Migration and Settlement

Abstract

The fashionable British view on the Chinese has, over the last 300 years, rung many changes on the bells marked vice to virtue, including (in roughly chronological order): philosopher, tyrant, Arcadian phalansterist, yellow peril, evil genius, opium-victim, drug-peddler, noble patriot, rabble-rouser, wartime ally, Red threat, frugal peasant, blue ant, seaman, landsman, washerman, laundry-lord, pauper-cook, getrich-quick caterer, inscrutable outsider, benighted illiterate, academic whiz kid, likely member of the professions and salariat, and (most recently) illegal immigrant and exploited cockle-picker. Some of the images stem from racist imagining. Others reflect real transformations over time.