Distant Shores - (Histories of Economic Life) by Melissa MacAuley

About the Book

"China has conventionally been considered a land empire whose lack of maritime and colonial reach contributed to its economic decline after the mid-eighteenth century. Distant Shores challenges this view, showing that the economic expansion of southeastern Chinese rivaled the colonial ambitions of Europeans overseas. In a story that dawns with the Industrial Revolution and culminates in the Great Depression, Melissa Macauley explains how sojourners from an ungovernable corner of China emerged among the commercial masters of the South China Sea. She focuses on Chaozhou, a region in the great maritime province of Guangdong, whose people shared a repertoire of ritual, cultural, and economic practices. Macauley traces how Chaozhouese at home and abroad reaped many of the benefits of an overseas colonial system without establishing formal governing authority. Their power was sustained instead through a mosaic of familial, brotherhood, and commercial relationships spread across the ports of Bangkok, Singapore, Saigon, Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Swatow. The picture that emerges is not one of Chinese divergence from European modernity but rather of a convergence in colonial sites that were critical to modern development and accelerating levels of capital accumulation. A magisterial work of scholarship, Distant Shores reveals how the transoceanic migration of Chaozhouese laborers and merchants across a far-flung maritime world linked the Chinese homeland to an ever-expanding frontier of settlement and economic extraction"--

Book Synopsis

A pioneering history that transforms our understanding of the colonial era and China's place in it

China has conventionally been considered a land empire whose lack of maritime and colonial reach contributed to its economic decline after the mid-eighteenth century. Distant Shores challenges this view, showing that the economic expansion of southeastern Chinese rivaled the colonial ambitions of Europeans overseas.

In a story that dawns with the Industrial Revolution and culminates in the Great Depression, Melissa Macauley explains how sojourners from an ungovernable corner of China emerged among the commercial masters of the South China Sea. She focuses on Chaozhou, a region in the great maritime province of Guangdong, whose people shared a repertoire of ritual, cultural, and economic practices. Macauley traces how Chaozhouese at home and abroad reaped many of the benefits of an overseas colonial system without establishing formal governing authority. Their power was sustained instead through a mosaic of familial, fraternal, and commercial relationships spread across the ports of Bangkok, Singapore, Saigon, Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Swatow. The picture that emerges is not one of Chinese divergence from European modernity but rather of a convergence in colonial sites that were critical to modern development and accelerating levels of capital accumulation.

A magisterial work of scholarship, Distant Shores reveals how the transoceanic migration of Chaozhouese laborers and merchants across a far-flung maritime world linked the Chinese homeland to an ever-expanding frontier of settlement and economic extraction.

Review Quotes

"A captivating journey through time and space. . . . Macauley's Distant Shores is a vital contribution to the study of Chinese history."---Ong Soon Keong, The Journal of Development Studies

"[A] delightful and inspiring book."---Ronald C. Po, Journal of Asian Studies

"[A] game-changer for early modern Chinese maritime history. . . . Distant Shores is an incredibly important book that will influence historical scholarship on the Qing Empire, Southeast Asia, and the global economy for years to come. The fact that it is packed with so many colourful characters and poignant vignettes is just icing on the cake."---Ryan Holroyd, Pacific Affairs

"[An] excellent study. . . . This compelling work not only provides a fresh look at the rationale behind the first Opium War, but also importantly deconstructs the rhetoric of the widely accepted fundamental divergence of Europe and China supposed to have developed starting in the eighteenth century."---Bart Dessein, Journal of the European Association for Chinese Studies

"[A] deeply researched study. . . . Distant Shores succeeds in its objective to further nuance the conventional narrative of China's decline throughout the long 19th century by shifting the gaze to the southeastern littoral."---Yorim Spoelder, Asian Review of Books

"Winner of the Bentley Book Prize, World History Association"

About the Author

Melissa Macauley is associate professor of history at Northwestern University. She is the author of Social Power and Legal Culture: Litigation Masters in Late Imperial China.