Encyclopedia of the Chinese Overseas (Chinese Worlds) - Hardcover

Pan, Lynn

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0700711228 ISBN 13: 9780700711222

Publisher: Routledge, 1998

Synopsis

Geographically organised, this Encyclopedia provides a panoramic view across past and present overseas Chinese communities worldwide. As such, it reflects the growing interest of international scholarship in diasporic communities and the worldwide surge in ethnic awareness.

The Chinese diaspora is produced by the interplay of diverse histories and traditions, inheriting Chinese experiences whilst also being modified and enriched by transplantation to other continents and civilisations. The Encyclopedia's task has been to cover the most important aspects of these experiences. The largest section consists of country-by-country profiles of individual Chinese communities. The rest divides into thematic sections on origins, migration, institutions, ties to China and inter-ethnic relations.

About this title

Review:

For many centuries, Chinese people have been emigrating and creating distinctively Chinese communities outside mainland China, even as they adjust to the foreign cultures in which they put down roots. A third-generation huaqiao, overseas Chinese, in Los Angeles is a very different person from one in, say, Manila, yet they share a heritage that may have molded their diverse experiences in similar ways. This book provides everything one could want to know about the Chinese diaspora in a very user-friendly way. Though encyclopedic in its wide-ranging detail, the information is not presented in encyclopedic form. First, essays analyze the origins of the overseas Chinese, their migrations, institutions, and relations with the motherland and with non-Chinese peoples. The rest of the book, more than half, is devoted to outlines of Chinese societies around the world: in Southeast Asia, the Americas, Australasia, Europe, East Asia, the Indian Ocean, and Africa. Maps, charts, drawings, and imaginatively chosen vintage and contemporary photographs describe the Chinese communities established in these disparate places. Questions of racial discrimination and identity in the modern world are approached rationally and dispassionately. A vast amount of history and social analysis is presented, yet editor Lynn Pan has maintained unusual clarity and accessibility in a book that could have been overwhelming in its thoroughness. --John Stevenson

From the Back Cover:

A valuable and-particularly for an encyclopedia-very readable work. Its unique strength is that half of it is made up of very substantial narrative, descriptive, and analytical chapters of different facets of the lives of Chinese overseas. The editor has succeeded remarkably in combining high standards of scholarship with an extremely readable style of exposition.-Prasenjit Duara, University of Chicago

About this edition

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0700711228
• ISBN 13: 9780700711222
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 400