Margaret Tart, Lao She, and the Opium-Master's Wife
Race and Class among Chinese Commercial Immigrants in London and Australia, 1866-1929
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2108744 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Stephen Auerbach (0000-0002-7868-791X, University of Nottingham, corresponding author), Sascha Auerbach |
| Year | 2013 |
| Volume | 55 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 35-64 |
| Publication date | 2013-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Comparative Studies in Society and History (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0010-4175 • E-ISSN: 1475-2999 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/s0010417512000576 |
| OpenAlex | W1973416567 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 4 |
| References cited | 37 |
What little has been written about Chinese immigrants in the British Empire has focused mainly on laborers, commonly known as 'coolies,' and their roles in imperial society, culture, and industry. Chinese commercial immigrants, though they loomed large in public dialogues about race, migration, and empire, have been virtually ignored. This article examines how such immigrants were represented, and how two prominent individuals represented themselves, in London and metropolitan Australia, respectively, during a high tide of British imperialism and Chinese global migration. By the 1920s, the ardent pro-British sentiment expressed by Mei Quong Tart, thede factorepresentative of the Chinese merchant class in Australia, had been superseded by the anti-colonial critique of Lao She, one of China's foremost modern novelists. Lao She's semi-autobiographical depiction of Chinese life in London condemned the violent and emasculating character of British imperialism, while also excoriating Chinese society's failure to modernize, cohere as a nation, and overcome internecine class conflicts. Both authors were concerned with social relations between Chinese men and white British women, as were British commentators throughout this period, and with differentiating themselves from laboring Chinese immigrants. Contrary to Stuart Hall's famous assertion that 'race is the modality through which class is lived,' for these Chinese commercial immigrants class and gender proved to be more essential than were crude concepts of race to their experiences and self-identification, and ultimately to British society's rejection of their attempts to assimilate
Ancient history · China · Colonialism · Empire · Immigration · Political science · Sociology · Wife · Australian History and Society · Gender Studies · History · Law · Migration, Ethnicity, and Economy · Travel Writing and Literature
Indentured labor in the age of imperialism, 1834-1922
John Bull’s Island
Specters of Mother India
Lure of the Modern
London 1900
Race, Law, and "The Chinese Puzzle" in Imperial Britain
Gender and Class in Modern Europe
Edge of Empires
Democratic Subjects
Fragments of Empire
Colonial Discourse and Post-Colonial Theory
Lao She and the Chinese Revolution
City of Dreadful Delight
Drawing the Global Colour Line
At the Heart of the Empire
Colonial masculinity
The Foreign Element”
Pooterism or Partnership? Marriage and Masculine Identity in the Lower Middle Class, 1870–1920
Empire and sexual opportunity
Drawing the Global Colour Line
White Women and Men of Colour
Limehouse Blues
The Imperial Working Class Makes Itself 'White
Atlantic and Pacific Crossings
Gender, Race, and Semicolonialism
Opium and the People
Lao She and the Chinese Revolution
Imperial Leather
Performing identity
In Medias Race (And Class)
Tongues Untied
| Unique citing works | 4 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,57 |
| Citation span | 2019 - 2024 (6) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 3 |