Before the formation of Shanghai city, Shanghai was part of Songjiang county (???), governed by Suzhou prefecture (???). From the time of the Song Dynasty (AD 960–1279), Shanghai gradually became a busy seaport, outgrowing its original political jurisdictions. For instance, Songjiang (??) today is one of 18 districts within Shanghai. ïîðíî ñ ìàëîëåòêàìè
German map of Shanghai from 1888
A city wall was built in AD 1553, which is generally accepted as the start of the city of Shanghai. However, before the nineteenth century, Shanghai was not considered a major city of China. Therefore, compared to most other major Chinese cities today, there are few ancient Chinese landmarks to be found in the city. The few cultural landmarks to be found are very ancient and typically date to the Three Kingdoms period of Chinese history. This is mostly due to the fact that present-day Shanghai is within the historic cultural center of the Wu Kingdom (AD 222–280). ñìîòðåòü ìàëîëåòíåå ïîðíî
During the Qianlong era of the Qing Dynasty, Shanghai became an important regional port for the Yangtze and Huangpu rivers. It also became a major seaport for the nearby Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces, although overseas commerce was still forbidden at that time. A historically important area of this era is Wujiaochang (???) (now in the Yangpu District), the foundation of the city center. Around the end of the Qianlong era, Shiliupu (???) (now in the Huangpu District) became the largest port in East Asia.
Nineteenth to early twentieth century
The importance of Shanghai grew radically in the 19th century, as the city's strategic position at the mouth of the Yangtze River made it an ideal location for trade with the West.
During the First Opium War in the early 19th century, British forces temporarily held Shanghai. The war ended with the 1842 Treaty of Nanjing, which saw the treaty ports, Shanghai included, opened for international trade. The Treaty of the Bogue signed in 1843, and the Sino-American Treaty of Wangsia signed in 1844 together saw foreign nations achieve extraterritoriality on Chinese soil, which officially lasted until 1943 but was essentially defunct by the late 1930s. From the twenties to the late 30s Shanghai was a so-called 'sin city'. Gangsters wielded a great deal of power and ran casinos and brothels.
The Taiping Rebellion broke out in 1850, and in 1853 Shanghai was occupied by a triad offshoot of the rebels, called the Small Swords Society. The fighting destroyed the countryside but left the foreigners' settlements untouched, and Chinese arrived seeking refuge. Although previously Chinese were forbidden to live in foreign settlements, 1854 saw new regulations drawn up making land available to Chinese. Land prices rose substantially.
Jiujiang Road, Shanghai, 1920s
1854 also saw the first annual meeting of the Shanghai Municipal Council, created in order to manage the foreign settlements. In 1863, the British settlement, located along the western bank of the Huangpu river to the south of Suzhou creek (Huangpu district), and American settlement, located on the western bank of the Huangpu river and to the north of Suzhou creek (Hankou district) joined in order to form the International Settlement. The French opted out of the Shanghai Municipal Council, and instead maintained its own French Concession, located to the south of the International Settlement. Citizens of many countries and all continents came to Shanghai to live and work during the ensuing decades; those who stayed for long periods — some for generations — called themselves "Shanghighlanders". In the 1920s and 1930s, almost 20,000 so-called White Russians and Russian Jews fled the newly-established Soviet Union and took up residence in Shanghai. Shanghai Russians then constituted the second-largest foreign community in Shanghai (after the Japanese) and played an important role in the economic and cultural life of the city.
This terrified baby was the only person left alive in Shanghai's South Station after a Japanese bombing run during the Battle of Shanghai in August 1937.
The Sino-Japanese War fought 1894–95 over control of Korea concluded with the Treaty of Shimonoseki, which saw Japan emerge as an additional foreign power in Shanghai. Japan built the first factories in Shanghai, which were soon copied by other foreign powers to effect the emergence of Shanghai industry. Shanghai was then the most important financial center in the Far East. Under the Republic of China, Shanghai was made a special city in 1927, and a municipality in May 1930. The Japanese Navy bombed Shanghai on January 28, 1932, nominally in an effort to crush down Chinese student protests of the Manchurian Incident and the subsequent Japanese occupation of northeast China. The Chinese fought back in what was known as the January 28 Incident. The two sides fought to a standstill and a ceasefire was brokered in May. The Battle of Shanghai in 1937 resulted in the occupation of the Chinese administered parts of Shanghai outside of the International Settlement and the French Concession. The International Settlement was occupied by the Japanese on 8 December 1941 and remained occupied until Japan's surrender in 1945.
Jewish asylum during World War II
In the 1930s and early 1940s, over 20,000 European Jews fleeing Nazi persecution found refuge in Shanghai, one of the few places in the world that allowed their entry at that time. The Sephardic Jewish community, which was well-established in Shanghai, helped these new immigrants to find jobs and shelter in the foreign settlements of Shanghai. However, under pressure from their Nazi allies, the Japanese required the European Jewish refugees to move to a section in the northeast part of the city that became known as the Shanghai ghetto in Shanghai's Hongkou District. As in the internment camps where other foreigners were interned in Shanghai during the war, conditions were poor; hunger, disease and abuse by the Japanese occupiers took the lives of many.
Communist rule
On May 27, 1949, Communist Party of China controlled People's Liberation Army took control of Shanghai. It was one of the only two former Republic of China (ROC) municipalities not merged into neighbouring provinces over the next decade (the other being Beijing). It underwent a series of changes in the boundaries of its subdivisions, especially in the next decade.
In 1949, most foreign firms moved their offices from Shanghai to Hong Kong. Specifically North Point is where the largest concentration of emigrants would be found. One of the first actions taken by the communist party was to clean up the portion of the population that were considered counter-revolutionaries. Mass executions took place with thousands slaughtered in the hands of the communist party. Places such as the Canidrome would transform from a greyhound racetrack/ballroom to a mass execution facilities.
During the 1950s and 1960s, Shanghai became an industrial center and center for revolutionary leftism. Yet, even during the most tumultuous times of the Cultural Revolution, Shanghai was able to maintain high economic productivity and relative social stability. In most of the history of the People's Republic of China (PRC), Shanghai has been the largest contributor of tax revenue to the central government compared with other Chinese provinces and municipalities. This came at the cost of severely crippling Shanghai's infrastructure and capital development. Its importance to China's fiscal well-being also denied it economic liberalizations that were started in the far southern provinces such as Guangdong during the mid-1980s. At that time Guangdong province paid nearly no taxes to the central government, and thus was perceived as fiscally expendable for experimental economic reforms. Shanghai was not permitted to initiate economic reforms until 1991.
Political power in Shanghai has traditionally been seen as a stepping stone to higher positions within the PRC central government. In the 1990s, there was what was often described as the politically right-of-center "Shanghai clique," which included the president of the PRC Jiang Zemin and the premier of the PRC Zhu Rongji. Starting in 1992, the central government under Jiang Zemin, a former Mayor of Shanghai, began reducing the tax burden on Shanghai and encouraging both foreign and domestic investment in order to promote it as the economic hub of East Asia and to encourage its role as gateway of investment to the Chinese interior. Since then it has experienced continuous economic growth of between 9–15%.
