| The nature of modernization along China's Southeast Coast and the role of overseas Chinese in that process is the subject of this dissertation. Beginning in the Ming dynasty, the global scope of Xiamen's trading networks, the historical roots of Xiamen's overseas Chinese in diaspora, migration, and international commerce, and the distinctive nature of Huaqiao “Chineseness” all combined to produce a narrative of community and development that would not only come to characterize Xiamen, but the entire southeast coast of China. The process of leaving and returning that characterized the sojourner experience of Xiamen's Huaqiao had much to do with the way many overseas viewed themselves and their relationship to their hometown. Xiamen, in turn, because of its place in the intra-Asian and increasingly international trading networks of global capitalism, became the heart of a Southeast coastal ideal of modernity within China that differed greatly with the centralizing forces of Beijing and Nanjing. Together they combined to produce a city and a populace whose identity a product of cosmopolitanism, commerce, and a resurgent Confucianism. |
