This course aims to answer the question of how modern port cities managed themselves in the 19th and 20th centuries and created an intercultural sphere for global inhabitants. The core of this course focuses on East Asian port cities which were opened by the “unequal treaties” with the foreign powers in the mid-19th century. The opening of the port cities in East Asia also provided the world with an access to settle down in these treaty ports and provided China, Japan and Korea with an opportunity to observe and learn from the West. Because of the cultural gap between the East and the West, the port cities naturally built up settlements and concessions for dividing various communities. The design of which could decrease the potential tensions between ethnicities or nationalities but it could not stop the following issues of globalisation, such as the spreading of diseases, crimes, pollution, etc. Thus, these port cites then had to work out solutions for communicating different concessions and settlements.
The other focus of this course is to bring in specialists who study other continents’ port cities, such as in North America and Continental Europe, and to provide students with a comparative perspective for advanced knowledge of the urban issues shared by all port cities. This course then focuses on the shared issues, such as cultural preservation, migration, crimes, diseases, pollution, inflation, etc., in American and European port cities. Thus, Professor Lockley and Professor Purseigle are invited to demonstrate their knowledge about port cities in North America and Europe. Students can then understand how the shared challenges affected global port cities in the 19th and 20th centuries.
