Sojourners To Settlers

Only recently has the role of Chinese minorities at the forefront of Southeast Asia's rapid economic growth attracted world attention. Yet interactions between Chinese and Southeast Asians are longstanding and intense, reaching back a thousand years and making it difficult, if not specious, to attempt to disentangle what is Chinese and what is indigenous in much of Southeast Asian culture. Sojourners and Settlers, now back in print, written by some of the most distinguished specialists in the field, demonstrates the depth of that relationship. Contributors: Leonard Blussé, Mary Somers Heidhues, Jamie C. Mackie, Anthony Reid, Craig Reynolds, Claudine Salmon, G. William Skinner, Wang Gungwu, O. W. Wolters.

Macedonians started immigrating to Canada in the late 1800s, yet the community has never had its history recorded - until now. Lillian Petroff, in her book Sojourners and Settlers, has remedied that omission in an informative and enjoyable manner. She charts the settlement patterns, living and working conditions, religious life, and political activity of Macedonians in Toronto from the early twentieth century to the Second World War. The first Macedonians who came to Toronto lived an almost isolated existence in a distinct set of neighbourhoods that were centred around their church, stores, and boarding houses. They moved with little awareness of the city-at-large since the needs of their families in the old country and political events in their homeland were much more important to them than developments in Toronto and Canada. A greater interest in Canada began to take root only after Macedonians began to think less like sojourners and more like settlers. This transition was often accompanied by a move from bachelorhood to marriage and from industrial labour to individual entrepreneurial activities. Employing a wealth of primary written and oral source material, Petroff tells the remarkable story of the men and women who laid the foundation for what would become a significant community in the Toronto area, which today represents the largest community of Macedonians outside the Balkans.

"Only recently has the role of Chinese and Sino-Southeast Asian minorities in leading Southeast Asia's rapid economic growth attracted world attention. Yet the interaction of Chinese and Southeast Asians reaches back a thousand years, at a level of intensity which makes it difficult, if not specious, to attempt to disentangle what is chinese and what is indigenous in much of Southeast Asian culture. This book demonstrates the depth of that relationship." "Ten of the most distinguished specialists in the field pool their expertise in considering the multiple ways in which Chinese have interacted with the region." "Jamie Mackie sets the scene in a survey of the Southeast Asian Chinese, particularly during the last fifty years." "Wang Gungwu considers their history in terms of the concept of 'sojourning', while Anthony Reid considers the oscillating pattern of interaction from the thirteenth century to the twentieth, giving rise to new Sino-Southeast Asian elites in times of mutual isolation, and to a more 'Chinese' character at times of close contact." "G. William Skinner provides a new explanation of why stable Sino-Southeast Asian creole societies were able to exist throughout the nineteenth century in Malaya, the Philippines and Java, and Claudine Salmon shows how one of these groups, the peranakan of Java, coped with pressures to become more Chinese in the second half of the nineteenth century." "Oliver Wolters and Craig Reynolds reflect upon the difficulty of disentangling the two cultures in Vietnam and Thailand respectively." "Leonard Blusse reveals new Chinese sources on the junk trade with Java, while Mary Somers Heidhues surveys the neglected but numerous Chinese rural settlers in the arc around Singapore."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved