ABSTRACT
Commercial relationships between salesmen such as Allan Raymond and Chinese traders were structured on various levels by economic rituals that concealed the operation of colonial power behind the fiction of an exchange between equals. After Allan Raymond's import and export business failed, he sought out increasingly menial forms of employment. Raymond was one of many Australians to experience downward social mobility after his arrival in Shanghai. Shanghai had a large unskilled labour force. It was rare for Europeans to be able to compete successfully with the poorly paid Chinese in the Shanghai labour market. The flow of Australians into Shanghai in the 1930s posed significant challenges for the imperial authorities – at a time when mobility within empire, and mobility between 'white man's country' and other colonial sites, were contested issues. Unlike resident Chinese, Australians could lay claim to some of the highest institutional rights to mobility and commerce that the city had to offer.
