Chinese Settlers Research Articles

Chinese Civilians Beyond the Palisade: an Inquiry on the Opening of Northern Manchuria to Han Commoners in the Yongzheng era

Abstract Even before the Qianlong ban of 1740 (fengjin zhengce 封禁政策), which officially and thoroughly prohibited Han civilians’ migration to Manchuria, the Qing rulers’ attitude toward the phenomenon was, most of the time, a negative one. Generally speaking, the court meant to preserve the territory to the imperial family themselves and the Manchu people. More specifically, as the policies addressing southern Manchuria (present day Liaoning province) changed over time, as the rulers’ wish to keep the place to their own people clashed with concerns about repopulation and land reclamation – for which Chinese settlers could be a resource, spontaneous settling in the northern part of the region (bianwai 邊外, “beyond the (Willow) Palisade”) was always formally forbidden. Such a difference was clearly reflected by the local administrative structures. The Chinese-fashioned system, zhouxianzhi 州縣制, was present in southern Manchuria since 1653, whereas it was established in Jilin only in Yongzheng era. Emperors Kangxi and Qianlong controlled or opposed the growth of the Chinese civil population in Manchuria. As a consequence, they kept unaltered or weakened the Chinese branch of the local government while making efforts to develop the local Eight Banners’ structures. Yongzheng’ policies were headed toward a different direction. Not only did the sovereign enlarge the civil administration in Liaoning; even more significantly, he ordered the foundation of three civil administrative centres in northern Manchuria – Yongji 永吉, Changning 長寧 and Taining 泰寧, which were in charge of the increasing civil population. Neither in China nor in western studies such policies have been attached the importance they are worth of. In addition, Qing sources such as Veritable Records, Gazetteers and the Collected Statutes provide very scarce information on such maneuver. By resorting to archival sources, both in Chinese and in Manchu, this work aims at researching into the rationales and the decision making process which lead to a brief but important interruption of the main trend of Qing rule of their motherland.

Making Sense of the Uyghur Genocide Through Religious Theodicy

This study aims to explore how some Uyghurs in Canada and Türkiye[1] interpret the ongoing Uyghur Genocide through a religious lens, as a form of theodicy, an explanation for evil and suffering.[2] The article is based on data collected from three different sources. The first source is a diary which recorded discussions of individual Uyghurs participating in an online class on the Qur’an taking place in 2021. The second source comes from interviews with two prominent Uyghur Imams who reside in Canada and Türkiye, and the third is an interview with a young Uyghur political activist residing in Canada. From their narratives, we have identified four distinct yet interrelated perspectives, which we have categorized into four categories: gnostic, mythic, apocalyptic, and mystery. Most of the Uyghur voices in our study understand and present the ongoing genocide in East Turkestan[3] as a divine test. Despite understanding the ongoing genocide as a test by Allah, the aspect of divine punishment appears to be downplayed, and instead what is emphasized is the goodness of Allah who seeks to teach His servants lessons so that they may achieve greater virtues in both this life and the afterlife. Our analysis has led us to the conclusion that Uyghur Islam seems to offer its adherents a sense of optimism and, for Uyghurs living in the diaspora, a means to move forward. This is in stark contrast to other forms of Islamic theodicy which focus more on the aspect of suffering.
 
 [1]. This spelling follows the Turkish government’s 2022 request for Turkey to be referred to as Türkiye – its spelling and pronunciation in Turkish. See “UN Agrees to Change Turkey’s Official Name to ‘Türkiye,’” Al Jazeera, June 2, 2022, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/6/2/un-registers-turkiye-as-new-country-name-for-turkey.
 [2]. John Hick, Evil and the God of Love (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007) and Mark S. Scott, “Theodicy at the Margins: New Trajectories for the Problem of Evil.” Theology Today 68, no.2 (2011): 113–204, https://doi.org/10.1177/0040573611405878.
 [3]. In this article we will use “East Turkestan” or “the Uyghur Homeland” to refer to the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of China. The Chinese term “Xinjiang” means “New Frontier,” “New Borderland,” or “New Territory,” a designation which was given to the region by the Qing dynasty in 1884, so it is politically fraught for Uyghurs because it justifies the displacement of its occupants by Chinese settlers. As the present study focuses on the Uyghur perspective, the preferred Uyghur terms for the region, given above, will be used.

“Paper More Precious Than Blood”: Chinese Exclusion Era Identity Documentation Processes and Racialization of Identity Data

ABSTRACT This project interrogates the United States’ national fixation on the answer to the question: Who are you? In this article, it is posed that identity documentation practices arising out of the Chinese Exclusion Act era cast identity as an empirical and immutable phenomenon, specifically in response to the racialization of American-born Chinese settlers as duplicitous, through the mechanisms that information is collected, the actual information itself, and the cross-references or connections created between cases. Through tracing this lineage, racialized identification data is identified and theorized as part of hegemonic data regimes.

Shelter for the Afflicted: Migration from Xinjiang to Russia in the 1860s-1880s

The authors examine the history of the migration of Chinese subjects from the territory of Xinjiang in the 1860s-1880s and measures taken by the Russian administration aimed at adapting them to the new socio-political and economic conditions. On the basis of the research, the waves and scales of migration are established and their reasons are named. The study of the sources is implemented using the formal legal method, the comparative legal method, the methods of analysis and synthesis of written sources, as well as induction. The application of these methods made it possible to formulate a general conclusion concerning the policy of the Russian Empire in relation to the non-Russian population of the region, including Chinese immigrants. The study of the documents related to the migration of the Xinjiang population to the territory of Russian possessions in Central Asia convinces us that the authorities of the Russian Empire were interested in this process. They sought to find a place for new subjects in the socio-economic communities of the indigenous population of the Turkestan territories. At the same time, the Russian authorities applied to the Chinese settlers the norms characteristic of both nomadic and settled residents. Their goal was to bring the status of former Chinese subjects closer to the status of the main population of the state. The Russian government sought to complete this adaptation through the merger of the former Qing subjects with the population of the internal provinces of the Russian Empire.

Pioneers, Sunday Schoolers, and Laundrymen: Chinese Immigrants in Iowa in the Chinese Exclusion Era, 1870-1890

ANTHONY MILLER examines Iowa's earliest Chinese settlers in the late nineteenth century—a period of heightened anti-Chinese sentiment that led to the Chinese Exclusion Acts. By attending to the first generation of immigrants from China, Miller both introduces distinct new voices that complicate Iowa's immigration history, and also situates Iowa's Chinese pioneers firmly in the urban and coastally dominated field of Sino-American history.

O legado colonial japonês e suas atuais implicações políticas no estreito de Taiwan

Although the majority of Taiwan’s population is descended from Chinese settlers who immigrated to the island between the 17th and 19th centuries, the Taiwanese independence movements refuse to accept unification with China, that since its founding in 1949 has claimed Taiwan as its own territory, and insist on designating Taiwan as a separate independent political entity from China. However, the existence of these independence movements is relatively new and begun in the mid-twentieth century, after the end of the fiftieth year of Japanese colonization in 1945. This article aims to analyse how the Japanese colonial and post-colonial experience played an important role in changing the perception of national identity in Taiwan, and currently is the main source of tension in relations with China. The article concludes that the fifty years of Japanese colonization and the violent Chinese repression in the post-war period were essential for the formation of a Taiwanese national identity distinct from the Chinese one and for the emergence of the Taiwanese independence movements.

Earthen\u2013wooden hybrid houses built by the Dai in Dehong Prefecture, South China

The Dai (or Tai) are an indigenous ethnic group distributed across the upper part of Southeast Asia and South China. Whereas the majority of the Dai living on the Southeast Asian mainland build wooden houses on stilts, Dai populations in South China, especially in Dehong Prefecture, are known for the distinctive architectural style of their hybrid earthen–wooden houses, which stems from their enduring social contact and cultural assimilation with Chinese settlers. This paper, which draws on comprehensive fieldwork conducted in Dai villages in Dehong Prefecture, explores the Dai’s hybrid earthen–wooden architecture. Specifically, it examines the development of forms, the relationship between settlement layouts and house plans, as well as building materials, structures and constructions characterising this architecture using data from qualitative surveys, architectural measurements and interviews. The hybrid architecture of the Dehong Dai demonstrates the fusion of two building cultures—earthen and wooden—that has shaped a vernacular architectural identity that is unique to this area. This paper also presents illustrative examples of earthen–wooden houses, thereby contributing to advancing knowledge about this eclectic, hybrid architecture that remains a gap in the academic literature.

Settler colonialism and usurping Malay sovereignty in Singapore

This article proposes that Singapore should be considered as a settler colony during its first years of settlement. The first Residents, William Farquhar, Thomas Stamford Raffles and John Crawfurd all attempted to build Singapore as a settler colony, similar to those in Australia and North America. The difference was, however, that they looked to attract Chinese, Malay and Indian settlers as well as Europeans. By viewing Singapore as a settler colony, this article reinterprets our understanding of who constitutes a settler within settler colonial frameworks. It concludes that settler colonialism was not directly about moving indigenous people off the land, but rather establishing a new system of sovereignty in which individuals (regardless of race) were allowed to own land and become settlers. Nevertheless, the actions of the settlers and the British authorities created violent tensions with the original Malay inhabitants that were only resolved by the transfer of sovereignty from Sultan Hussein to the East India Company.

‘Throwing Mud’ on Questions of Sovereignty: Race and Northern Arguments over White, Chinese, and Aboriginal Labour, 1905–12

This article addresses two arguments about Chinese settlers in the Northern Territory. The first, in 1905, was sparked by criticisms of Chinese mining practices and accusations that Chinese people contaminated those Aboriginal people with whom they came into contact. The second was prompted by the imposition, in 1910–11, of restrictions on Chinese rights to work and employ in the Territory. Both were opposed by the Chinese, who represented themselves as deserving and indispensable settlers who had made their home in the Northern Territory. The article argues that these arguments demonstrate the centrality of Aboriginal people to settler practices of being and belonging. Placing Indigeneity and migration in uneasy relation, it examines the emergence of racialised modes of representation as ways of both producing and obscuring sovereignties.

Erasure and Reclamation: Centering Diasporic Chinese Populations in Oregon History

This essay provides an overview of early Chinese American history and introduces the key themes of the Oregon Historical Quarterly special issue on the Chinese diaspora in Oregon. It asserts that the history of Chinese people in Oregon should be centered within the state’s history because doing so compels a rethinking of Oregon’s earliest waves of colonization and economic, political, and social development. The articles in this special issue illustrate how Chinese people were transnational historical actors, navigating a social and cultural terrain that was often unwelcoming and oppressive. They humanize early Chinese settlers in ways that avoid reliance on, or reinforcement of, Orientalist stereotypes and Eurocentrist assumptions as well as a tendency to reduce Chinese immigrant experiences to either resistance or victimization. Each contribution in this special issue helps undo nearly two centuries of erasure and reclaims the place of Chinese people in the history of Oregon.

‘True and Pious Men’: Anglican Ministry to Chinese Settlers in Southern Queensland, 1850–1914

Chinese men began emigrating to the Australian colonies from the 1840s onward. Past historiography has been sceptical of the impact of Christianity on these Chinese immigrants. This paper revisits this theme, placing it in the wider context of mission to Chinese immigrants in other anglophone countries. It documents the ministry of the Anglican Church among Chinese settlers in colonial Queensland, and especially the role that Chinese converts played in the evangelisation of their fellow countrymen. It provides a new perspective on the ways in which the Chinese embraced Christianity, and their contribution to the evangelisation of their countrymen.

‘The Chinese Doctor James Lamsey’: performing medical sovereignty and property in settler colonial Bendigo

ABSTRACTThis article traces the spatially grounded operation of ‘medical sovereignty' by reading property alongside medical practice and regulation in a settler colonial city. It does so through the lens of the Antipodean life of one Canton-born doctor, James Lamsey, who was a prolific proprietor in the regional Australian city of Bendigo and used his interlinked proprietorial and medical powers to mediate between the Bendigo Chinese community and white settlers and doctors. Reading medical power through the lens of Lamsey’s life, shaped, as it was, by European-made laws, shows how settler medical sovereignty was enacted in a dynamic relation with Chinese medical sovereignty, performed here in the urban context of Bendigo, on unceded Indigenous Dja Dja Wurrung land. With support from the common law system, health-related boards were, in the late nineteenth century, intensifying a settler sovereignty, where board members and doctors practised increasingly exclusive forms of discretionary power and exercised the right to exclude non-white people from membership. At the same time, Lamsey was enacting a diasporic medical sovereignty that drew on Chinese imperial and British colonial authority. He leveraged his medical sovereignty towards promoting collective Chinese entitlements to health and to counter the exclusions of a whitening settler sovereignty.

Black Pepper in Malaysia: An Overview and Future Prospects

Cultivating black pepper in Malaysia started in early 10th to the 11th century when the South Indian Kings began to extend their empire. The crop was brought to East Malaysia in 1840 by Chinese settlers, actively planted until it was hit by the massive flood, fluctuation of the price and outbreak of foot rot. High yielding cultivars such as Kuching, Semenggok Emas and Semenggok Aman provided promise for better production, but resulted in increased soil degradation and reduced crop growth in Sarawak. The paper aims to discuss the black pepper industry in Sarawak and present scenario of its cultivation including future prospects. Cultivating on hilly topography with coarse textured dominant soil becomes one of the limiting factors. This factor is observed due to high rainfall intensity and steeper slopes. Neglected soil conservation also affects crop production and lead to a lower return on investments. Technologies such as land conservation and practising precision agriculture need to be adopted to reduce the impact of soil degradation and better production.

Beyond Big Gold Mountain: Chinese-Australian Settlement and Industry as Integral to Colonial Australia

ABSTRACTAustralian historiography has generally treated both the architecture and the industry of non-Western immigrants as marginal phenomena. However, Chinese settlements were not only integral to the nineteenth-century goldmining industry in Australia, but also critical to the wider development of northern Australia. Beyond this, Chinese settlers were instrumental in the establishment of market gardening, plantation agriculture, cabinet making, and laundry industries in the late nineteenth century, all of which had architectural manifestations that provided integral if unprivileged elements to Australia’s developing cultural and aesthetic landscape. The following text aims to provoke ongoing questions about Australia’s architectural identity in a context where reconsideration of the integral role of Chinese settlers in the development of Australian society might not only apply more widely to the flows of people from China in the period of Australia’s establishment as a nation but also to the contributions of Chinese-Australian industry to the local built environment.

A Passage to China: Literature, Loyalism, and Colonial Taiwan by Chien-hsin Tsai

Reviewed by: A Passage to China: Literature, Loyalism, and Colonial Taiwan by Chien-hsin Tsai Emma J. Teng A Passage to China: Literature, Loyalism, and Colonial Taiwan by Chien-hsin Tsai. Cambridge: Harvard University Asia Center, 2017. Pp. xiv + 342. $49.95 cloth. Chien-hsin Tsai's A Passage to China: Literature, Loyalism, and Colonial Taiwan plays on the dual meanings of "passage" to offer a highly original examination of the theme of loyalism and the figure of the loyalist in colonial Taiwan's literature. Focusing on authors who traveled to China, sometimes via Japan, Tsai demonstrates how they creatively deployed and adapted loyalist ideals and tropes from the Chinese literary tradition in order to work through Taiwan's abandonment by the Qing (1636–1912), the vicissitudes of Japanese colonialism, and the search for a Taiwanese identity in the modern world. Tsai argues that the tradition of loyalism cannot be interpreted as an unquestioned and [End Page 400] unchanging essential tie between Taiwan and China, but rather reveals the complications and contradictions of this historical link. Like other works in Taiwan studies, the book makes a case for "why Taiwan matters."1 It also contributes more broadly to the field of sinophone literary studies as well as to the theoretical discussion of postloyal criticism in comparative terms. The texts examined by Tsai showcase the linguistic diversity of literary production in colonial Taiwan, including works written in classical Chinese, vernacular Mandarin, Japanese, and experimental attempts to transcribe the Taiwanese (Southern Min 閩) regional speech using Chinese scripts. They furthermore span the genres of poetry, travelogue, short story, novella, novel, essay, drama, and more. The introductory chapter lays out the trajectory of the author's critical concerns "from loyalism to postloyalism" (p. 1) and establishes the importance of the figure of the loyalist (yimin 遺民) in the Chinese literary and cultural tradition. First demonstrating how the tradition of loyalism "went through another existential and cultural reconfiguration after the end of the Qing [dynasty]" (p. 34), Tsai further makes his case for why Taiwan matters, arguing that Taiwanese writers' creative reinventions of loyalist culture and identity in colonial Taiwan provide fresh insights into questions of loyalism and postloyalism. He shows how the history of Taiwan's conquest and settlement by Han Chinese, dating back to the 1661 occupation of the island by Ming (1368–1644) loyalist Koxinga (Zheng Chenggong 鄭成功; 1624–1662), produced a particular entanglement between yimin as loyalist and the homophonous term yimin 移民, meaning "immigrant settler." The notion of loyalism in colonial Taiwan was complicated by the legacy of Ming loyalism, as the island's Han Chinese settlers faced first the demise of Koxinga and the Qing conquest of the Chinese empire, then the Japanese colonization of Taiwan, and finally the 1911 Revolution in China, celebrated by some Taiwanese as a belated victory of the old Ming loyalists over the Manchu Qing. Linking literary history to contemporary issues, Tsai further considers the legacy of loyalism for post-1949 Taiwan, which became a bastion of anti-Communist Republican loyalism under Chiang Kai-shek 蔣介石 (1887–1975). [End Page 401] Chapter 1, "Qiu Fengjia and Lyric Poetry after Trauma," examines the Chinese classical-style poetry-history (shishi 詩史) of Qiu Fengjia 丘逢甲 (1864–1912), the most outstanding Taiwanese poet of his era. Qiu's life spanned the cession of Taiwan to Japan in 1895, the brief establishment of the independent Republic of Formosa (1895–1896), and the Republican Revolution of 1911 that overthrew the Qing. A descendent of Hakka 客家 immigrants from Guangdong, Qiu received a classical Chinese education in Taiwan. In 1889, he traveled to Beijing, where he sat for and passed the highest level of the civil examination. After a brief spell as an official in Beijing, Qiu became disillusioned with bureaucratic life and returned home to Taiwan. His quiet life as a teacher and poet was soon disrupted, however, by Taiwan's cession to Japan, a traumatic event captured in this brilliantly sketched scene of collective crying that opens Tsai's chapter: It was the mad year of 1895. The whole island of Taiwan, all of a sudden, displayed a key symptom of hysteria—collective crying. People burst into tears when the news report reached their ears...

The Impact of Environmental Pollution on Ethnic Unrest in Xinjiang: A Uyghur Perspective

Since the early 1990s, the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region has been one of the most restive areas in China, and in recent years, following the July 2009 Urumchi riots, it has experienced frequent incidents of severe ethnic violence. A large body of scholarship has attempted to explain the sources of Uyghur discontent and pointed to various factors, including cultural and religious repression, unemployment, discrimination, and the mass migration of Han Chinese settlers into the region. This article proposes that environmental degradation, a factor that so far has received little attention in the research that focuses on ethnic tension in Xinjiang, is another important contributing factor. Focusing on air and water pollution in Xinjiang, but also addressing other types of environmental degradation, the article examines the attitudes of Uyghurs toward the phenomenon and shows how their perceptions have affected and been affected by their tense relationship with the Chinese government and the Han Chinese settlers in the region.

Finding Meaning in Time and Space: Periodisation and Taiwanese-centric History

This essay explores the practice of a Taiwanese-centric historiography that prioritises the study of peoples rather than states. It reconceptualises the manner in which Taiwan’s history has been periodised by moving away from political history to divide time according to major transformations for the main long-term populations of the island—indigenous groups and multiple waves of Chinese settlers—and their interactions with each other, the governing entities, and the island itself. It traces the differential processes through which people created and adopted Taiwanese identities. Though not a traditional state-of-the-field essay, it builds upon a body of existing scholarship and demarcates Taiwan’s history into four eras at three watershed zones: the 1650s–1670s, the 1870s–1880s, and the 1970s–1990s. It draws connections to the study of Chinese history and uses scholarship on United States history for insights into the incorporation of indigenous and minority groups into a single narrative of the past.

Fools rush in … and succeed: how an outsider's naivety effected an arts and reconciliation initiative in Indonesia's Sulawesi

ABSTRACTWithout knowing anything of the contentious history between Sulawesi's Chinese and Indonesian Moslem communities, Taiwanese director Peng Ya-ling went to Makassar to conduct a reconciliation workshop. As director of Uhan Shii Theatre, Peng creates performances from oral histories she collects in interviews. She applied this technique in Indonesia, first having to overcome deep-seated suspicion from both sides. The Moslem Indonesian actors performed symbolic re-enactments of the Chinese settlers’ stories for a mixed audience from both communities, thus effecting a moment of racial harmony.

Traditional Chinese Medicine in Malaysia: A Brief Historical Overview of the Interactions between China and Malay Peninsula

Chinese Medicine was introduced to the Malay Peninsula during the colonial era circa 18th to 19th century. The British imported Chinese immigrants mainly for tin mining. The early Chinese settlers had brought with them the knowledge of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) to Malaya. As time goes by, TCM becomes one of the popular traditional medicines that are accepted by other ethnicities. TCM has thus contributed to the welfare of Malaysians. In 2016, a Traditional and Complementary Medicine (T and CM) Act was passed by the Malaysia Parliament. TCM is one of the T and CM practices that fall under the regulation. TCM services are now offered in Malaysia's public hospitals in addition to private practices. This article aims to provide a brief overview on the development of TCM in the precolonial and postindependent Malaysia.

Gubernur Jenderal VOC Jan Pieterszoon Coen dan Pembangun Kota Batavia (1619-1629)

<p>ABSTRACT</p><p>The establishment of the city of Batavia on the west coast of the north coast of Java, cannot be separated from the role of a figure named Jean Pieterzoon Coen. Although previously Jayakarta (the name before Batavia), was controlled and built by Pangeran Fatahillah, the situation and conditions in the social and economic fields of Jayakarta were not like the management of J.P. Coen. After Jayakarta was controlled by the VOC, through a military expedition policy designed by JP. Coen, the condition of the city of Jayakarta slowly gradually increased in the social and economic fields. The increase in the city of Batavia in the social and economic fields was based on three JP policies. Coen was quite brave, namely increasing trade activities in the Sunda port of Kalapa, revitalizing the position of the islands in northern Batavia as a base of administration and defense and security, and opening the widest door for Chinese traders and immigrants. The three policies, in fact, were purely based on the thoughts outlined by JP. Coen, after taking over the Jayakarta area from the mastery of Prince Fatahillah.</p><p>Keywords: J.P. Coen, Kota Batavia.</p><p><strong><em>ABSTRAK</em></strong></p><p>Pendirian kota Batavia di sebelah barat pesisir pantai utara Jawa, tidak dapat dipisahkan dari peran seorang tokoh yang bernama Jean Pieterzoon Coen. Meskipun sebelumnya Jayakarta (nama sebelum Batavia), dikuasai dan dibangun oleh Pangeran Fatahillah, akan tetapi situasi dan kondisi dalam bidang sosial dan ekonomi Jayakarta tidak seperti pada masa pengelolaan J.P. Coen. Setelah Jayakarta dikuasai oleh VOC, melalui kebijakan ekspedisi militer yang dirancang oleh JP. Coen, keadaan kota Jayakarta perlahan demi perlahan semakin meningkat dalam bidang sosial dan ekonomi. Peningkatan kota Batavia dalam lapangan sosial dan ekonomi dilatari oleh tiga kebijakan JP. Coen yang cukup berani, yakni meningkatkan aktivitas perdagangan di pelabuhan Sunda Kalapa, merevitalisasi kedudukan pulau-pulau di utara Batavia sebagai basis adiministrasi dan pertahanan dan keamanan, serta membuka pintu seluas-luasnya bagi pedagang dan pendatang etnis Tionghoa. Tiga kebijakan tersebut, sejatinya meurpakan murni hasil pemikiran yang dituangkan olh JP. Coen, setelah mengambil alih wilayah Jayakarta dari penguasaan pangeran Fatahillah.</p><p>Kata Kunci : J.P. Coen, Kota Batavia.</p>