According to the latest estimate the native population of the city and suburbs of Shanghai amounts to 156,000. When to this number the boat population, amounting to 11,000, and the mixed inhabitants of the foreign settlements, numbering 145,500, are added, a total is reached of 312,500 souls.
The vastness of English interests in China and the large British population at Shanghai gave rise in 1865 to the establishment of a British supreme court for China and Japan,—Sir Edmund Hornby, who was then the judge of the British court at Constantinople, being the first judge appointed to the new office. The court thus constituted not only exercises jurisdiction over the British subjects at Shanghai but acts as a court of appeal from all British consular courts in China and Japan. All charges against Chinamen within the settlement are tried before a mixed court, which sits daily, presided over by a Chinese official and an officer of the consular service. During the year 1884 2,304 criminal cases were tried before this tribunal, and 99 civil cases,—in 85 of which cases no less a sum than £60,000 was involved.
SHANNON. See Ireland, vol. xiii. p. 216.
SHANS. This name is applied to a number of for
the most part semi-independent communities occupying a
region bounded on the W. by Burmah and Assam, N. and
N.E. by the Chinese province of Yun-nan, E. by Tong-
king, and S. by Siam (see Plate IX.). Ethnologically
the race has a much wider extension, including the
Siamese (see SIAM), and also, according to Gamier and
Colquhoun, the hill tribes around the Tong-king delta
and various tribes of Kwang-tung and Kwang-se, and
extending across the north of Burmah into Assam. It
is also widely diffused through south-western Yun-nan.
Terrien de Lacouperie considers it allied to the Mon, the
Mung, and the Pa, and places its early home in the
mountains north of Sze-chuen, whence, not having amal-
gamated with the growing Chinese empire, it was gradually
forced southwards. Although the level of civilization and
the purity of their Buddhism vary considerably among the
different branches of the race, there is everywhere a
remarkable resemblance in appearance, manners, customs,
and polity. The traditions current of their origin, too,
though localized by each in its own habitat, are closely
similar. This great homogeneity seems the more remark-
able in that the race is found not only living under many
different political systems, i.e., either independent, or
subject to Burmah, China, or Siam, but often in com-
munities isolated by mountain ranges, inhabited by tribes
of different race and character. All this seems to point to
a political unity in earlier times.
The Shans probably appeared on the upper Irawadi
nearly two thousand years ago, but Burmese and Shan
traditions agree that they were established some centuries
earlier on the upper waters of the Shweli and on the
Sal win and adjacent valleys on the south-west frontiers
of Yun-nan. Here, at all events, in the 7th and 8th cen-
turies, we hear of the growth of that power which,
temporarily broken by Burmah in the llth century,
reached its highest development in the 13th. This Shan
empire, known by the classical Indian name of Kausambi,
corrupted after the punning Chinese fashion into Ko-
shan-pyi, i.e., nine Shan states, was a confederacy of
about ten states, known among themselves by the name
of the most powerful member, Mau, or Muang Mau. A
great leader, Sam Lung Pha, brother of the king of Mau,
overran and conquered Upper Assam from the Satiyas in
1229, the dynasty lasting until the British annexation.
These Ahoms still inhabit the Assam districts of Sibsagar
and south and east Lakhimpur, though pressed on from
the south-west by the Bengalis, whom they despise as a
black and inferior race, preferring to associate with the
Chinese, whom they regard as congeners, and as the
greatest race in the world.
This 13th and the following century also saw Tali to
the east and Arakan to the west invaded, Burmah being
then weakened by the Mongol invasion ; Chieng Mai and
other southern Shan states were also annexed, and
" Ayuthia " (i.e., Siam), Cambodia, and Tavoy are claimed
by the Shan historians as among their conquests, the
Shan influence being felt even in Java. From the 14th to
the 16th century wars with both Burmah and China were
frequent, and Shan dynasties ruled at times in Burmah ;
but in 1556-62 the Burmese conquered Mogaung, the
chief province of Mau, when Buddhism is recorded to
have been introduced : probably only a reform of religion
is meant. In 1604 the districts now known as the Chinese
Shan States, i.e., the heart of the Mau empire, lying
chiefly in the Ta-peng basin, east of Bamo, a town whose
population also is mainly Shan, were finally conquered
by China, Mogaung remaining independent on sufferance
till absorbed by Burmah in 1796.
Zimme' or Chieng Mai (including Kiang Hai, Kiang Sen,
Lagong, and Lapong), whose capital is now an important
and well-built town, and Vien Chang on the east of the
Me-kong, were both great Shan centres, warring, with
various fortunes, with Burmah and Cambodia and with
each other, till subjected by the growing power of Siam
late in the last century.
The Burmese Shan States, especially those more remote
from Mandalay, have latterly become practically inde-
pendent; and, the tyranny which led to extensive south-
ward migration having thus ceased, the stream is partly
returning northwards. Descendants, too, of the popula-
tion deported by Siam from Kiang Sen about a hundred
years ago are now by the king's permission returning to
people that fertile territory. The Burmese plan with the
Shans was to govern by fostering internal dissensions, and
they are bitterly hated, while the Chinese are in an equal
degree liked and respected. The great Shan state of
Kiang Hung has now accepted the dictation of China, to
whom in fact, like some of its lesser neighbours, it has
always paid certain taxes, while acknowledging the supre-
macy of Burmah. Kiang Tung to the south, which has
been Burmese for over a century, has lately made over-
tures to Siam, though not forgetting the injuries inflicted
by that power in 1854. The numerous ruins of great
cities over the whole region from Chieng Mai to Kiang Tung
testify to former wealth and prosperity, though they may
not have all existed contemporaneously. In Luang Pra-
bang in the north-east, on the other hand, tribes of a partly
Chinese race are pressing southwards. It is remarkable
how many of the conquering irruptions of south-east Asia
were due mainly to the eviction of such conquerors by
some stronger power. Incessant wars and vast deporta-
tions have tended to assimilate the various populations of
all this region.
