Global Mobility and Nationalism: Chinese Migration and the Reterritorialization of Belonging, 1880–1910

Abstract

Globalization is not only the catchword of the day. At the same time, it refers back to a longer history, and historians have in recent years begun to analyze its genealogy. The years between 1880 and 1914, in particular, have caught the attention of recent scholarship as a high time of global exchange and cross-border interaction.1 The integration of the international economy, the political and imperial expansion of the West, and the increase in cultural exchanges across national borders contributed to a complex set of networks of global engagements. This did not go unnoticed by contemporaries who witnessed the process with enthusiasm, or apprehension. The integration of the world was indeed accompanied by the emergence of a form of global consciousness.2