Ambition and identity: China and the Chinese in the colonial Philippines, 1885--1912

A distinguishing feature of Chinese foreign policy in the modern era has been the Chinese government's relations with the millions of Chinese living overseas. By exploring the interaction between the Qing government, Spanish and American colonial governments, and the Philippine-Chinese during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries this dissertation demonstrates how these governments sought to exploit the Chinese overseas as an instrument of political, social, and economic strengthening, and how the Philippine-Chinese elite was able to manipulate imperial and colonial aspirations to further local interests. The significance of this approach is threefold; first it examines the institutions created by the Chinese government to co-opt overseas Chinese into its political agenda; second I describe the ways in which the local Chinese elite sought to create legitimacy by allying itself with external sources of authority; and third, by comparison to other colonial environments, I show that the development of Chinese identity in the colonial Philippines was conditioned by the specific characteristics of the host community.;Chapter Summary. This dissertation is divided into three parts. The first two chapters establish the historical setting. Chapter I introduces the international context of the early relations between China and the Philippines, the origins of the Philippine-Chinese community in the sixteenth century, the environment in which it was created, and Chinese state's first attempts to form linkages with the Philippine-Chinese. Chapter II examines the local context that conditioned the evolution of the Philippine-Chinese community during the Spanish period (1571-1898). The middle section is composed of Chapter III, and will show how the dynamics of Chinese elite leadership in the Spanish Philippines and the ambitions of one local elite, Carlos Palanca Chen Qianshan, shaped the early history of the Qing consulate-general in Manila. The final section, comprising Chapters IV and V, examines the Philippine-Chinese response to the dramatic changes that swept through Asia and the Philippines at the turn of this century. Chapter IV describes social, political, and institutional changes in the Chinese community, and Chapter V examines how the new Manila Chinese General Chamber of Commerce dealt with threats to its authority.