Photographs constitute a unique record of the intimate history of
China’s interactions with Britain and its empire in the nineteenth
and twentieth centuries, a history on which the written record is
usually silent. Discovering family photographs tucked among the
piles of correspondence and diplomatic memoranda in the archives
first ignited my interest in the experiences of people of mixed
European and Chinese ancestry born out of contact between China
and the British empire. The product of this research is the first
comprehensive study of the life histories of Eurasians in Hong Kong,
the Chinese treaty ports, and Britain from the mid-nineteenth
century until the 1960s. Using a rich base of untapped sources
from China, Hong Kong, Britian and the United States, including
memoirs, consular correspondence and educational records, this
project maps the life trajectories of Eurasians from childhood to
retirement. While the contributions of illustrious Eurasian families
such as the Ho Tungs have received well-deserved recognition, this
project draws attention to the gamut of Eurasian life experiences.
While Eurasians were often valued by colonial elites for their ability
to cross between cultures – an ability which is suggested visually
in these two photographs of Eurasian women in Chinese and
Western dress – they were also shunned as evidence of the
transgression of ostensibly impermeable community boundaries.
Some individuals became notorious, such as Lawrence Kentwell,
an Oxford-trained barrister and crusader against the entrenched
racism of treaty-port institutions whose life ended ignominiously
with a conviction for collaborating with the Japanese wartime
puppet government. Many more lived quiet and ordinary lives on
the China coast. As this research shows, all were a constitutive part
of society in Britain and Asia and contributed in significant ways
to the economies, communities and cultures of port cities. |
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This project breaks new ground by situating the life stories of
Eurasians in the context of the professional and migration
opportunities – in addition to the growing fear of racial ‘mixing’ –
generated by the expansion of European empires. It demonstrates
how many Eurasians were able to draw upon personal and
professional ties across the globe in order to move between
different sites of empire in an era of hostility towards Chinese
migration, thereby forming international webs of familial
connections. To give one apt example, Lawrence Kentwell was
born in Hong Kong and lived in the United States, Britain and
Shanghai, while his wife was Hawaiian. By combining the
methodologies of social and political history, particularly by
considering how intimate family histories intersected with political
concerns such as policing the international movement of peoples,
this project shows how the ability of Eurasians to exploit a ‘mixed’
identity was constrained by increasingly strict definitions of national
belonging in China and the British empire from the 1920s onwards.
By drawing attention to the ways in which Eurasians negotiated
racial and national categories, this research can help us to
understand the ways in which ethnically-defined concepts of
citizenship impinge upon the lives of individuals in the present day.
Dr Catherine LADDS
Department of History
Hong Kong Baptist University
cladds@hkbu.edu.hk
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