Selda Altan

The French colonial administration of Indo-China attained the Chinese railroad concessions in the late 19th century. The construction of the Yunnan railroad (1898-1910) aroused local discontent and confronted an unprecedented labor shortage due to Yunnan’s harsh geography. While these two issues forced French managers and administrators to develop solutions in line with their colonial principles, railroad workers reacted to the French colonial policies in their own ways. My dissertation project analyzes the construction of the French railroad in Yunnan within the frame of French colonialism and labor politics in southwestern China. I propose that the everyday interactions between the two were the site of struggle and reconciliation.

Chinese Industrial Cooperatives, known as “Indusco” or “Gung Ho,” was a civil initiative that emerged in wartime China to preserve the country’s industrial production during the Japanese occupation. Although the original idea belonged to American journalist Helen Foster Snow, and a group of foreign and Chinese women managed its promotional and organizational work, women’s leadership in the movement has not been adequately examined. This research focuses on the collaboration of Chinese and western women in the cooperatives to understand how women led industrial production in wartime China for civilian and military needs. This project argues that women’s promotion of the cooperatives helped China’s post-1949 reconstruction with the ideals of cooperative work and industrial development.