The history of the Chinese communities in the British West Indies has not garnered much academic interest due to scholars subconsciously viewing such significance as based on population scale, distance from China, and nation-state-centered perspectives. This study aims to present new images of China’s modern history, analyzing the British West Indies’ Chinese community from the 1880s to the 1970s and the diaspora Chinese figures of the community who had a significant impact. Class and transnationalism of overseas Chinese in between multiple empires will be the main discussions in the presentation of this study.
Joining the bandwagon of rapid development of the commodity crop economics in the British colonies and rising into the middle class of local communities, many Chinese in the British West Indies took intriguing measures and actions to mitigate conflicts with other ethnic groups and with other Chinese at various levels of economic success and with different political stances. The upper-middle-class Chinese, both those who stayed in the region as local elites and who became part of the diaspora of Chinese elites, demonstrated a diasporic nature and made global choices in their education, career, and life in British Malaya, the UK, the US, and China. Their transnationalism, which wove their history with the intersectionality of these areas and China, embraced many diasporic Chinese staff and agents in the ROC government and was one of the stages in the careers of the diasporic Chinese elites.
Several examples of class and transnationalism are shown in this presentation, including the little-known final days of Eugene Chen from 1941 to 1944. Chen, who was born in Trinidad, West Indies, became Minister of Foreign Affairs of the ROC in the 1920s and 30s, and died while under house arrest by the Japanese imperial army. Chen enjoyed a close relationship with diasporic Japanese journalist Tosuke Yoshida, a former member of the Japanese Communist Party.
Setsuko Sonoda, PhD (the University of Tokyo, 2008) is a Professor at the College and Graduate School of International Relations of Ritsumeikan University, Japan. Considering historical and sociological studies on Chinese in the Americas as her lifework, she has conducted archival and fieldwork in various places in East Asia and the Americas. In addition, she has published a monograph, The Chinese in the Americas and Modern China (University of Tokyo Press, 2009), and co-authored books and articles on the history of Chinese communities there and China’s extraterritorial policies from the second half of the nineteenth century to the present. Currently, she is a one-year Senior Associate at Pembroke College and an Academic Visitor of the Oxford China Centre.
