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Helen Meller and Heleni Porfyriou (eds.), Planting New Towns in Europe in the Interwar Years: Experiments and Dreams for Future Societies. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2016. ix + 232pp. £47.99 hbk.

providing a modicum of protection for the citizens of the International Settlement. War saw the SMC act like a state one last time, and Jackson’s description throughout the book of how this organization navigated competing Shanghai, Chinese and imperial interests is a compelling story: global history at its best. One minor quibble is her characterization of Shanghai as a ‘global city’, a backdrop to the transnationalism of the SMC. This is not the place to debate the merits of Sassen’s theory. It may apply to the International Settlement with its banks, hotels, jazz bars and cosmopolitan population, but is less relevant to the povertystricken alleyways of the Chinese city. This is the only place in the book in which Jackson’s analysis perhaps falls short, given Shanghai’s complicated political and social geography. Otherwise, she has given us a beautifully crafted account of how global and local processes intertwined to shape what continues to be one of the world’s most important cities, which will be on the reading lists of scholars and students of Shanghai for years to come.