Robert Bickers’s Out of China: How the Chinese ended the era of Western domination is a timely reminder of how much the past actually matters to Chinese élites in shaping their view of the twenty-first century. This is a story of the anger and indignation that lay at the heart of a Chinese nation seeking to bring the inequalities of a world dominated by empire to an end, one, as we are reminded, that only ended twenty years ago in China when Hong Kong and Macao drew the final curtain of formal colonial rule.

The history of Western domination in Asia is well known in China but scantly understood or acknowledged in the West. The consequences of this ignorance, argues Bickers, will condemn Western leaders to continuously misread what China wants in today’s world. Nothing seems to illustrate this better in Out of China than the Opium Wars (1839–42), regarded in China as a major tragedy which signalled the beginning of its ‘Century of Humiliation’. Yet when the Foreign Office prepared Margaret Thatcher’s briefing almost 140 years later during negotiations with Deng Xiaoping over the future of Hong Kong, any references to the war were glaringly absent. And if Western leaders seemed to have forgotten their past sins, Chinese communist leaders such as Zhou Enlai had no problem in lecturing them for hours on end, as he did with Nixon administration officials over the shabby treatment of China at the 1954 Geneva Conference. ‘Is it not simply history, done and dusted with now?’ is a question Bickers frequently hears in Western diplomatic circles. The simple answer, of course, is no.

Readers may already be familiar with Bickers’s previous book The Scramble for China (2011) that explained the growing presence of the West in China. Out of China, a continuation of this story, focuses on the long-drawn battle that took place during great part of the twentieth century, a struggle to restore China’s sovereignty and to end foreign privilege. In this highly engaging account of the struggle, we are introduced to a wide cast of characters from both sides of the story, each playing their part in either sinking or keeping afloat the floundering empire in China. Bickers, drawing on his expertise on empire in China, cites a number of original sources that bring to life unfamiliar players. Half-hearted China Maritime Customs Service employees retreating to Chongqing in 1941, or self-declared ‘China-hands’ in Shanghai, entrenched in extraterritorial privilege, make this a refreshing account of China’s embattled twentieth century.

Out of China starts in 1918 by examining China’s diplomatic bid to restore sovereignty in German concession areas in Shandong by joining the Allied forces during World War I. Its ultimate failure revealed the ways in which the peace conference seemed to be rigged in favour of empire. This betrayal sets the tone for the rest of the book: a gripping narrative detailing the emergence of anti-imperialism at the centre of modern China’s political project and the forms this struggle took until the British handover of Hong Kong in 1997.

Echoing a number of revisionist views, Bickers emphasises the need to see the whole of China’s twentieth century through the lens of anti-imperialism in order to appreciate its continuities rather than its ruptures. Indeed, the house of anti-imperialism had many rooms in China for this period. It was occupied by a number of residents of all political stripes and colours bringing arch-enemies such as communists, the Guomindang, and even those collaborating with the Japanese, such as Wang Jingwei, under one single roof. Cohabitation, of course, was the tricky part.

Anti-imperialist movements shook the whole of China at different periods and in different places as well. Guangzhou in the 1920s and Beijing in the 1960s became centres of anti-colonial struggle, inspiring other movements in the region. In this light, we are opportunely reminded that the seizure of Hankou (a foreign concession area) by Guomindang forces in 1927 was the first British imperial possession to be lost in the twentieth century in Asia and Africa under the pressure of local revolts. Driving the West from China would ultimately hold a global significance for nationalist movements everywhere for most of the twentieth century.

China’s struggle to end Western domination was a battle fought on many other fronts as well. Robert Bickers takes us to the cultural and intellectual frontlines of this battle where well-known Chinese writers such as Lin Yutang attempted to take on Westerners who for decades had dared to speak for China (in mostly negative terms) to the rest of the world. The communists later opened a similar front by establishing the Foreign Language Press in 1952 to explain China to the world. The question posed by Bickers, ‘Who speaks for China?’ is as relevant today as it was in the past. Western museums that have dealt with the PRC in recent years and faced endless negotiations surrounding exhibits on China know this only too well.

President of the People's Republic of China, Xi Jinping (kremlin.ru)

Bickers ends his book on a critical note, not so much aimed at the West and its historical amnesia, but rather at China’s party-state and its dangerous use of the past in building a strong nationalistic narrative that at times has flared out of control. The tight official script of national humiliation crafted by the Chinese Communist Party allows little space for questioning the complexities of foreign collaboration. Those recognised as being part of this historical struggle (alongside the Chinese Communist Party) are but a select few. Indeed, these are challenging times for scholars to question the past in China, let alone do actual research, for Chinese archives continue to restrict access. Those who dare cross the line are called out by Chinese officials for engaging in ‘historical nihilism’. Yet in these times of anger and indignation where ‘history wars’ seem to flare up on every continent, the world may need more ‘historical nihilists’ such as Robert Bickers to continue probing into China’s ambivalent relationship with the West.