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Whole Document UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles Vocabularies of Violence: The Chinese Coolie Trade and the Constitutive Power of its Conceptual Vocabularies, 1847-1907 A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Asian Languages and Cultures by Elizabeth Evans Weber 2015 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Vocabularies of Violence: The Chinese Coolie Trade and the Constitutive Power of its Conceptual Vocabularies, 1847-1907 by Elizabeth Evans Weber Doctor of Philosophy in Asian Languages and Cultures University of California, Los Angeles, 2015 Professor Shu-mei Shih, Chair This project is concerned with the foreign-executed trade in contracted Chinese labor (the “coolie trade”) to the Americas that spanned from 1847-1876. The first part of the project explores the many violences that the coolie trade visited upon Chinese persons, whether those who were themselves directly victimized by the trade, or those who suffered more indirectly (persons whose families were torn apart, who lived in fear of kidnapping, or who were forced to contemplate the meaning of foreign-imposed racial hierarchies, commodification of racialized Chinese labor, and the general decline of late Qing China’s geopolitical position). As Chinese from a variety of backgrounds began to respond to and apprehend these traumatic violences, they gave rise to a set of “conceptual vocabularies”— including terminologies, subjectivities, conceptions of racial and geopolitical hierarchies, and understandings of servitude and personal liberty—that gave voice both to the ongoing traumas, and to the shock and simmering outrage that resulted therefrom. ii The second part of the project then details how nationalist authors writing in the early twentieth century were able to repurpose and manipulate these powerful, already-extant, shared vocabularies of violence in order to urge a crystallizing reading public to take an interest in the future of an endangered China. In the respective moments of the 1905 Anti- American Boycott and the 1904 Movement to Enlighten the Lower Classes in Beijing, several pieces of “coolie fiction” emerged, making use of the traumatic memory of historic coolie trade violences to advocate immediate political agendas—in this case anti-foreign activism and socially-oriented educational reform. At the same time, however, these pieces also gestured on a much broader level toward the formation of a “people” united by a collective memory of victimization, and shared determination to prevent further subjugation by foreigners in the contemporary moment. The coolie trade vocabularies would ultimately prove a very effective means first of eliciting a strong, unified emotional response from a media-consuming public; and second, of offering prescriptive visions for how a Chinese “people” might condense around particular social and political challenges and anxieties in the twentieth century. iii The dissertation of Elizabeth Evans Weber is approved. Jack W. Chen Robert C. Romero Shu-mei Shih, Committee Chair University of California, Los Angeles 2015 iv To My Family (Inclusive) v Table of Contents Acknowledgments vii Vita x Introduction: Vocabularies of Violence 1 the Chinese Coolie Trade and the Constitutive Power of its Conceptual Vocabularies Part I: Coolie Trade Violences and Vocabularies 1. Racism and the Human Commodity 36 slaves and coolies in the New World 2. Conceptual Vocabularies of the Coolie Trade 106 the trade as a site of meaning creation Part II: The Coolie Trade as Rhetorical Tool in Twentieth-Century Fiction 3. Imagining the Post-Slave 174 constructing a “people” as a site of civic activism in late Qing coolie fiction 4. Selling Out the Nation 267 the didactic function of the crimp in twentieth-century coolie fiction Conclusions: 323 Out of the Ashes the coolie trade as ideational crucible Works Cited 328 vi Acknowledgments This project, as with any other, has been touched by a large number of people—some directly, some indirectly. To those who have given me direction, those who have awarded financial support, those who have taken an interest in my research, those whose research has inspired my own, those who have lent a kind ear, and those who have in general made this journey easier, I give my thanks. My advisor, Shu-mei Shih, has provided constructive feedback and perceptive criticism throughout the duration of this project and my graduate career. Her keen inquisitiveness has always given me direction and clarity, and I am grateful for her insight. Professor Shih’s thoughtful direction has been critical both to the realization of this project, as well as to my growth as a scholar. Committee member Jack W. Chen has been supportive throughout my graduate career, with regard both to my research and to teaching. His guidance has been formative to my professional development, and I hope to teach my own students with the care and enthusiasm that Jack shows for his. I am also thankful for the thoughtfulness and energy committee member Robert C. Romero put into my independent study courses with him as I embarked on this project. I have benefitted greatly from his knowledge and patience. Thanks too to Namhee Lee who, despite short notice on my part, was an invaluable member of my qualifying committee. There are a great number of other people at UCLA—too numerous to name—to whom I owe thanks for their expertise, inspiration, and kindness in training me to become a better scholar more generally. I also owe a debt of gratitude to Shan Shan Chi-Au, who has patiently and graciously dealt with all of my administrative queries over the years. I have been the fortunate recipient of financial support from a number of sources. This project would not have been possible without a Fulbright-IIE fellowship for my research year in China, or a grant from the UCLA International Institute. A grant from the Mellon Foundation vii funded a small project several years ago that turned out to be the seed from which my interest in the coolie trade and coolie fiction would emerge. I am especially grateful to UCLA for support in the forms of a Dissertation Year Fellowship, Graduate Research Mentorship, Summer Research Mentorships, TAships, fellowships, and Chancellor’s Prize. I incurred a number of debts while conducting my Fulbright research in Beijing: to the History Department and Professor Wu Xiaoan of Peking University for sponsoring my research trip; to Professor Xia Xiaohong, also of Peking University, for allowing me to sit in on her class on Liang Qichao; and to Janet Upton who administered the Fulbright-IIE program in China and greatly facilitated the transition to life there. Conducting research can be a lonely task, but Emily Mokros, Patrick Wilson, Wang Meng, Zoe Ma, and Brent Powis all helped keep me sane in one way or another. My family (and family-in-law) has been a great source of support and understanding over the years. Living thousands of miles away from some of the people I love the most, I have had to miss event after event—holidays, births, weddings, reunions, funerals—and have always wished that I could be with them at these times of togetherness, to share in person these moments of happiness and sorrow. For this reason, I am dedicating this project to them, that it might in some small way make up for my many absences. Perhaps no one has quite understood the challenges of the past few years as well as Clara Iwasaki, incisive scholar and tireless friend who is wise beyond her years and funnier than she has any right to be. Deep in the grey, plodding months of revisions and corrections, conversations with Clara were like sunlight I’d almost forgotten existed. She has been a tremendous source of strength when I have faltered, of perspective when I have been too hard on myself, and of joy when I have needed to laugh. The first time I met her, I thought, “There’s a lady I want to know.” I have never once regretted it. viii I suppose there is one other person who has understood the difficulties involved in bringing this project to fruition, and that is the person who has had the misfortune of living with me while I endeavored to make it happen. Thomas Weber has patiently endured with great equanimity the many vicissitudes of being married to a humanities PhD student, and has offered unending support since before this project began. He became my family when my own was far away, and in a way, he is imbedded in every page of the text that follows. I am extremely proud of his own numerous accomplishments, and can only strive to be deserving of the faith he has in me. ix Vita 2006 B.A., International Relations Wellesley College Wellesley, MA 2008 M.A., in East Asian Studies Yale University, New Haven, CT 2009-2011 Teaching Assistant, Dept. of Asian Languages and Cultures University of California, Los Angeles Los Angeles, CA 2011-2013 Graduate Research Mentorship UCLA Graduate Division 2012-2013 Fulbright Fellow, Department of History Peking University, Beijing China Fulbright-IIE Dissertation Research Fellowship UCLA International Institute partial fellowship 2014-2015 Dissertation Year Fellowship UCLA Graduate Division 2015-2016 Visiting Assistant Professor, Chinese Language and Literature Pepperdine University Malibu, CA Publications “Writing in the Language of Labor: activist adaptations of coolie trade vocabularies in late Qing coolie fiction,” Literature Compass special issue: Labor Travels, Art Forms: Geopolitical Economies of Cultural Transformation. Forthcoming summer/fall 2015. Entries on “coolie trade” and “contract laborers” in Chinese Americans: the History and Culture of a People, Jonathan H.X. Lee ed., (ABC-CLIO). Forthcoming 2016. Conference Presentations “Violent Participation and Verbal Contestation: the inscription of the Chinese ‘Coolie’ as Historical Subject in Colonial Cuba,” (Life and Identity in Asian Contact Zones) CSU Long Beach, CA.
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