Virtual Shanghai

Shanghai Urban Space in Time

Editor: Christian Henriot (IAO - Institut Universitaire de France)

->Overview

Articles

Topics

E-Books

Original Texts

Appendices

The « Virtual Shanghai » project represents an attempt to write a history of the city from its beginning to nowadays, with a focus on the 19th and 20th centuries. This section will provide entries into topics, essays, original documents (textual, video, audio, visual), and research monographs.

The history of Shanghai can only be written by various hands. The “Virtual Shanghai” project is open to contributions from outside, including texts and essays, provided they meet academic standards. Due credit will always be acknowledged. English is the standard medium of the project, but contributions in other languages will also be accepted, with an English summary.

Of course, the “Virtual Shanghai” does not plan to simply juxtapose unrelated contributions. It will present a master narrative to provide the reader with an organized journey into the history of Shanghai. In fact, one can even imagine several “master narratives” and several journeys. The “Virtual Shanghai” platform focuses on “content” about the history of Shanghai, not links to outside resources. Only resources related to written essays, such as archival documents, audio and video files, maps and visual documents, are included in the platform.

All the texts and documents presented in this section are available free of charge. Yet they are also protected by intellectual copyrights and shall be given due credit when quoted. The purpose of the “Virtual Shanghai” project is to provide a site of reference to scholars, students, and the general public in the spirit of the OAI. It supports the aim of direct scientific communication and general circulation of knowledge for the purpose of education and research.

The section entitled "Articles" provides scholarly essays on various topics. Most papers evetually find their way in academic publications in a revised form. Yet the version presented on the platform takes advantage of all the potentialities of linking texts with texts, with images, with maps, with visual or map narratives. Eventually we hope to achieve seamless movement through the various components of the web platform.

Topics actually serve as 'road maps' on specific topics. This is meant as an aid that present all the various entries into a given topic. There is no need to follow any specific order, but we found it useful to prive the reader with a summary of resources distributed among the different menus or 'gateways' into topical research.

E-books are our next step. It is still in construction both at the level of content and technology. Yet this section will provide monograph-like studies of Shanghai history in e-book format.

Original texts provides documents that are often not easy to find, mostly publications such as city guides. They are made available in pdf format. Do not hesitate to contact us if you have difficulties downloding these documents. We also welcome contributions of such documents to enrich this digital library.

Page modified on 21 April 2009