Ambition and Identity: Chinese Merchant Elites in Colonial Manila, 1880–1916

Introduction

Introduction 1 On May 9, 1912, the Manila Times reported that the Manila Chinese General Chamber of Commerce, the leading voice of the local Chinese community, had formally recognized the new Republic of China and had received official greetings from China’s new president , Yuan Shikai. Many in Manila’s Chinese community responded enthusiastically to the overthrow of the moribund Qing dynasty by a modern Chinese republic. Some young Chinese patriots even had a celebratory photo taken unfurling the new republican flag. Given that the leaders of the 1911 Revolution, especially Dr. Sun Yat-sen, would later give great credit to Chinese overseas for their role in the fall of the dynasty, such overt support for the new republic either by the dour heads of the chamber or by the younger generation was completely understandable. Only six years earlier, however, the Chinese Chamber of Commerce had been founded with the direct support of the Qing government and had welcomed the Qing consul general as an honorary member. Moreover, the Chinese merchant elite, who controlled the Chamber of Commerce, had been aggressively emphasizing their loyalty and personal ties to the dynasty for over thirty years. These loyal overtures were reciprocated. In the last four decades of its rule, the dynasty had reoriented its foreign policy agenda to emphasize the protection of Chinese overseas through the establishment of consulates and embassies in major nodes of Chinese emigration—allowing Beijing to develop institutional linkages with its expatriate subjects—and had reformulated its national development strategy to capitalize on the wealth and talent of Chinese overseas . Manila’s Chinese merchant elite had been significant players in 2 Introduction Figure 1. Local Tongmenghui members unfurling the new national and party flags in Manila, 1911. Courtesy of Guomindang Party Archives, Jinshan, Taiwan. this process, but all these efforts were insufficient to save the faltering dynasty or to guarantee the loyalty of the Chinese overseas.1 The reorientation of Beijing’s foreign policy agenda had been rapid. Throughout most of the Qing dynasty (1644–1911), the imperial court had problematic relations with Chinese overseas. Various forces loyal to the Ming dynasty (1368–1644) had taken refuge in Southeast Asia in the late seventeenth century and harassed the South China coast in the name of restoring the Ming. Taiwan, once a Dutch outpost, fell to the pirate Koxinga, the most notorious Ming loyalist, whose family held the island until it fell to a massive ManchuChinese expedition in 1683. Other Ming loyalists found refuge in Vietnam and Thailand, often blending with established Chinese communities. Ethnic Chinese interaction with the region was therefore suspect in the eyes of the Manchu court. In the eighteenth century , Beijing took various measures to ban emigration for any purpose ; while these laws were often relaxed in the case of merchants, it remained illegal for Chinese to travel abroad without official permis- Introduction 3 sion. In the late nineteenth century, however, the massive and largely uncontrollable flow of Chinese into Southeast Asia and the Americas as well as the dynasty’s pressing need for talent and money forced a reappraisal of Qing emigration policy. A series of accords with Britain and France in the 1850s and 1860s sought to regulate labor recruitment in China’s treaty ports. The 1868 Burlingame Treaty, between China and the United States, recognized the right of Chinese to emigrate freely and heralded a new official attitude toward the Chinese overseas.2 Emigration laws were constantly revised, and the connections between Beijing and the Chinese overseas were continuously enhanced up until the dynasty’s final collapse. Institutional innovation accompanied this policy reorientation. In the 1870s and 1880s, the Qing established consulates and embassies throughout the world, charged to protect Chinese subjects and thereby improve the dynasty’s international image. Investigative missions sent to Peru and Cuba in 1874 resulted in treaties that promised better treatment of Chinese laborers. Beijing successfully pressured foreign governments to end the abominable coolie trade and made the protection of Chinese overseas the first priority of China’s new ambassadors to the United States, Spain, Peru, and Great Britain. In an era when China’s international position was worsening daily, the Qing dynasty managed to enjoy a few foreign relations successes in the area of overseas Chinese affairs. Beijing also courted the money and talent of the Chinese overseas for its self-strengthening program. In a reversal of the Confucian...