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

concession Concession may refer to: General * Concession (contract) (sometimes called a concession agreement), a contractual right to carry on a certain kind of business or activity in an area, such as to explore or develop its natural resources or to opera ...

) 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 popul ...

(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 Kingdom of Sardinia, Sardinia was proclamation of the Kingdom of Italy, proclaimed King of Italy, until 1946, when civil discontent led to ...

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 ab ...

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 Austria-Hungary, often referred to as the Austro-Hungarian Empire,, the Dual Monarchy, or Austria, was a constitutional monarchy and great power in Central Europe between 1867 and 1918. It was formed with the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of ...

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 The Legione Redenta ("Redeemed Legion") was an Italian military formation that participated in the Siberian intervention during the Russian Civil War. It was formed from 2500 prisoners of war who had been captured by the Russians from the Austro-Hu ...

'' that fought in 1919 during the

Allied intervention Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War or Allied Powers intervention in the Russian Civil War consisted of a series of multi-national military expeditions which began in 1918. The Allies first had the goal of helping the Czechoslovak Legio ...

against Soviet troops in

Siberia Siberia ( ; rus, Сибирь, r=Sibir', p=sʲɪˈbʲirʲ, a=Ru-Сибирь.ogg) is an extensive 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 part of ...

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 Manc ...

. 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 Italian constitutional referendum, 1946, birth of the Italian Republic (''Repubblica Italiana''), the ''Regia Marina'' ch ...

'' (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 The Boxer Rebellion, also known as the Boxer Uprising, the Boxer Insurrection, or the Yihetuan Movement, was an anti-foreign, anti-colonial, and anti-Christian uprising in China between 1899 and 1901, towards the end of the Qing dynasty, by ...

in 1900, the Beijing Legation Quarter became the center of an international incident during the Siege of the International Legations by the Boxers for several months. After the siege had been broken by the

Eight-Nation Alliance The Eight-Nation Alliance was a multinational military coalition that invaded northern China in 1900 with the stated aim of relieving the foreign legations in Beijing, then besieged by the popular Boxer militia, who were determined to remove fo ...

(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 The Boxer Protocol was signed on September 7, 1901, between the Qing Empire of China and the Eight-Nation Alliance that had provided military forces (including Austria-Hungary, France, Germany, United Kingdom, Italy, Japan, Russia, and the Unit ...

. 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-speak ...

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 throug ...

: 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 grou ...

and in Hankow. In 1925,

Benito Mussolini Benito Amilcare Andrea Mussolini (; 29 July 188328 April 1945) was an Italian politician and journalist who founded and led the National Fascist Party. He was Prime Minister of Italy from the March on Rome in 1922 until his deposition in 194 ...

created the ''Battaglione italiano in Cina'' and quartered it with soldiers of the San Marco Regiment 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 The Italian Social Republic ( it, Repubblica Sociale Italiana, ; RSI), known as the National Republican State of Italy ( it, Stato Nazionale Repubblicano d'Italia, SNRI) prior to December 1943 but more popularly known as the Republic of Salò ...

(RSI) formally relinquished the concession to the Wang Jingwei's Japanese-sponsored Chinese puppet state, 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 Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the northeast ...

, 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 1947 constitution and subsequent fo ...

was defeated. At the same time, the Italian commercial concessions in the Shanghai International Settlement, Hankou and Beijing were ceded to the Republic of China. On 2 June 1946, the Kingdom of Italy became the Italian Republic 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 Chiang Kai-shek (31 October 1887 – 5 April 1975), also known as Chiang Chung-cheng and Jiang Jieshi, was a Chinese Nationalist politician, revolutionary, and military leader who served as the leader of the Republic of China (ROC) from 1928 ...

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 Tientsin 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