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  • Chinese in Colonial Burma: A Migrant Community in a Multiethnic State by Yi Li
  • Siew Han Yeo
Yi Li. 2017. Chinese in Colonial Burma: A Migrant Community in a Multiethnic State. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-1-137-51900-9

A history of the Chinese community in colonial Burma could not arrive at a more crucial juncture for Burma and Southeast Asian studies. Compared to other countries in Southeast Asia, the history of the Chinese community in Burma is under-researched, a gap that Yi Li's Chinese in Colonial Burma: A Migrant Community in a Multiethnic State directly addresses. Li's monograph draws on English and Chinese-language archival, vernacular, and epigraphical primary sources from 1826–1942. Li's translations of epigraphical sources from existing Chinese institutions in Burma are not to be underestimated. These are unique sources of historical importance that are essential for the study of overseas Chinese history, and as Li's book demonstrates, reveal much about the transnational nature of Chinese diasporic communities in British Burma and more broadly, Southeast Asia.

The book is split into two parts: the first discusses the settlement and arrival of Chinese migrants in British Burma. Chapter One lays out Li's main argument: that the experience of the Burmese Chinese was unique because of their position between India-based colonialism in Burma and the "trans-territorial" experience of other British colonial territories like the Straits Settlements (p. 8). More cautiously, Li asserts that English and Chinese-language sources were the "most accessible and usable" (p. 11). Chapter Two analyzes the development of the Burma-China border in 1886 and its concomitant effects on how Yunnanese Chinese established community through local schools, newspapers, associations, and religious institutions in Heshun and Upper Burma (Tengyueh, Mandalay). The securing of the frontier in 1886 also meant increased interaction between the Yunnanese and incoming Hokkien and Cantonese migrants, subsequently changing [End Page 160] how all three groups came to be classified as "Burmese Chinese" under British colonial rule.

The second part of the book explores how the colonial state and Chinese institutions historically represented "Burmese Chinese" identity for Yunnanese, Hokkien, and Cantonese groups (p. 9). Chapter Three reconstructs a composite account of the Hokkien and Cantonese groups that migrated to Lower Burma in the 1900s to the 1930s and established new communal and religious institutions based on native-place and dialect groups in what is today Pathein, Pyapon, Myeik, and Yangon. Combining English-language colonial-era newspapers, reports, and publications such as Who's Who in Burma and Twentieth-Century Impressions, with Chinese-language press and clan association publications, Li examines the varied expressions of Chinese communal identity that continue to maintain a prominent presence in Yangon and Mandalay today (such as the Hokkien Kheng Hock Keong temple). Li also notes the historical records of Chinese religious processions, weddings, and funerals by significant individuals such as Lim Chin Tsong, a prominent Hokkien-Chinese merchant and member of Legislative Council in 1909. Chapters Four through Six address how common "myths" of the Chinese population were made in the colonial press and reports. These myths coalesce around the perception of the Chinese as a commercial community (p. 112), easily corrupted by the vices of opium and the crime of secret societies, and as an apolitical group. Chapter Seven concludes with the cautionary note about the difficulties of identifying the "in-betweens" of the Chinese-Burmese community due to the lack of a "distinctive profile" (p. 223).

Li's exhaustive coverage of Chinese and English language sources provides a new look at how the Chinese in Burma, as a smaller percentage of the diaspora in Southeast Asia, continued to transplant many of the same political, economic, and social networks through kinship connections. Chinese identity in this respect remains consistent with older histories that have identified the salience of political, social, and economic migrant networks as a key signifier of overseas [End Page 161] Chinese identity. Li for example argues that Chinese political organizations such as the Baohuanghui (Society to Protect the Emperor) in 1905 and Tongmenghui (Chinese Revolutionary Alliance) in 1908 united the Burmese Chinese community in their support for China as overseas Chinese...

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