Post by NZBC on Dec 22, 2008 17:33:47 GMT 12
www.pacs.canterbury.ac.nz/documents/Microsoft%20Word%20-%20Willmott_WP17.pdf.
This is the second working paper to emerge from research I have undertaken over the
past fifteen years on Chinese in the South Pacific Countries. The first, Macmillan Brown
Centre for Pacific Studies Working Paper no. 12 (Willmott 2005), described the Chinese
communities in the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, and New Caledonia. The present working
paper examines the history of Chinese settlement in the smaller countries of the Pacific
and therefore excludes Fiji, Western Samoa and French Polynesia.
While some might feel the small numbers of Chinese in these countries hardly merits
research, it is my hope that students of Chinese abroad will appreciate summaries of all
that we know about them. One of my aims in undertaking this research was to fill a gap
in the published records on Chinese overseas, and for these small countries very little is
available at present. This working paper brings together information from archival
documents, published material and my own brief fieldwork in these countries, which took
place in 1993-1996.
Logistic constraints forced me to limit my area of research primarily to Polynesia and
eastern Melanesia. Of the Micronesian countries, I included only Kiribati and Nauru,
because the history of Chinese migration to these two countries, both traders and
labourers, is very similar to the rest of the South Pacific, whereas the other Micronesian
territories experienced quite different patterns of colonialism and migration (Oliver 1975,
104).
This is the second working paper to emerge from research I have undertaken over the
past fifteen years on Chinese in the South Pacific Countries. The first, Macmillan Brown
Centre for Pacific Studies Working Paper no. 12 (Willmott 2005), described the Chinese
communities in the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, and New Caledonia. The present working
paper examines the history of Chinese settlement in the smaller countries of the Pacific
and therefore excludes Fiji, Western Samoa and French Polynesia.
While some might feel the small numbers of Chinese in these countries hardly merits
research, it is my hope that students of Chinese abroad will appreciate summaries of all
that we know about them. One of my aims in undertaking this research was to fill a gap
in the published records on Chinese overseas, and for these small countries very little is
available at present. This working paper brings together information from archival
documents, published material and my own brief fieldwork in these countries, which took
place in 1993-1996.
Logistic constraints forced me to limit my area of research primarily to Polynesia and
eastern Melanesia. Of the Micronesian countries, I included only Kiribati and Nauru,
because the history of Chinese migration to these two countries, both traders and
labourers, is very similar to the rest of the South Pacific, whereas the other Micronesian
territories experienced quite different patterns of colonialism and migration (Oliver 1975,
104).