The Italian concession of Tianjin (, it, Concessione italiana di Tientsin) was a small territory ( concession) in central

Tianjin Tianjin (; ; Mandarin: ), alternately romanized as Tientsin (), is a municipality and a coastal metropolis in Northern China on the shore of the Bohai Sea. It is one of the nine national central cities in Mainland China, with a total popu ...

(formerly romanized as Tientsin), China, controlled by the

Kingdom of Italy The Kingdom of Italy ( it, Regno d'Italia) was a state that existed from 1861, when Victor Emmanuel II of Sardinia was proclaimed King of Italy, until 1946, when civil discontent led to an institutional referendum to abandon the monarchy and f ...

between 1901 and 1943, officially ceded to China in 1947.

Characteristics

On 7 September 1901, Italy was granted a concession of 46

hectares The hectare (; SI symbol: ha) is a non-SI metric unit of area equal to a square with 100-metre sides (1 hm2), or 10,000 m2, and is primarily used in the measurement of land. There are 100 hectares in one square kilometre. An acre is a ...

in Tientsin from the Chinese government. On 7 June 1902, the Italians took control of the concession, which was to be administered by an Italian consul. After the

First World War World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

, Italy desired to add the former Austro-Hungarian concession which was adjacent to the Italian concession, and would have doubled its size. However, in 1917 China terminated the leases of Germany and Austria-Hungary's concessions. The districts were converted into "Special Areas" under Chinese control, with a separate administration from the rest of Tientsin. Italy requested again the Austrian concession at the end of

and obtained it in 1920. It returned to Chinese authorities when the Second Special Area (the former Austrian concession) was in danger of war and occupation during the

Chinese Civil War The Chinese Civil War was fought between the Kuomintang-led government of the Republic of China and forces of the Chinese Communist Party, continuing intermittently since 1 August 1927 until 7 December 1949 with a Communist victory on m ...

. The Italian concession became the headquarters of the Italian '' Legione Redenta'' that fought in 1919 during the Allied intervention against Soviet troops in

Siberia Siberia ( ; rus, Сибирь, r=Sibir', p=sʲɪˈbʲirʲ, a=Ru-Сибирь.ogg) is an extensive region, geographical region, constituting all of North Asia, from the Ural Mountains in the west to the Pacific Ocean in the east. It has been a ...

and

Manchuria Manchuria is an exonym (derived from the endo demonym " Manchu") for a historical and geographic region in Northeast Asia encompassing the entirety of present-day Northeast China (Inner Manchuria) and parts of the Russian Far East (Outer M ...

. In 1935, the Italian concession had a population of about 6,261, including 110 Italian civilians and about 536 foreigners. The ''

Regia Marina The ''Regia Marina'' (; ) was the navy of the Kingdom of Italy (''Regno d'Italia'') from 1861 to 1946. In 1946, with the birth of the Italian Republic (''Repubblica Italiana''), the ''Regia Marina'' changed its name to ''Marina Militare'' ("M ...

'' (Italian Royal Navy) stationed some vessels at Tientsin, such as the river gunboats ''Carlotto'' and ''Caboto''.

History

Karte der Konzessionsgebiete in Tientsin

During the Boxer Rebellion in 1900, the

Beijing Legation Quarter The Peking Legation Quarter was the area in Peking (Beijing), China where a number of foreign legations were located between 1861 and 1959. In the Chinese language, the area is known as ''Dong Jiaomin Xiang'' (), which is the name of the ''hutong ...

became the center of an international incident during the

Siege of the International Legations The siege of the International Legations occurred in 1900 in Peking, the capital of the Qing Empire, during the Boxer Rebellion. Menaced by the Boxers; an anti-Christian anti-foreign peasant movement, 900 soldiers, sailors, marines, and civilian ...

by the Boxers for several months. After the siege had been broken by the Eight-Nation Alliance (that included Italy) at the end of the Battle of Peking, the foreign powers obtained the right to station troops to protect their legations under the terms of the Boxer Protocol. In addition, Italy obtained the concession in Tientsin, southeast of Beijing. On 7 September 1901, a concession in Tientsin was ceded to the

by the

Qing dynasty The Qing dynasty ( ), officially the Great Qing,, was a Manchu-led imperial dynasty of China and the last orthodox dynasty in Chinese history. It emerged from the Later Jin dynasty founded by the Jianzhou Jurchens, a Tungusic-spea ...

of China. On 7 June 1902, the concession was taken into Italian possession and administered by an Italian

consul Consul (abbrev. ''cos.''; Latin plural ''consules'') was the title of one of the two chief magistrates of the Roman Republic, and subsequently also an important title under the Roman Empire. The title was used in other European city-states throu ...

: the first was Cesare Poma and the last (in 1943) was Ferruccio Stefanelli. Along with the other foreign concessions, the Italian concession lay on the Pei Ho, southeast of the city centre. In the late 1920s, the Italians even held small forts such as the ''Forte di Shan Hai Kuan'' near the

Great Wall of China The Great Wall of China (, literally "ten thousand ''li'' wall") is a series of fortifications that were built across the historical northern borders of ancient Chinese states and Imperial China as protection against various nomadic gro ...

and in

Hankow Hankou, alternately romanized as Hankow (), was one of the three towns (the other two were Wuchang and Hanyang) merged to become modern-day Wuhan city, the capital of the Hubei province, China. It stands north of the Han and Yangtze Rivers whe ...

. In 1925, Benito Mussolini created the ''Battaglione italiano in Cina'' and quartered it with soldiers of the

San Marco Regiment The 1st San Marco Regiment (Italian: ''1° Reggimento San Marco''), located in Brindisi, is an amphibious formation of the Italian Navy. They are the Italian marines. Until the middle of the 1990s the unit was known as the San Marco Battalion (' ...

in the new Caserma Ermanno Carlotto. The police were Chinese, while the officers were Italians. There was even a football team in the Italian concession. During World War II, the Italian concession in Tientsin had a garrison of approximately 600 Italian troops on the side of the

Axis powers The Axis powers, ; it, Potenze dell'Asse ; ja, 枢軸国 ''Sūjikukoku'', group=nb originally called the Rome–Berlin Axis, was a military coalition that initiated World War II and fought against the Allies. Its principal members were ...

. On 10 September 1943, when Italy signed an armistice with the Allies, the concession was occupied by the

Imperial Japanese Army The was the official ground-based armed force of the Empire of Japan from 1868 to 1945. It was controlled by the Imperial Japanese Army General Staff Office and the Ministry of the Army, both of which were nominally subordinate to the Emperor o ...

. Later in 1943, the Italian Social Republic (RSI) formally relinquished the concession to the

Wang Jingwei Wang Jingwei (4 May 1883 – 10 November 1944), born as Wang Zhaoming and widely known by his pen name Jingwei, was a Chinese politician. He was initially a member of the left wing of the Kuomintang, leading a government in Wuhan in oppositi ...

's Japanese-sponsored Chinese

puppet state A puppet state, puppet régime, puppet government or dummy government, is a state that is ''de jure'' independent but ''de facto'' completely dependent upon an outside power and subject to its orders.Compare: Puppet states have nominal sove ...

, the

Reorganized National Government of China The Wang Jingwei regime or the Wang Ching-wei regime is the common name of the Reorganized National Government of the Republic of China ( zh , t = 中華民國國民政府 , p = Zhōnghuá Mínguó Guómín Zhèngfǔ ), the government of the pup ...

which, like the RSI in Axis-held northern Italy, was not recognized by the Kingdom of Italy, the Republic of China, or most other nations. The Wang Jingwei government fell when the

Empire of Japan The also known as the Japanese Empire or Imperial Japan, was a historical nation-state and great power that existed from the Meiji Restoration in 1868 until the enactment of the post-World War II Constitution of Japan, 1947 constitu ...

was

defeated Defeated may refer to: * "Defeated" (Breaking Benjamin song) * "Defeated" (Anastacia song) *"Defeated", a song by Snoop Dogg from the album ''Bible of Love'' *Defeated, Tennessee, an unincorporated community *''The Defeated ''The Defeated'', al ...

. At the same time, the Italian commercial concessions in the

Shanghai International Settlement The Shanghai International Settlement () originated from the merger in the year 1863 of the British and American enclaves in Shanghai, in which British subjects and American citizens would enjoy extraterritoriality and consular jurisdictio ...

, Hankou and Beijing were ceded to the Republic of China. On 2 June 1946, the Kingdom of Italy became the

Italian Republic Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical re ...

and, on 10 February 1947, by virtue of the peace treaty with Italy, the Italian concession was formally ceded by Italy to Chiang Kai-shek's Republic of China.

Governors

During the Italian presence, the following governors succeeded each other:https://books.google.it/books?id=TE2ldbz57eIC&pg=PA157&lpg=PA157&dq=lista+governatori+tientsin+cesare+poma&source=bl&ots=uxI_jsD3tr&sig=QsY0e6j0DPUUXsaERCnUEVRF3kE&hl=it&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjPi_7rza7WAhXCCBoKHQf2DmwQ6AEIUzAK#v=onepage&q=lista%20governatori%20tientsin%20cesare%20poma&f=false * (1901–1903) * Giuseppe Chiostri (1904–1906) * Oreste Da Vella (1906–1911) * Vincenzo Fileti (1912–1920) * Marcello Roddolo (1920–1921) * Luigi Gabrielli di Quercita (1921–1924) * (1925–1927) * (1927–1932) * (1932–1938) * (1938–1943)

Notes

Bibliography

* Cucchi, Giuseppe. ''Una bandiera italiana in Cina'', Rivista Militare, n. 6/1986. * De Courten, Ludovica, Sargeri, Giovanni. ''Le Regie truppe in Estremo Oriente, 1900-1901''. Ufficio Storico Stato Maggiore dell’Esercito, Roma, 2005. * Dikötter, Frank. ''The Age of Openness China before Mao'' University of Chicago Press. Berkeley, 2008 . * Donati, Sabina. ''Italy’s Informal Imperialism in Tianjin during the Liberal Epoch, 1902-1922'', The Historical Journal, Cambridge University Press, 2016, available on CJO2016, do
10.1017/S0018246X15000461
* Grasselli, Enrico. ''L’esercito italiano in Francia e in Oriente'' Corbaccio ed. Milano, 1934. * Marinelli, Maurizio, Andornino, Giovanni. Italy’s Encounter with Modern China: Imperial dreams, strategic ambitions, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. * Marinelli, Maurizio. “The Triumph of the Uncanny: Italians and Italian Architecture in Tianjin”, In Cultural Studies Review, Vol. 19, 2, 2013, 70-98. * Marinelli, Maurizio. “The Genesis of the Italian Concession in Tianjin: A Combination of Wishful Thinking and Realpolitik”. Journal of Modern Italian Studies, 15 (4), 2010: 536-556. * Mautone, Antonio. ''Trentini ed Italiani contro l'Armata Rossa. La storia del corpo di spedizione in Estremo Oriente e dei Battaglioni Neri''. Temi editrice. Trento, 2003. {{coord, 39.1350, N, 117.1939, E, source:wikidata, display=title

Tientsin Tianjin (; ; Mandarin: ), alternately romanized as Tientsin (), is a municipality and a coastal metropolis in Northern China on the shore of the Bohai Sea. It is one of the nine national central cities in Mainland China, with a total popul ...

20th century in Tianjin 1901 establishments in the Italian Empire 1947 disestablishments in the Italian Empire China–Italy relations

Characteristics

History

Governors

See also

Notes

Bibliography