Donna Brunero. Britain's Imperial Cornerstone in China: The Chinese Maritime Customs Service, 1854-1949.(Book review)

Donna Brunero. Britain's Imperial Cornerstone in China: The Chinese Maritime Customs Service, 1854-1949. Routledge Studies in the Modern History of Asia 36. London & New York: Routledge, 2006. xvi, 200 pp. Hardcover $120.00, ISBN 0-415-32619-2.

In the 1950s John King Fairbank argued that the Imperial Maritime Customs Service, established in 1854, represented a "synarchy"--that is, a jointly administered sino-foreign institution incorporating Westerners into the Chinese paradigm of foreign relations. (1) Scholars in the 1980s like Jurgen Osterhammel rejected this ...

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