‘Chinamen, Wherever We Go’: Chinese Nationalism and Guangdong Merchants in British Columbia, 1871–1911

Abstract

The 1899 formation of the Bao Huang Hui, or Chinese Empire Reform Association, marked the emergence of a collective Chinese nationalist identity among British Columbia migrants from Guangdong province in South China. This identity transcended more localized ones based on ethnicity, clan, and place of origin, to construct what Benedict Anderson has called 'imagined community.' Although linked to China and elsewhere in the Chinese diaspora, this identity had emerged out of the on-going political response of elite merchants to the conditions of their lives in Canada, and their efforts to maintain their class and gendered interests. These conditions included white supremacist exclusion in British Columbia, participation in a trans-Pacific economy, and the organization of schools to educate members of the rising generation. As a response to conditions encountered in British Columbia, this 'Chinese' nationalism was just as 'Canadian' as it was Chinese. Its continuities between China and Canada challenge the Eurocentric categories commonly framing histories of Canada.

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