Chinese Diaspora Charity And The Cantonese Pacific 1850 1949

This work sheds new light on the history of charity among Chinese overseas and its place in the history of charity in China and in the wider history of global philanthropy.

Chinese Diaspora Charity and the Cantonese Pacific, 1850–1949 sheds new light on the history of charity among Chinese overseas and its place in the history of charity in China and in the wider history of global philanthropy. It finds that diaspora charity, besides serving traditional functions of helping the sick and destitute and supporting development in China, helped to build trust among dispersed hometown networks while challenging color boundaries in host societies by contributing to wider social causes. The book shows that charitable activities among the “Gold Rush” communities of the Pacific rim—a loosely integrated émigré network from Guangdong Province perhaps better known for its business acumen and hard work among English-speaking settler societies in North America and Australasia—also led the way with social innovations that helped to shape modern charity in China. Fitzgerald and Yip’s volume demonstrates that charity lay at the heart of community life among Chinese communities overseas. From remittances accompanying letters to contributions to benevolent organizations, emigrants transferred funds in many different ways to meet urgent requirements such as disaster relief while also contributing to long-term initiatives like building schools or hospitals. By drawing attention to diaspora contributions to their host societies, the contributors correct a common misunderstanding of the historical Chinese diaspora which is often perceived by host communities as self-interested or disengaged. This important study also reappraises the value of charitable donations in the maintenance of networks, an essential feature of diaspora life across the Cantonese Pacific. “Fitzgerald and Yip’s fascinating collection is a major contribution to the growing study of charity and its relationship to social welfare. The essays show how remittances were used for much more than family support. The book fills a large gap on the almost unrecognized importance of charity among Cantonese communities in the Chinese diaspora.” —Diana Lary, University of British Columbia “This collection is a great contribution to our understanding of how important charity became among overseas Chinese in the early stages of the diaspora—between 1850 and 1949. Philanthropy was crucial in the creation of trust networks among the diasporic communities that earned Chinese recognition to the overseas communities both in China and in their host countries.” —Sue Fawn Chung, University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Employing the classic Chinese saying “returning home with glory” (man zai rong gui) as the title, Michael Williams highlights the importance of return and home in the history of the connections established and maintained between villagers in the Pearl River Delta and various Pacific ports from the time of the Californian and Australian gold rushes to the founding of the People’s Republic of China. Conventional scholarship on Chinese migration tends to privilege nation-state factors or concepts which are dependent on national boundaries. Such approaches are more concerned with the migrants’ settlement in the destination country, downplaying the awkward fact that the majority of the overseas Chinese (huaqiao) originally intended to (and eventually did) return to their home villages (qiaoxiang). Williams goes back to the basics by considering the strong influence exerted by the family and the home village on those who first set out in order to give a better appreciation of how and why many modest communities in southern China became more modern and affluent. He also gives a voice to those who never left their villages (women in particular). Designed as a single case study, this work presents detailed research based on the more than eighty villages of the Long Du district (near Zhongshan City in Guangdong Province), as well as the three major destinations—Sydney, San Francisco, and Honolulu—of the huaqiaowho came from this region. Out of this analysis of what truly mattered to the villagers, the choices they had and made, and what constituted success and failure in their lives, a sympathetic portrayal of the huaqiao emerges. Returning Home with Glory inaugurates the Hong Kong University Press book series “Crossing Seas”. “From the very local qiaoxiang or home village of migrants to the transnational destinations in America and Australia, this book is a model of how to write ‘diaspora’ into modern Chinese history. The Cantonese Pacific comes alive in this highly readable book that is sure to capture our imagination.” —Evelyn Hu-DeHart, Brown University “A perceptively conceptualized and well-researched case study of an emigrant community in the Pearl River Delta that extended its reach to Sydney, the Hawaiian Islands, and San Francisco. Williams offers a refreshing qiaoxiang perspective through which to understand the experiences of Chinese immigrants in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.” —Yong Chen, University of California, Irvine “This welcome study of Chinese mobility among settler societies of the Pacific places the family and the village at its heart, just as its subjects did over the century under review, to 1949. A path-breaking study based on first-hand research.” —John Fitzgerald, Swinburne University of Technology

This prescient Handbook examines how legacies of colonialism, gender, class, and other markers of inequality intersect with contemporary humanitarianism at multiple levels.

This ground-breaking edited collection draws together Australian historical scholarship on Chinese women, their gendered migrations, and their mobile lives between China and Australia. It considers different aspects of women’s lives, both as individuals and as the wives and daughters of immigrant men. While the number of Chinese women in Australia before 1950 was relatively small, their presence was significant and often subject to public scrutiny. Moving beyond traditional representations of women as hidden and silent, this book demonstrates that Chinese Australian women in the twentieth century expressed themselves in the public eye, whether through writings, in photographs, or in political and cultural life. Their remarkable stories are often inspiring and sometimes tragic and serve to demonstrate the complexities of navigating female lives in the face of racial politics and imposed categories of gender, culture, and class. Historians of transnational Chinese migration have come to recognize Australia as a crucial site within the ‘Cantonese Pacific’, and this collection provides a new layer of gendered comparison, connecting women’s experiences in Australia with those in Canada, the United States, and New Zealand. ‘Locating Chinese Women is a path-breaking book. By exploring the experiences of Chinese Australian women during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the authors have opened new and compelling avenues of inquiry about the history of Chinese Australian women. In this landmark work, they have brilliantly recast the history of Chinese Australia.’ —Joy Damousi, Australian Catholic University ‘Locating Chinese Women breaks new ground in Australian and transnational Chinese women’s history by making the lives of remarkable Chinese Australian women visible. Photographs, testimonies, Chinese-language newspapers, and digitized archives help document the women’s agency and activities as they navigate public lives between and within Australia and China during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.’ —Shirley Hune, University of California, Los Angeles, and University of Washington

Examining the stories of diverse Christians in Shanghai, this book uses the city as a model to highlight how a minority religion in a city has interacted with other religions as well as social, cultural, political, and economic changes. Susangeline Y. Patrick illustrates how the history of Shanghai Christians sheds light on why and how Christians have accommodated social and political changes, and gives valuable insights into multiculturalism, globalization, sinicization, and ecclesiology. The interreligious dialogues between Shanghai Christians and other traditions such as Buddhism, Daoism, Confucianism, Islam, and Judaism throughout history provide worthy reflections on the roles of Christians in a multi-religious space.

Now fully revised and updated, The United States and China offers a comprehensive synthesis of US-Chinese relations from initial contact to the present. Balancing the modern (1784–1949) and contemporary (1949–present) periods, Dong Wang retraces centuries of interaction between two of the world’s great powers from the perspective of both sides. She examines state-to-state diplomacy, as well as economic, social, military, religious, and cultural interplay within varying national and international contexts. As China itself continues to grow in global importance, so too does the US-Chinese relationship, and this book provides an essential grounding for understanding its past, present, and possible futures.