Jayati Bhattacharya - Indian and Chinese Immigrant Communities

Indian and Chinese
Immigrant Communities

ANTHEM-ISEAS INDIA-CHINA STUDIES

Anthem-ISEAS India-China Studies seeks to promote the field of Sino-Indian studies. This area of research includes ancient and contemporary interaction/dialogue between India and China, the comparative analysis of Indian and Chinese societies, and Indian and Chinese perceptions of and writings about each other. The series is a collaboration between Anthem Press and the Nalanda-Sriwijaya Centre at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore.

Series Editor

Tansen Sen City University of New York, USA

Editorial Board

Jinhua Chen University of British Columbia, Canada
Prasenjit Duara National University of Singapore, Singapore
Toru Funayama Kyoto University, Japan
Ashok Gurung India China Institute, The New School, USA
Huang Jing Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, Singapore
Victor H. Mair University of Pennsylvania, USA
Mohan Malik Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies, USA
C. Raja Mohan Observer Research Foundation, India
C. V. Ranganathan Former Indian Ambassador to China
N. C. Sen Former Foreign Expert, Foreign Languages Bureau, China
Peter van der Veer Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity, Germany
Bangwei Wang Centre for India Studies, Peking University, China
Anand Yang University of Washington, USA

The Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS) was established as an autonomous organization in 1968. It is a regional centre dedicated to the study of socio-political, security and economic trends and developments in Southeast Asia and its wider geostrategic and economic environment. The Institutes research programmes are the Regional Economic Studies (RES, including ASEAN and APEC), Regional Strategic and Political Studies (RSPS), and Regional Social and Cultural Studies (RSCS).

ISEAS Publishing, an established academic press, has issued more than 2,000 books and journals. It is the largest scholarly publisher of research about Southeast Asia from within the region. ISEAS Publishing works with many other academic and trade publishers and distributors to disseminate important research and analyses from and about Southeast Asia to the rest of the world.

Indian and Chinese
Immigrant Communities

Comparative Perspectives

Edited by
Jayati Bhattacharya
and Coonoor Kripalani

Anthem Press
An imprint of Wimbledon Publishing Company
www.anthempress.com

This edition first published in UK and USA 2015
by ANTHEM PRESS
7576 Blackfriars Road, London SE1 8HA, UK
or PO Box 9779, London SW19 7ZG, UK
and
244 Madison Ave #116, New York, NY 10016, USA

A copublication with
ISEAS Publishing
Institute of Southeast Asian Studies
30 Heng Mui Keng Terrace
Pasir Panjang
Singapore 119614

2015 Jayati Bhattacharya and Coonoor Kripalani editorial matter and selection; individual chapters individual contributors

The moral right of the authors has been asserted.

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Indian and Chinese immigrant communities : comparative perspectives / edited by Jayati Bhattacharya and Coonoor Kripalani.
pages cm (Anthem-ISEAS India-China studies)
A copublication with ISEAS Publishing.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-78308-362-6 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. East Indian diaspora. 2. Chinese diaspora. 3. Human geographyAsia. 4. AsiaEthnic relations.
I. Bhattacharya, Jayati, editor. II. Kripalani, Coonoor, editor. III. Bose, Sugata, 1956. Blackbirders refitted Container of (work):
DS432.5.I444 2015
305.891411dc23
2014046608

ISBN-13: 978 1 78308 362 6 (Hbk)
ISBN-10: 1 78308 362 X (Hbk)

Cover image: Toa55 / Shutterstock.com

This title is also available as an ebook.

From victims of a new system of slavery to valued non-residents, from sojourning abroad to eventual settlement and political integration, the images of generations of Indians and Chinese moving out of their homes flash across the pages of this volume of essays. Whether the boatloads of poor coming out of British India and the independent India inherited by the nationalists, or those contracted out of Imperial China and escaping a China in chaos or at war, the rich variety of peoples described here make words like migrant and diaspora quite inadequate to encompass them. Thus the authors of the essays in this volume are not content to find labels for these people, or pin down the correct terminology to describe what they have been through, but have dug deeply into a wide range of sources to explain the experiences that shaped the communities they established far away from home.

Indian and Chinese merchants have been trading abroad for centuries. Where the labour classes were concerned, however, it was the Indians who got onto official records first. By the early nineteenth century, the British who controlled the Indian economy also had a global trading and plantation empire to fill with hard-working labour. They institutionalized a system of contracts so that their enterprises could be assured of a dependable supply. In China, on the other hand, the Qing emperor pretended that good Chinese stay at home to look after their parents and tend their tax-producing fields. Those who traded outside the country or sought work and adventure overseas without explicit permission were outlaws or traitors hiding in foreign lands. In their desire to seek work outside China, they had to depend on their kinfolk or put themselves at the mercy of unscrupulous recruiters. Until the end of the second half of the century, no mandarin wanted to know about the working conditions of the Chinese communities in East and Southeast Asian ports and in the new lands across the Pacific Ocean. Few cared that thousands of their Chinese subjects were joining the Indians to do the work that African slaves were no longer available to do. Also, unlike the Indians, who were largely sent to the British tropical empire, the Chinese often had to confront more draconian discrimination policies in North America, Oceania, as well as in French, Dutch and Spanish-speaking territories.

As long as the British were still administering India, Indian labour was supplied along an officially approved trajectory of supply and growth. Independent India took time to review its policies towards non-resident Indians and gradually devised new contract systems to serve labour destinations close by, notably in the Middle East. In contrast, the successive governments of republican China after 1911 found political value in the overseas communities. In turn, the Chinese abroad often responded to political slogans with patriotic zeal. Both the Republic of China and the Peoples Republic of China maintained large offices in the countrys major cities to manage the family and locality bonds that official policies went out of the way to strengthen. The contrast between Indian and Chinese official attitudes towards their respective communities is striking. This volume provides a fascinating account of the consequences of differing official policies on communities around the world.