Melissa Macauley on the 19th C. Expansion of Chinese in Southeast Asia

East Asia Now

On this episode of the East Asia Now podcast, Professor Melissa Macauley of Northwestern University discusses her interest in Chinese history and its connection to Southeast Asian history. In her book, Distant Shores: Colonial Encounters on China’s Maritime Frontier, she argues against the narrative that China lacked expansion and resources in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Following the lives of the overseas Chaozhouese, who settled in places like Siam and Indonesia and created a translocal economy and informal institutions to maintain their settlements.