Globalizing Jiangmen: The Legacy of Returned Overseas Chinese in the Development, Integration, and Modernization of the Sze Yup and its Enclaves Abroad

Abstract

As foreign interlopers collided onto China amidst the Century of Humiliation in the late nineteenth century, the centuries-old settlements of the Pearl River Delta underwent a self-empowerment campaign carried out by its own inhabitants. As the inhabitants of what would formally become “Jiangmen” set out to become the Chinese diaspora in trans-Pacific migration, they brought back the capital necessary to transform their ancestral homes into a cosmopolitan metropolis with a sense of place distinct from the rest of Guangdong. Between the opening of Jiangmen Wharf in 1902 and domestic conflicts in the 1920s, returned overseas Chinese built riverside commercial hubs, industrial mills, and even railroad lines with their own expertise, labor, and capital. Simultaneously, they exported their distinct variant of “Chinese” language, culture, and cuisine across the trans-Pacific world, most visibly in North American Chinatowns. Whilst many political actors sought a top-down modernization in Asia, the city of Jiangmen achieved a globalization and modernization that was entirely its own, only receiving marginal assistance from externa actors. Drawing from Chinese county and prefecture-level gazetteers and American newspapers, I argue the distinct cultural and economic power of the Jiangmen diaspora and its returned members, both in Jiangmen and abroad.