China and the West in the Modern World – serie

Tribute and Trade: China and Global Modernity explores encounters between China and the West during this period and beyond, into the early 20th century, through examples drawn from art, literature, science, politics, music, cooking, clothing and more.

The first novel of the Chinese Australian experience, it is a roller-coaster tale of blackmail, murder, betrayal and even thylacine attack, partly based on real people, places and events.

"The true strength and value of this book lies in the fact that it contains first hand accounts ... South Flows the Pearl is not just an important historical text, it's also a compelling, emotional and at times surprising read."

Made in Chinatown delves into a little-known aspect of Australia’s past: its hundreds of Chinese furniture factories. These businesses thrived in the post-goldrush era, becoming an important economic activity for Chinese immigrants and their descendants and a vital part of Australia’s furniture industry. Yet, owing to an exclusionary vision for Australia as a bastion of ‘white’ industry and labour, these factories were targeted by anti-Chinese political campaigns and legislative restrictions. Guided by Chinese manufacturers’ and workers’ own reflections and records, this book examines how these factories operated under the exclusionary vision of White Australia. Historian Peter Gibson uses previously untapped archival sources to investigate the local and international factors that boosted the industry, and the business and labour practices associated with factory operation. He explores the strategies employed in efforts to resist injustice, and the place of Chinese furniture factories within the contexts of Australian enterprise, work and consumerism more broadly. Made in Chinatown argues that Chinese Australian furniture manufacturers and their employees were far more adaptable, and the White Australia vision less pervasive, than most histories would suggest.

Benefiting from recently catalogued archival materials, The Flip Side: Old China Hands and the American Popular Imagination, 1935–1985 evaluates the influence of an ensemble of well-known Americans born or bred in China – Pearl S. Buck, Henry R. Luce, Owen Lattimore and John Hersey – after their return to the United States of America.The children of missionaries and others serving China, all contributed in significant ways to the globalisation of the American ideal in the 20th century, even as each sought in different roles – as publishers, as novelists, as scholars – to centre Chinese values and concerns in the anglophone public sphere. As Chinese ideas and values met the projection of American soft power and governmentality, a uniquely bilateral, global imaginary arose, wherein respect for China as an emerging force encountered Western reaction. For these “old China hands”, the return to the USA resulted in unique and differing sociocultural formations: Buck’s intersectional literary populism on behalf of “the Chinese people”; Henry R. Luce’s press internationalism; Lattimore’s “inner Asian” regional imaginaries; and Hersey’s China trilogy allegories. All were keen observers of and participants in international networks combining a diversity of China-based expertise and resources that continued to inform their everyday work at a great distance. Both public and private, these networks, onshore and off, enabled and energised their own advocacy that dared to imagine a Chinese future distinct from its colonial or semi-feudal past.The Flip Side asserts that these American stakeholders occupied a transitional but crucial role in the rise of China in Western imagination, prior to China’s assertion of sovereignty over its own global role and message.

Gardner Molina dismantles the myth of a single Chinese Australian community and rebuilds a solid understanding of many diverse communities instead; each with their own aims, needs and participatory capacities.

Patriots and Propaganda uncovers the multifaceted relationships between China, Australia, and the Australian Chinese diaspora, highlighting the political, racial and class dynamics that shaped these interactions.

Sinophone Australia opens a new window onto Australian history by foregrounding Chi-nese-language sources as a lens through which to reinterpret the nation’s past. Under-standing Australian history through sources written in a different language offers a familiar yet fundamentally different perspective on the Australian experience.This groundbreaking volume brings together a rich collection of primary sources – letters, essays, travelogues – written in Chinese and now translated into English, spanning from the gold rush era of the 1850s to the postwar reflections of the 1950s. Each chapter in-cludes primary sources translated into English and preceded by an academic introduction written by a historian who has engaged with these sources. In this respect, Sinophone Australia revises the Anglo-hegemony of historical writing, providing glimpses of non-English historical documents with the hopes that this will lead to the expansion of Australian history, just as a new multilingual generation of historians stands up to interpret the vast amount of source documents written in other languages.Beyond its contribution to Australian history, Sinophone Australia positions these narratives within the broader framework of the global Sinophone, addressing themes that resonate across settler colonies and Chinese-speaking communities worldwide. Sharing analysis from historians who have extensive experience working with Chinese-language sources on Australian history, Sinophone Australia invites scholars and readers to reconsider the intersections of language, migration and identity in shaping historical knowledge.

A rare and unique effort to combine translations of primary sources with professional history writing for Chinese Australian history, and perhaps for any non-English language account of AustraliaBrings together historians with extensive experience working with Chinese language sources on Australian history, well positioned to explain how these sources can trans-form our understanding of Australia’s past and presentMany of the translations in this book were produced in collaboration with international graduate students, keen to learn about Australia and eager to contribute their knowledge of different languagesIdeal for historians of the global Sinophone, as well as those interested in Australian historyAccessible for undergraduate students, and therefore well suited for teaching Australian and Sinophone historySinophone Australia opens a new window onto Australian history by foregrounding Chinese-language sources as a lens through which to reinterpret the nation’s past. Understanding Australian history through sources written in a different language offers a familiar yet fundamentally different perspective on the Australian experience.This groundbreaking volume brings together a rich collection of primary sources – letters, essays, travelogues – written in Chinese and now translated into English, spanning from the gold rush era of the 1850s to the postwar reflections of the 1950s. Each chapter includes primary sources translated into English and preceded by an academic introduction written by a historian who has engaged with these sources. In this respect, Sinophone Australia revises the Anglo-hegemony of historical writing, providing glimpses of non-English historical documents with the hopes that this will lead to the expansion of Australian history, just as a new multilingual generation of historians stands up to interpret the vast amount of source documents written in other languages.Beyond its contribution to Australian history, Sinophone Australia positions these narratives within the broader framework of the global Sinophone, addressing themes that resonate across settler colonies and Chinese-speaking communities worldwide. Sharing analysis from historians who have extensive experience working with Chinese-language sources on Australian history, Sinophone Australia invites scholars and readers to reconsider the intersections of language, migration and identity in shaping historical knowledge.