Trick or force somebody to do someting unpleasant or to go somewhere; to drug or inebriate and send to sea as a sailor; take control of.
To British and French reporters Communist Barmine had told how he refused to dine aboard a Soviet steamer sent to Greece, suspecting the Captain had been ordered to shanghai him and take him back to Russia.
Unattributed, Time Magazine, 10 January 1938. Time Magazine
At 15, a rebel militia tried to shanghai him into their ranks, the lawyer said.
Sometimes a superstructure the firm had bid for and lost - there were a number of them, more than Barbet wanted to count - but one in particular, in China, seemed persistently to shanghai her nightworld, grafting failed CG skinsketch onto gauzy somnambulist constructions.
And what's nice about being in a broadcast center is that with CBS "This Morning" being on for two hours, there's always a parade of people going in and out on any number of subjects, and I've been known to shanghai them on occasion.
Albert Parisi, The New York Times, 24 April 1994. New York Times
They have attempted to set him up and to shanghai him into something that he does not know about.