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Evolving Intra-Asian Dynamics over the longue durée: Chinese Migration to Southeast Asia, Second Millennium A.D.
Organizer: Hui Kian Kwee, Asia Research Institute
Chair: Patrick Manning, University of Pittsburgh
Discussant: Adam McKeown, Weatherhead East Asian Institute
Although the Chinese sojourning and migration to Southeast Asia has a long pedigree, studies on the topic tend to focus on its development in the period from the nineteenth to mid-twentieth century. Informed by the unique circumstances in this period, historians have often explained the movement in terms of the push factors like warfare and population pressure in China and also pull factors as economic opportunities enabled by the European colonialism of Southeast Asia. This panel takes a longer-term approach and examines the process over the second millennium A.D., via both the maritime and land routes to different parts of Southeast Asia. The papers study the various types and sizes of movement - from commercial sojourning to labour migration, the specific migration networks, the social formations in China enabling especially the larger-scale movements, the migrants’ interaction with the indigenous societies as well as their negotiation with the local authorities throughout the period, and also that with the colonial authorities in a much later period. By examining a longer historical period, the panel hopes to decenter the focus on the migration process from the nineteenth to mid-twentieth century, when circumstances in China seemed particularly chaotic in the height of western imperialism and when colonial involvement in the Southeast Asian region was increasingly strong. It especially seeks to discern the intra-Asian dynamics which fired the Chinese migration and also that which evolved as a result of the movement.
The Hokkien Networks in Historical Maritime Asia
Jiang Qian, Centre of Asian Studies, Hong Kong
Hokkien merchants or merchants from coastal Fujian of China were the most venturous and successful Chinese merchants engaged in maritime trade in the pre-modern period. Given the background of discrimination and abandonment by the Chinese government on the one hand, and of oppression by and competition with the European merchants and colonial authorities on the other hand, how did these enterprising merchants so successfully establish themselves in port polities of historical maritime Asia and transplant their folk culture and social organisations to their overseas sojourning communities in Southeast Asia and East Asia? Without doubt one of the major factors should be ascribed to the various networks formed by the Hokkien people. Based on archival sources, local gazetteers, genealogies, and Japanese and Western records, this paper seeks to work towards an understanding of the dynamics of the Chinese sojourning merchants in maritime Asia by looking into different Hokkien networks and their functions in assisting the Hokkien commercial activities overseas.
Migration and Indigenization: Chinese Migrants in Pre-13th Century Yunnan
Bin Yang, National University of Singapore
This paper examines Chinese migrations to ancient Yunnan before the thirteenth century. Three features distinguish my argument. First, the paper regards ancient Yunnan as more Southeast Asian than Chinese. In other words, ancient cultural and ethnic boundaries between China and Southeast Asia had reached much further north. Second, this paper scrutinized how native culture indigenized Chinese migrants to Yunnan. As a result, almost all Chinese migrants had been absorbed into local society, a fairly universal phenomenon later happened to Chinese migrants in Southeast Asia. Finally, the arrival of Chinese elements had actively participated into and changed native society.