Accommodating cosmopolitan experiences: Jiang Dunfu’s 蔣敦復 and Wang Tao’s 王韜 autobiographical processing of their treaty port years

With the establishment of the treaty ports in 1842, contact between China and the Western world intensified. In Shanghai, the most extensive exchange of knowledge and ideas took place between the missionaries of the London Missionary Society and their Chinese assistants. By working and translating for the missionaries, these traditionally educated men gained intimate insights into the West and Western learning and established close personal relationships with the missionaries. But in the process, they also became outcasts, as working for Westerners was viewed critically by their contemporaries. This article sets out to analyse the way in which Jiang Dunfu (1808-1867) and Wang Tao (1828-1897) processed and accommodated these cosmopolitan experiences in Shanghai in their prose autobiographies.