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2 - Migration in the Prosperous Age, 1740–1840

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 January 2020

Steven B. Miles
Affiliation:
Washington University, St Louis
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Summary

Chapter 2 covers the years from 1740 to 1840, a period that some scholars refer to as the “Chinese century” in Southeast Asia and a period that partially overlaps with what Chinese historians call the High Qing and was known to contemporaries as the “prosperous age.” The chapter demonstrates that migration across the Qing frontiers and to destinations abroad was linked to the extraction of resources in Inner Asia and Southeast Asia for the Chinese market. This was a period in which Chinese laborers – miners and farmers – became distinct types of migrants. The chapter introduces a new diasporic trajectory, that of Hakkas to Borneo and other areas in Southeast Asia. It traces the development of such diasporic institutions as native-place associations, or huiguan, and the emergence of others, such as revenue farms, brotherhoods, and kongsi. It also further explores the issues of split families, maintained through remittances, and of unmarriageable men for whom migration became a means of ascending the marriage ladder. The chapter ends with an example of another diasporic community, the Chinese mestizos in the Philippine town of Malabon.

Type
Chapter
Information
Chinese Diasporas
A Social History of Global Migration
, pp. 52 - 89
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

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References

For Further Exploration

Archives of the Chinese Council (Kong Koan), available on-line via Leiden University www.library.universiteitleiden.nl/Google Scholar
Giersch, Charles P. Asian Borderlands: The Transformation of Qing China’s Yunnan Frontier. Harvard University Press, 2006.Google Scholar
Heidheus, Mary F. Somers. Bangka Tin and Mentok Pepper: Chinese Settlement on an Indonesian Island. Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1992.Google Scholar
Li, Guotong. Migrating Fujianese: Ethnic, Family, and Gender Identities in an Early Modern Maritime World. Brill, 2016.Google Scholar
Miles, Steven B. Upriver Journeys: Diaspora and Empire in Southern China, 1570–1850. Harvard University Asia Center, Harvard University Press, 2017.Google Scholar
Reid, Anthony. “Chinese Trade and Southeast Asian Economic Expansion in the Later Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries: An Overview.” In Cooke, Nola and Tana, Li, eds., Water Frontier: Commerce and the Chinese in the Lower Mekong Delta Region, 1750–1880 (Rowman & Littlefield, 2004), 2134.Google Scholar
Schlesinger, Jonathan. A World Trimmed with Fur: Wild Things, Pristine Places, and the Natural Fringes of Qing Rule. Stanford University Press, 2017.Google Scholar
Shepherd, John Robert. Statecraft and Political Economy on the Taiwan Frontier, 1600–1800. Stanford University Press, 1993.Google Scholar
Sommer, Matthew H. Polyandry and Wife-Selling in Qing Dynasty China: Survival Strategies and Judicial Interventions. University of California Press, 2015.Google Scholar
Trocki, Carl A.Chinese Pioneering in Eighteenth-Century Southeast Asia.” In Reid, Anthony, ed., The Last Stand of Asian Autonomies: Responses to Modernity in the Diverse States of Southeast Asia and Korea, 1750–1900 (St. Martin’s Press, 1997), 83101.Google Scholar

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