Conceptualizing Chinese Diasporas, 1842 to 1949

Abstract

Each of these epigrams is from an exemplary work of primary research. While not entirely exclusive—potential for overlap appears in the ideas of “mutual development” and “transfer” of culture—they each exemplify different research agendas that result in competing narratives of Chinese migration. Sucheng Chan's work is part of a larger project of contemporary Asian American studies to incorporate Chinese as important actors in American history. It emphasizes the adaptations of Chinese social organization in the United States, and explains them as necessary and unprecedented responses to unfamiliar challenges. Although Chan pays more attention than many Asian American historians to Chinese nationalism, transnational families, and continued links to China, she does not follow the implications of these descriptions so far as to reformulate her narrative of migration as a monodirectional relocation followed by locally conditioned transformation (see also S. Chan 1991, 63–66,96–97; 1990). In their most extremely America-centered versions, Asian American histories have treated these extra-American phenomena as little more than byproducts of exclusion and racism, and denounced the idea of the temporary Chinese sojourner as an orientalist construction (A. Chan 1981).

Across the Pacific: Transnational Context in the Japanese Plantation Workers’ Cemetery in Pāhala, Hawai’i

“…Sugar plantation managers therefore used the terms of the Masters' and Servants' Act, passed by the Hawaiian government in 1850, to import foreign workers under terms of indenture (Beechert 1985, p. 41;Fuchs 1961, p. 19;Merry 2000, p. 98). Under this law, the first indentured laborers were imported from China in 1852 (Glick 1980, p. 7;McKeown 1999;Nordyke and Lee 1989).…”

Migratie, diaspora en identiteiten

“…Over nationale grenzen heen kunnen imagined communities, netwerksamenlevingen of communities of practice ontstaan. In reactie op de natiestaat kan zich een eigen diasporacultuur vormen (McKeown, 1999 In de tweede plaats brengt 'diaspora' tot uitdrukking dat mensen ervoor kiezen gelijktijdig in twee of meer werelden te leven of aan twee of meer culturen deel te nemen. Een migrant is zo bezien niet een slachtoffer van een cultuurconflict, maar eerder iemand die door nieuwe mogelijkheden wordt uitgedaagd.…”

Is there a Spirit of Overseas Chinese Capitalism?

“…A second criticism is that the Chinese Diaspora is culturally more diverse than the SOCC suggests. Accounts like the SOCC implicitly assume a degree of cultural homogeneity of the Overseas Chinese who arrived in Southeast Asia from different ethnic and geographic backgrounds in different historical contexts and for different reasons (see McKeown 1999;Chan 2015). In addition, the Chinese Diaspora culture may be subject to significant intergenerational change (King 1996;Gomez 2007a;Po 2010;Koning and Verver 2013), yet their economic superiority remains.…”