The Transpacific Chinese Diaspora

Zhongping Chen examines the origins, rise, and reform of the Cantonese-dominated Chinese diaspora in Canada between 1788 and 1898. Combining a diasporic approach with both qualitative and quantitative analyses of Chinese and English documents, including previously untapped archival records of secret societies, community organizations, and family businesses, this book reveals the transnational mobility of Chinese migrants and the expansion of their migration network across southern China, the American West, and Pacific Canada. Chen especially highlights the cross-cultural development of Chinese migration networks through interactions with white and Indigenous peoples as well as Western culture ranging from racism and settler colonialism to constitutionalism. The book features the first intensive examination of Chinese migrants' engagement in the transpacific Anglo-American fur trade, the gold rushes spreading from California to British Columbia, the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway, and community reforms across North American Chinatowns. Through innovative theoretical approaches and meticulous analysis of archival sources, Chen demonstrates how the Cantonese-dominated diaspora in Canada exerted profound but long-neglected and under-researched influence on sociopolitical changes in Qing China, Canadian society, and the Chinese communities across the Pacific Rim, including American Chinatowns, going beyond the nation-state frameworks in Chinese Canadian and Chinese American studies.