Six Companies diplomacy: Chinese merchants and late Qing policy toward exclusion, 1848--1911.

摘要

This study demonstrates that Chinese merchants are essential to understanding every stage of Chinese experience in nineteenth-century United States. Organized through the Six Companies, their influence decisively shaped late Qing policy toward exclusion.; The dissertation examines the role of Cantonese merchants in Chinese immigration. It sees Chinese exodus to California within the context of wider sphere of Chinese emigration resulting from the meeting of old and new market economies.; In addition to their role spearheading immigration, Chinese merchants also formed a powerful influence within the Chinese immigrant communities. They brought their native-place association or huiguan tradition with them and established the Six Companies, a federation of huiguan in California. Like their counterparts in China and other countries, the Six Companies operated not only as an arbiter of community disputes but also a vehicle for meeting outside challenges which affected their members.; The anti-Chinese movement gravely injured Chinese merchants and the Six Companies became the chief target. In this respect, I argue that the long-standing perception that the Six Companies functioned as the main Chinese labor brokers was an ideological construction that is unsupported by empirical evidence.; In the early period the Six Companies became the defender of the Chinese and effectively and simultaneously fought against the anti-Chinese movement on several fronts. More importantly, the Six Companies profoundly shaped late Qing policy toward the United States. Firstly, late Qing opposition to Chinese exclusion stemmed from the petitions of the Six Companies which led to the establishment of the first Chinese legation in the United States. Also, spokesmen for the Chinese community, the Six Companies set the rhetorical tone and defined the strategies for subsequent struggles of the Chinese diplomats. The Qing legation followed the Six Companies' leadership in defending Chinese treaty rights, demanding indemnity, litigating on behalf of Chinese civil and property rights, and lobbying for liberalizing the immigration legislation and reforming Chinese community.