Harbin: A Cross-Cultural Biography by Mark Gamsa

Abstract

Reviewed by: Harbin: A Cross-Cultural Biography by Mark Gamsa Cathy McAteer Harbin: A Cross-Cultural Biography. By Mark Gamsa. Toronto and London: Toronto University Press. 2020. x+383 pp. $67.50. ISBN 978–1–4875–0628–5. Mark Gamsa's latest monograph differs from his many previous works on Sino-Russian relations in that it derives from his Ph.D. thesis on Manchuria, and was composed (in thought and deed) over a twenty-year period. Over this time, he confesses to having reflected on many approaches to writing history. The result is a labour of love very different, as he states, in both form and focus from his other publications, one which demonstrates in its complex parallel structure an experimental [End Page 522] approach to writing Harbin's history. Gamsa's monograph is an alternating, intertwining biography of both the city—described as the 'epicentre of Russian–Chinese relations in Manchuria [. . .] after the completion of the Chinese Eastern Railway (CER) in 1903' (p. 3), an engineering project that enabled Harbin to become a world centre of post-revolutionary Russian emigration attracting 185,000 Russians at its peak—and of the book's protagonist, the Baltic-born Russian émigré Baron Roger Budberg (1867–1926: no relation of the suspected double agent Moura Budberg, once lover of Robert Bruce Lockhart, Maksim Gorʹkii, and H. G. Wells). The structure of this monograph devotes equal attention to tracing the city's developments on the macro and micro scales. Half of the chapters document the ebb and flow of Harbin's inhabitants and the legacies of their complicated relations. Gamsa guides the reader from the earliest Chinese and Russian settlers (the latter attracted to the area by the Trans-Siberian rail project) to the pro-Tsarist Cossacks and the cross-culturally devastating Boxer uprising of 1900. He examines the region's historical links with the Japanese, the White Russians (who fled there after the 1917 Revolution), and finally the Soviet army, who reclaimed Harbin in 1945 and handed it back to the People's Republic of China. In alternating chapters, Gamsa interpolates this political context with analysis of Budberg's local significance in Manchuria as a Sinophile, a critic of Russia, a physician, and a memoirist. Trained as an obstetrician and gynaecologist, Budberg was deemed 'of little use on the battlefield' (p. 53) during the Russo-Japanese war. Permitted instead to explore China, Budberg settled in Harbin, immersing himself in Chinese culture, learning the language, and marrying a fourteen-year-old Chinese woman with whom he had a daughter. In 1907 the CER appointed him director of a hospital for prostitutes. Budberg's contribution to medical research and Gamsa's dedication to tracking down primary resources result in a remarkably timely revelation. One of his public-health pamphlets from 1911 offers the following insight into minimizing deaths during a plague epidemic: 'when in the presence of infected persons, never expose yourself directly to their breath, protect clothes and hands from contact with suspect objects, and do not touch your face' (p. 115). Visionary that he apparently was, Budberg also recommended the wearing of head bandages as effective face masks. Gamsa's final chapter zooms out from both storylines in order to assess the broader 'outcome and legacy of [. . .] Russian and Chinese societies in Harbin' (p. 201). The thoroughness of Gamsa's research permeates not just chapter content (the sheer density of detail risks making the book appear pot-bound) but paratextual material too, the latter providing an essential toolkit for readers unfamiliar with his field. The Introduction supplies a historical overview of Russian activities in Harbin, illustrated by maps of the region dating from 1905 and 2011 respectively. It explains the provenance of Gamsa's primary research material (letters, rare publications with interesting histories, and archived photographs, some of which are included as illustrations) and the aims of the book, and summarizes Gamsa's methodologies. Readers might, additionally, have appreciated the provision of a family tree for the extensive Budberg clan and a timeline of events, useful for a book that determinedly eschews obvious chronological structure. Concluding paratexts include an [End Page 523] Epilogue for the many peripheral figures who feature...