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The Treaty Port Connection: An Essay

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 August 2009

Michael R. Godley
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Extract

Overseas Chinese played a special role in China's entry into the modern age. Volumes have appeared to discuss the competition between revolutionaries and reformers, and this author has written of the late Ch'ing regime's own efforts to enlist leading members of the Nanyang merchant class. But this essay intends to shy away from the historian's conventional concern for factional politics. Despite the long-standing conviction that 1911 constituted a watershed and the equally worn shibboleth which tells us that the contribution from abroad was largely a function of factional allegiance, the Southeast Asian Chinese who took part in changing China should also be remembered for the perspectives they shared. This is because all the groups are part of a movement greater than China. Not only should their legacy to China be viewed from a far broader perspective but, also, their place in Southeast Asian history.

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Southeast Asian Studies , Volume 12 , Issue 1 , March 1981 , pp. 248 - 259
Copyright
Copyright © The National University of Singapore 1981

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References

1 “The Late Ch'ing Courtship of the Chinese in Southeast Asia”, Journal of Asian Studies 34, no. 2 (02 1975):361–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Siang, Song Ong, One Hundred Years' History of the Chinese in Singapore (Singapore, 1967), p. 249Google Scholar.

3 Murphey, Rhoads, The Outsiders: The Western Experience in India and China (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1977), pp. 96–97Google Scholar.

4 Cohen, Paul, Between Tradition and Modernity: Wang T'ao and Reform in Late Ch'ing China (Cambridge, Mass., 1974), pp. 239–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 Murphey, op. cit. An earlier version of this argument appears as “The Treaty Ports and China's Modernization”, in The Chinese City between Two Worlds, ed. Elvin, Mark and Skinner, G. William (Stanford, Calif., 1974), pp. 17–71Google Scholar.

6 Ping, Lee Pah, Chinese Society in Nineteenth-Century Singapore (Kuala Lumpur, 1978)Google Scholar.

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8 See, e.g., Fatt, Yong Ching, “Chinese Leadership in Singapore, 1900–1941”, Journal of Southeast Asian History 9, no. 2 (09 1968):258–85CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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10 See the fine study by Hao, Yen-p'ing, The Comprador in Nineteenth-Century China: Bridge between East and West (Cambridge, Mass., 1970)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 Further examples can be found in the author's book, The Mandarin-Capitalists from Nanyang: Overseas-Chinese in the Modernization of China, 1893–1911 (Cambridge, forthcoming). See also the very thorough study by Hwang, Yen Ching, “Ch'ing's Sale of Honours and the Chinese Leadership in Singapore and Malaya (1877–1912), Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 1, no. 2 (09 1970):20–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 Song, op. cit., p. 79.

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14 Cohen, op. cit., pp. 91–109.

15 Shin, Linda P., “Wu T'ing-fang: A Member of a Colonial Elite as Coastal Reformer”, in Reform in Nineteenth-Century China, ed. Cohen, and Schrecker, , pp. 265–71Google Scholar.

16 See Michael R. Godley, “The Late Ch'ing Courtship of the Chinese in Southeast Asia”, and Godley, op. cit.

17 LatPau, 1 Aug. 1901; Straits Times, 31 07, 6 08 and 25 10 1901Google Scholar; Straits Chinese Magazine 5 (1901):116Google Scholar.

18 Schiffrin, Harold Z., Sun Yat-sen and the Origins of the Chinese Revolution (Berkeley, Calif., 1970)Google Scholar.