Binghamton Journal of History

Binghamton Journal of History Phi Alpha Theta History Journal Alpha Theta Epsilon Chapter ΦΑΘ Editorial Board Deneil Hill Jonathan Jones Jennifer Montgomery Travis Shutz Selection Committee Deneil Hill Erica Schumann Alex Jablonski Travis Shutz Jonathan Jones Gregory Smaldone Jennifer Montgomery Volume 17 2016 Letter from the Editors Dear Readers, Thank you for taking an interest in the Binghamton Journal of History, published by Binghamton University’s chapter of Phi Alpha Theta, the history honor society. This journal proudly provides undergraduates with the opportunity to have high quality research projects published as articles. The journal also provides graduate students experience as the editors who select and review submissions and publish the journal’s annual issues. The editors are excited to present in this volume a selection of undergraduate articles that span several time periods, geographical regions, and methodologies. We also include in the final pages of this volume information regarding Phi Alpha Theta, Binghamton University’s Research Days, and the History Department’s Combined BA/MA Program. We appreciate the support of Phi Alpha Theta and its members as well as History Department faculty who have helped make the publication of this journal possible. Sincerely, The Editorial Board Contents Biographies Contributing Authors .............................................................. 1 Articles Chinese Diaspora in the Dutch East Indies during the Eighteenth Century: Religion and Custom as Roots of Identity against Assimilation and the Discrediting of Chineseness Jaijun Zou......................................................................... 3 Defining Autonomy: Women Navigating Transatlantic Intellectual Connections in Boston, 1770–1779 Laura E. Earls .................................................................. 37 From Tape to Mendez: The Boundaries of Race, Citizenship, and Education in California Gabrielle Schiller.............................................................. 65 The Imperial Press: American Reflections on the Subjugation of the Philippines Lindsey McClafferty ......................................................... 85 Building Up and Breaking Down: Community Building and Its Difficulties among Mexican and Chicano Homosexuals Sara Marie Hobler ...........................................................111 Phi Alpha Theta Welcome to Phi Alpha Theta .................................................133 Phi Alpha Theta Inductees and Executive Board .........................134 Binghamton University Research Days ....................................................................135 History Department’s Combined BA/MA Program....................136 Acknowledgments Acknowledgment of Department Professors and Staff .................137 Author Biographies Laura E. Earls was a senior history and music major with a minor in Japanese studies when she wrote “Defining Autonomy: Women Navigating Transatlantic Intellectual Connections in Boston, 1770–1779” as part of her senior honors thesis, “Defining Autonomy: Women Navigating Economic, Political, and Intellectual Spaces in Boston, 1770–1779,” under the supervision of Professor Dael Norwood. She is interested in early American cultural and gender history, as well as material culture, and most of her research has focused on gender in the mid- to late eighteenth century. Earls was on the executive board of Phi Alpha Theta and Mu Phi Epsilon, the professional international coed music fraternity, for much of her time as an undergraduate. Being a part of these organizations and working with the history professors at Binghamton University have been integral to her work ethic and the development of her historical writing over the past four years. Earls plans to have a career in museum collections and curation, which she has begun through her work as a tour guide at the Shaker Museum Mount Lebanon. In fall 2017, she will enter a graduate program to pursue a master’s degree in history. Sara Marie Hobler is a history and sociology major with a minor in Spanish. She wrote “Building Up and Breaking Down: Community Building and Its Difficulties among Mexican and Chicano Homosexuals” as a sophomore for the Latin America and the United States course taught by Professor Nancy Appelbaum. Her historical interests include social movements, revolutions, and transnational history, particularly in Latin America and Eastern Europe during the twentieth century. Hobler plans to pursue a doctorate in sociology once she completes her bachelor’s degree at Binghamton University. 1 Lindsey McClafferty wrote “The Imperial Press: American Reflections on the Subjugation of the Philippines” as a junior for Professor Stephen Ortiz’s US and the World, 1914–1945 course. McClafferty is a history and English major with a minor in education. She is interested in Philippine history and race and gender studies. Her future plans include obtaining a master’s degree in education and teaching high school English courses. Gabrielle Schiller was a senior history major when she wrote “From Tape to Mendez: The Boundaries of Race, Citizenship, and Education in California” for Professor Dael Norwood’s United States, Asia, and Empire seminar. Her historical interests include social policy, especially immigration and refugee experiences. Schiller plans to obtain a master’s degree and doctorate in public health and demography so that she can pursue a career writing policy measures. Jiajun Zou wrote “Chinese Diaspora in the Dutch East Indies during the Eighteenth Century: Religion and Custom as Roots of Identity against Assimilation and the Discrediting of Chineseness” as a junior history major for Professor John Chaffee’s Maritime Asia course. His focus is on Qing history during the late seventieth and eighteenth centuries with a particular interest in identity. His other interests related to this field are folk religion of lower classes, the provincial history of Fujian and Canton, the anti-Qing rebels and Han nationalists in these two provinces and abroad, the flourishing literature and opera, the role of women in society, and the persistence and transformation of Confucian moral codes. Zou plans to pursue a doctorate degree in Chinese history with a focus on “new Qing history” to become a history professor in the United States. 2 Chinese Diaspora in the Dutch East Indies during the Eighteenth Century: Religion and Custom as Roots of Identity against Assimilation and the Discrediting of Chineseness Jiajun Zou In his article “Creolized Chinese Societies in Southeast Asia,” the anthropologist William Skinner developed the idea of the overseas Chinese diaspora as “the creation through ‘fusion’ of a new sociocultural system that achieved autonomy and stability despite continued contact with both parent societies.” In an anthropological view, Skinner saw Java as one of the examples in which the Chinese community “yielded a wondrous array of adaptive, acculturative, and assimilative phenomena.” 1 The creolization process certainly occurred and created a new group called the Javanese Peranakan, which now has fully evolved into a distinctive ethnic community. However, I disagree on the so-called “acculturative and assimilative 1 William G. Skinner, “Creolized Chinese Societies in Southeast Asia,” in Sojourners and Settlers: Histories of Southeast Asia and the Chinese, ed. Anthony Reid (St. Leonards, Australia: Allen & Unwin, 1996), 51–93, 51. 3 phenomena” and the idea that ethnic diasporic community becomes the product of mixed cultural systems. Although multicultural societies often provide the opportunity for interaction and socialization between different people, Skinner’s overarching argument underestimates the resilience of the old system and institutions that maintained the Chinese diasporic identity. Skinner was limited by a lack of Chinese language sources and a reliance on the preexisting English scholarship. While not necessarily a cultural outsider since Skinner understood Fujianese dialect, he was unmindful that available archival sources on the overseas Chinese community in Batavia, as well as eighteenth-century Chinese travelers’ accounts, demonstrate a paradox in which the Chinese overseas community nurtured their distinctive cultural system and maintained a high degree of autonomy and self-regulation under the supervision of Dutch colonial authority. I argue that it is a paradox for two reasons. On the one hand, it does not conform with the anthropological studies of the Chinese in Southeast Asia, wherein mixed marriages between the Chinese and the locals was ubiquitous. On the other hand, it overrides the Chinese official record, especially of the Ming and Qing dynasties, which often alienated the Chinese diaspora as a despicable cultural other. In other words, they were orphans of their own culture and viewed by the Ming and Qing governments as barbarians because of adopting foreign culture. I intend to demonstrate that, at least in eighteenth-century Java, the large Chinese community lived under a cultural system that was transplanted from China to Java. The community’s autonomy and stability was achieved because of the distinctive cultural background of the Fujianese Chinese. Their identity was not rooted in the land but a portable set of ideas and customs that they carried with them throughout the long history of their seafaring tradition. With a history of maritime exploration, the Fujianese brought with them practices and beliefs critical to their spiritual identity. As

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