SOAS Research Online

Abstract

The Chinese of Burma and the Straits have been portrayed in two different ways in colonial historiography and the prevailing literature. On the one hand, Teo-chiu, Guangdong, Hokkien, Hakka, and "Baba" identifiers are often viewed in the historical literature as an important part of the Chinese heritage in the Straits of Melaka. On the other hand, the Chinese of Burma, at least for historiography of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, are often portrayed as a single community comprising both themselves and the Yunnanese. The Chinese of Burma, however, see themselves today and historically as little different from their Straits counterparts, sharing the same diversity of dialects and affiliations, and, among the Chinese population of Yangon, with little connection to the Chinese of Yunnan. This seminar addresses this dramatic contrast in the prevailing literature between the Overseas Chinese of Burma and of the Straits, and the incompatibility between the external and internal views of the Overseas Chinese of Burma. To do so, this seminar explains how colonial expectations of economic activity for the Overseas Chinese left its imprint on colonial historiography on the Overseas Chinese in two different contexts, in British Burma and the Straits Settlements.