From Campus To Capitol

How Student Revolutionaries Resisted Colonial Rule in Shanghai

Abstract

While current literature often credits political elites and the Chinese Communist Revolution (1949) for ending colonial influence, this paper reexamines this narrative and explores Shanghai’s decolonization after the Opium Wars through the often overlooked role of Chinese student revolutionaries from the 19th to early 20th centuries. This paper finds that student movements, notably during the May Fourth Movement (1919), May Thirtieth Labor Protest (1925), and the 1931 Nanjing demonstrations, served as the foundation of anti-colonial resistance. By analyzing historical events under the framework of political theories about colonialism by George Steinmetz,  Barbara Arneil, and Isabella Jackson, this paper redefines and envisions Shanghai as a site of “transnational colonialism.” Through this new framework, I argue that students played an important role in the nationalist struggles of shaping China’s state legitimacy and modern identity. This study ultimately sheds light on students at the center of Shanghai and China’s anti-colonial history.