New Books In East Asian Studies

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Shanghai became a cosmopolitan hub with communities of Japanese, British, Russians, Jews, and others including Indians – most of whom were Sikhs. The story of Indians in Shanghai has however been largely elided. From Policemen to Revolutionaries: A Sikh Diaspora in Global Shanghai, 1885-1945 (Brill, 2017) by Yin Cao uncovers the lesser-known story of Sikh emigrants in Shanghai across the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, from their arrival in the city in 1885 through the end of World War II in 1945. Cao argues that the cross-border circulation of personnel and knowledge across the British colonial and the Sikh diasporic networks, facilitated the formation of the Sikh community in Shanghai, eventually making this Chinese city one of the overseas hubs of the Indian nationalist struggle. Initially brought in as policemen by British colonial authorities to discipline the local Chinese population, Sikhs in Shanghai transformed into anti-colonial re