and the local impact of global challenges.Transcultural processes can be understood at the same time as a specific expression or result of worldwide entanglements. Interest in the phenomenon of globalisation, which has greatly increased in recent years, has also enriched our understanding of the significance of global interconnectedness and cultural processes of exchange in various historical contexts. "Globalisation" is thereby no longer only a central concept of modern social science; it also has established itself as an important concept in history and cultural studies-despite initial reservations on the part of historians. 1 In particular, areas such as the history of international trade, migration research, and the history of international relations can quite reasonably be analysed from the perspective of "globalisation" and thereby contribute to research on the history of globalisation. 2 A global perspective has also altered examination of the history of regional and local developments, not least in view of the study of colonial or imperial contexts. "Faraway" places and local processes at the periphery of empires no longer appear in the research as more or less the last links in a chain of diverse developments and events emanating from the centre, but instead meet with particular interest as cultural contact zones and crossroads, as they highlight in a special way the diversity, complexity, and multidimensionality of encounters and processes at the frontiers between cultures.The city of Harbin in the first half of the twentieth century represented this kind