In the 1920s, Westerners viewed Harbin, in North Manchuria, as a world turned upside down. Located in a former Chinese Eastern Railway concession with a significant Russian population, the city and the Special District in which it resided were represented as places that had reversed the “natural” racial hierarchy – a place where white was the ruled and not the ruler.

Administering the Colonizer explores how a non-Western culture dealt with the Western minority under its administration. It reveals that contrary to observations and ideological and national histories emanating from Moscow and present-day Beijing, republican China created policies in a number of areas that not only promoted its own sovereignty but also protected the Russian minority.

A historical examination of how an ethnic, cultural, and racial majority coexisted with a minority of a different culture and race, his book also restores to history the multiple national influences that have shaped northern China and Chinese nationalism.

Blaine R. Chiasson is an associate professor of modern Chinese history and Sino-Russian relations at Wilfrid Laurier University.

James Carter, author of Creating a Chinese Harbin: Nationalism in an International City, 1916-1932:
Administering the Colonizer is fine scholarship. Chiasson, more than any previous author, details the administrative structures and policies by which the unique city of Harbin was governed during the transition from Russian to Chinese rule. His book makes an outstanding original contribution on a subject that is important in its own right, but even more so as instances of mixed administration (both historical and current) are popular and relevant cases to study.

Ronald Suleski, author of Civil Government in Warlord China: Tradition, Modernization, and Manchuria:
Chiasson is not afraid to take on the racial prejudice and discrimination that was part of life in China’s concession areas. His use of many Russian sources allows him to give the Russian perspective on what is usually taken to be a part of China’s history. This book should have wide appeal to those interested in modernization, colonial history, inter-cultural confrontations and, intimately related to these topics, the creation of planned human communities.