Imperial Nationhood? Regional and Occupational Networks Linking Ireland and China, 1870–1930

The continuing expansion of the treaty ports in China, from the 1860s to the 1920s, led to the growth of semi-permanent communities of foreign expatriates, bound together by associational and professional networks. As this novel legal regime developed, largely under the influence of British lawyers, nationality became not only a symbol of cultural affinity but also defined one’s rights and privileges. This paper examines Irish networks and connections in China, and the experiences of those who lived within this regime, at a time when both Irish and Chinese public discourse was navigating evolving and contested definitions of nationality, sovereignty, statehood, and modernity. It will focus on three regional diasporic groups - County Antrim agents of the Chinese Maritime Customs, County Cork police officers in Shanghai and Hong Kong, and County Roscommon missionaries and medical personnel, aligned to the Church Missionary Society and the Irish Presbyterian Mission. These three cases represent a diversity of class, gender, and religion, but all three networks relied on similar affinities of county and nation to sustain them over multiple generations. The development of a St Patrick’s society in Shanghai in the early 1870s provided a focus for Irish identities in China, and decisions concerning inclusion and exclusion in this body provides further insight into the development of Irish claims to ‘imperial’ nationhood in this period, and Ireland’s heretofore underexamined role in informal empire in China.