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Madmen in Shanghai: The Final Reckoning

I am pleased to announce the publication of my fourth monograph, Between Public and Market: A Spatial History of Advertising in Modern Shanghai (1905–1949), published by De Gruyter.

At the heart of this book lies the story of the silent revolution that advertising brought to Shanghai’s press and urban life in the pre-communist era. While traditional scholarship often treats advertising merely as a commercial tool or a cultural “mirror,” this study reveals its transformative role as a driver of municipal policies and as a catalyst for public engagement among urban elites within the transnational context of the treaty ports.

As a sequel to Madmen in Shanghai: A Social History of Advertising in Modern China (De Gruyter, 2024)—which explored the world of professionals who built the advertising industry in pre-communist China—this new volume shifts the focus from the industry’s rise to its broader social and political impact in treaty-port Shanghai.

Drawing on untapped sources—including municipal archives, photographs, and newspapers—and employing innovative digital methods such as Geographic Information Systems (GIS), the book examines how advertising reshaped urban landscapes, nightlife, and traffic management, as well as the physical appearance, content, and business models of Republican-era newspapers. It will be of interest not only to students and scholars of modern Chinese history, but also to those working in urban studies, media studies, advertising, and urban management.

This work concludes the bilingual diptych dedicated to constructing a social history of professional advertising in modern China, developed from my doctoral research. A Chinese-language edition is forthcoming with the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences.

Cécile Armand

Cécile Armand

Ancienne élève de l'Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon (2006), agrégée d'histoire (2009), docteure en histoire (2017), mes travaux portent sur la publicité, l'histoire urbaine, les migrations intellectuelles entre la Chine et les Etats-Unis et les méthodes computationnelles appliquées à la recherche historique. Mes recherches ont reçu le soutien des fondations Chiang Ching-kuo, Coca-Cola, Andrew Mellon (Program DHAsia, Stanford), de l'Agence Nationale de la Recherche (Access ERC, ENS-Lyon) et du Conseil Européen de la Recherche (projet ENP-China, Aix-Marseille).

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OpenEdition vous propose de citer ce billet de la manière suivante :
Cécile Armand (21 juillet 2025). Madmen in Shanghai: The Final Reckoning. ADVERTISING HISTORY. Consulté le 8 novembre 2025 à l’adresse https://doi.org/10.58079/14gyl


Cécile Armand

Ancienne élève de l'Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon (2006), agrégée d'histoire (2009), docteure en histoire (2017), mes travaux portent sur la publicité, l'histoire urbaine, les migrations intellectuelles entre la Chine et les Etats-Unis et les méthodes computationnelles appliquées à la recherche historique. Mes recherches ont reçu le soutien des fondations Chiang Ching-kuo, Coca-Cola, Andrew Mellon (Program DHAsia, Stanford), de l'Agence Nationale de la Recherche (Access ERC, ENS-Lyon) et du Conseil Européen de la Recherche (projet ENP-China, Aix-Marseille).

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