Robert Bickers

Drawing from the letters and other artifacts left behind by Richard Maurice Tinkler, an expat Englishman who served as a municipal policeman in the International Settlement of Shanghai, Bickers puts together a somewhat patchy and very author-heavy story of the fading days of the British Empire. While the book's focus on the particularities of Tinkler's story, and of what Bickers can find out about other Shanghailanders of the time, limits his ability to really tell the story of empire well, it doesn't stop the author from providing lots of opinions. Tinkler goes from being a pretty admirable character, a man who survived long service in WW I with hardly a scratch, to being a hate-filled racist loner (though, apparently, still incorruptible) who hates Britain, loathes the Chinese, and idolizes America. But life elsewhere doesn't hold much appeal once he is enmeshed in the Shanghai of the 1920s, with its White Russian refugees (who make good girlfriends), nightlife, and opportunity to lord it over the Chinese constables serving on the force and the somewhat better-off, but just as untrustworthy (in his eyes), Sikhs.

Despite its flaws, one notable one being that the author is a better researcher than he is a writer, the book provides a much more gritty, on-the-ground look at policing in Shanghai than I have seen before. We see how Tinkler and his colleagues, though holding themselves far superior to the Chinese, were limited in their career advancement by their non-aristocratic birth and by the British old-boy network that ran Shanghai. This is a sad book to read, heading toward Tinkler's tragic (though it was largely his own fault) death at the hands of the Japanese in 1939.

This is not a book for casual readers who want to learn about Shanghai between the wars. Without some background on what was going on in the rest of China (which Bickers somewhat provides, but not clearly enough) or an understanding of the struggle between the KMT and the Communists (and other things such as the notorious Green Gang), this probably would be a frustrating, mystifying read. But for anyone who has lived in Shanghai and remains endlessly fascinated by its history, this book fills a gap. Despite my criticisms, the book reads pretty quickly and will leave you with the same sort of sadness you felt when you had to leave Shanghai. And an urge to return--however quixotic.… (mehr)

At one level, this is a biography of Robert Maurice Tinkler, working class Lancashire lad, decorated and gallant WW1 soldier, and detective in the Shanghai Municipal Police (SMP), eventually killed in an incident with Japanese troops largely due to his own aggressiveness. But of course, although Tinkler's life is better documented than many, there isn't really enough material for this to work. Tinkler keeps up with his family and a sweetheart intermittently until 1930 and then drops off the grid - leaving the police and travelling in the US before making his way back to Shanghai and taking a series of jobs of ever declining status before a death that forced the Empire to reclaim him as one of their own

There are 36 letters and only the remembrances of a few ex colleagues, but no old friends, and a few peripheral mentions from which to build a life. And this seems a little unfair to Tinkler; his letters home, bristling with class resentments at his subordinate status in Shanghai, and full of racial predjudices that were probably common place at the time, but 85 years later do him little credit, can only paint a superficial picture. He does seem to have let himself go with drink and marginally respectable Russian girlfriends, mistresses and prostitutes. But really we don't know - and there are years for which there is no evidence at all

For Bickers, Tinkler's story is the story of Empire writ small. Many of the Empire's servants lived out their lives as government employees or private entrepreneurs in a staggering breath of locations. Tinkler's SMP intake of 1919 turn up later in Australia, New Zealand, Borneo, Africa, India - anywhere the Empire made its mark , its servants were there. And it is a part of history that is often forgotten, with the wave of anti colonialism of the 60s and 70s; its probably fair to suggest that in many ways Tinkler and his comrades are to some degree representative of the working class Empire experience

Bickers also writes at length and knowledgeably of the history of the SMP and Shanghai local politics in the between war years. Probably there is too much of this; the minutae of who won what SMP election and why gets a bit dull . But my main complaint would be the lack of maps. Its all very well to reference Tinkler's transfer to a certain station "far from the action"- the lack of a map to demonstrate this is a bit irritating. I know Shanghai reasonably well and I was getting lost in some of the locational details. If you are going to highlight the difficulties of the SMP in having jurisdiction in a tightly defined area of Shanghai, then it would be as well to show that area

Overall a good book, but one that in my opinion needed some firmer editing.… (mehr)

Empire Made Me is a detailed history of Shanghai from post WWI until the opening of WWII, spun around the life of Richard Maurice Tinkler who left England after WWI (for which he signed up under age and saw two years of fighting) to join the Shanghai Municipal Police (SMP). It is also a history of the SMP and of the changing character of the British Empire as evidenced in the changing and very turbulent history of China with its internal warfare and its struggle against the Japanese. Interlaced are also the stories of dozens of other men and women, mainly again through the prism of the SMP.

Bickers is drawn, as he says, to the stories of "ordinary British lives created in the interstices of the grand narrative of the rise and fall of British empire, or ordinary men and women living in the ordinary empire world." He also done a remarkable job of piecing together the life of Tinkler through personal letters, newspaper accounts (Tinkler was killed by Japanese, though his own uncontrolled temper undoubtedly led to his death), and official documents. Bickers has raised Tinkler from the obscurity of one of millions of unrecorded lives to one that has a place and substance.
(Jan/06)… (mehr)