The rise of the economic power of the ethnic Chinese, known also as overseas Chinese, Chinese overseas or Chinese diaspora, was a late 20th century phenomenon. It was partly the result of the rise of the Four Little Asian Dragons in the 1970s, and was speeded up by the tempo of globalization towards the end of that century. This book explores the ethnic identity and boundary of the Chinese as minority groups in foreign lands, and as sub-groups among the Chinese themselves. It examines prominent personalities that had wielded considerable influence in the ethnic Chinese communities in the economic, social and educational arenas. It also discusses the type of politics that had impacted their relationship with their mother country — China.Containing 16 papers presented at various international conferences in Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, China and Taiwan as keynote speeches and research findings which are predominantly unpublished in English, this book provides fresh perspectives and re-interpretations on the issues of ethnicity, leadership and politics in the ethnic Chinese worlds.

The League of Nations Advisory Committee on the Traffic in Opium and Other Dangerous Drugs, created in 1920, culminated almost eight decades of political turmoil over opium trafficking, which was by far the largest state-backed drug trade in the age of empire. Opponents of opium had long struggled to rein in the profitable drug. Opium’s Long Shadow shows how diverse local protests crossed imperial, national, and colonial boundaries to gain traction globally and harness public opinion as a moral deterrent in international politics after World War I. Steffen Rimner traces the far-flung itineraries and trenchant arguments of reformers—significantly, feminists and journalists—who viewed opium addiction as a root cause of poverty, famine, “white slavery,” and moral degradation. These activists targeted the international reputation of drug-trading governments, first and foremost Great Britain, British India, and Japan, becoming pioneers of the global political tactic we today call naming and shaming. But rather than taking sole responsibility for their own behavior, states in turn appropriated anti-drug criticism to shame fellow sovereigns around the globe. Consequently, participation in drug control became a prerequisite for membership in the twentieth-century international community. Rimner relates how an aggressive embrace of anti-drug politics earned China and other Asian states new influence on the world stage. The link between drug control and international legitimacy has endured. Amid fierce contemporary debate over the wisdom of narcotics policies, the 100-year-old moral consensus Rimner describes remains a backbone of the international order.

The bibliographical essays on the studies of the ethnic Chinese in the ASEAN states will be extremely useful as it is the first monograph of its kind and also up-to-date. It begins with a general overview on the studies of the ethnic Chinese in the ASEAN states, and is followed by five country studies and two essays on specific topics. All essays in this volume were written by specialists.

Oral History is a means of recording the past, through interviews. There has been much oral history activity in Southeast Asia since the 1960s at both the institutional and individual levels. This volume contains a range of papers dealing with the theoretical, methodological and practical issues in oral history and the unique problems of their application in the Southeast Asian context. The authors include both academics and practitioners who bring with them a wealth of expertise and experience in anthropology, history, sociology, publishing and archives administration.

With around 30 million migrants worldwide, the ethnic Chinese and the Chinese in diaspora form the largest diaspora in the world. The economic reform of China in the late 1970s marked a huge phase of migration from China, and the new migrants have had a major impact on the local societies (including the ethnic Chinese) and on China. The transnational networks between the Chinese in diaspora and China have become even more significant as China has emerged as an economic world power.

Dreams of Gold Dreams of Power These drove men and women to seek their fortune in Sarawak. They came from Britain to carve a future on virgin soil from China - to escape grinding poverty. They fought and traded, lived and died in the struggle to fulfil their dreams. Some lost their lives to bloodthirsty headhunters, or in the disease-ridden swamps and trackless jungles of the interior; some survived to make their fortune. Chinese, British, Malays rubbed shoulders with fearsome Sea Dayaks, and nomads in the hunter-gatherer stage of evolution. The Steam Age met the Stone Age in this exotic, untouched land. Cultures clashed in a multiracial society. Charles Brooke, enigmatic White Rajah of Sarawak, was a man of vision, a man with a mission to tame the natives first, then to protect them from exploitation. His dream was to take them gently towards modern civilisation, to bring them the rewards of self-development. He was paternalistic but loving, a truly benevolent despot. Dreams of Adventure Dreams of Romance Stephen Young, a young graduate, arrives in Sarawak in 1898. Seduced by its virgin beauty steaming jungle, majestic mountains and noble savages he stays. Erotic intrigue, passion, violence and warfare surround him. His goal is to survive these with his head and his heart intact.