Voyages, Migration, and the Maritime World. On China’s Global Historical Role
Edited by: Clara Wing-chung Ho, Ricardo King Sang Mak, and Yue-him Tam
De Gruyter Oldenbourg | 2018
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110587685
OVERVIEW
This is a multi-author volume resulted from an international conference focusing on topics related to our understanding of the role of China in the global history. Apart from introductory chapters exploring methodological issues and providing big pictures of framing China in the world in particular time zones, this volume also covers rich discussions on the following themes from the ancient period to the twentieth century: organized water transport, cultural interactions, navigators, port cities, smuggling activities, customs service, foreign relations, migration, and diasporas. Written by scholars of different generations who are based in diverse regions including Canada, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, Taiwan, the UK and the US, the chapters in this volume either address old questions from new perspectives, or table new topics that were largely ignored in previous scholarship. Some go further to brainstorm possible research directions in the future. This thought-provoking volume will be beneficial to readers who are interested in rethinking China’s position in the global historical stage against the backdrop of Post-Orientalism.
This edited volume features 12 papers touching on China’s long-established connection to the outside world, documenting the various processes and resulting dynamics produced by the movement of peoples, goods and cultures.
AUTHOR INFORMATION
Clara Wing-chung HO, Hong Kong Baptist University
Ricardo King-sang MAK, Hong Kong Baptist University
Yue-him TAM, Macalester College
Contents
Introduction —
Part I. Perspectives on the world. World/global history and the positionality of historians / Haneda Masashi —
The world in the year 1000 : the view from Beijing / Valerie Hansen —
Part II. China’s maritime world : from ancient to modern times. The emergence of organized water transport in early China : its social and geographical contexts / Chinhau Lei —
Cultural interactions throughout the ancient South China Sea / Kin-Sum (Sammy) Li —
The role of Vietnam in China’s foreign relations / Han Xiaorong —
Advantages of Chinese navigators during the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries / Chen Kuo-tung —
The pearl by the Bohai Sea : Qinhuangdao in the early modern period / Ronald C. Po —
Smuggling and legal pluralism on the China coast : the rise and demise of the joint investigation rules, 1864-1934 / Philip Thai —
Beyond tariffs and duties : the Chinese maritime customs service and its representations of China’s maritime world c.1912-49 / Donna Brunero —
Part III. Migrations and the travel of ideas. International law and China’s entry into the ‘family of nations’ : the question of forced migration and refugees / Glen Peterson —
At the edge of two worlds : rethinking the Portuguese diaspora in British Hong Kong / Catherine S. Chan —
The global migration of a Chinese family : Kwan Yuen-cheung and his descendants / Ying-Yue Yung.