MEDIATED IMAGINATIONS: CHINESE-ARAB CONNECTIONS IN THE LATE NINETEENTH AND EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURIES A Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences of Georgetown University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History By Shuang Wen, M.A. Washington, DC August 2015 Copyright 2015 by Shuang Wen All Rights Reserved ii MEDIATED IMAGINATIONS: CHINESE-ARAB CONNECTIONS IN THE LATE NINETEENTH AND EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURIES Shuang Wen, M.A. Advisors: James A. Millward, Ph.D. and John O. Voll, Ph.D. ABSTRACT This dissertation uncovers some little-known stories that linked Britain, China, Egypt, France, Japan, and the United States at the turn of the twentieth century. They include the ways in which Chinese and Arab intellectuals regarded each other in response to the common challenge of western imperialism, how soybeans and their cultivation circulated from China to Egypt, the encounters of Arab and Chinese laborers working for the American Expeditionary Forces in WWI France, and the western missionary efforts to proselytize in Egypt and China. In narrating these stories, this project investigates the mediating role of western and Japanese powers in the intellectual, commercial, and interpersonal connections between Chinese and Arabic speaking societies during the high tide of global imperialism. Despite their great distance from each other, the Chinese and the Arabs occupied a similar position in the world order as colonized and semi-colonized peoples. As a result, in response to their comparable political and social situations, ideas, commodities, and people were transferred between them through transnational networks. Different modes of mediations—textual, material, and spatiotemporal—were involved in the processes of movements. This phenomenon of mediated mobility shows that the connections in an increasingly globalized modern world were not all about robust reticulation and iii accelerated interactions and exchanges. Rather, some of the linkages between non- western societies enmeshed in the scaffolding of global imperialism were attenuated and mediated by imperialism itself. For example, the trade of soybeans and the transfer of its cultivation know-how between China and Egypt were enabled by the British imperial interests. Furthermore, the meditation processes were dynamic and transformative with the mediator and the mediated being in constant state of flux. A person moving from Egypt to China can be both the product (the mediated) and the facilitator (the mediator) of western missionary efforts. Overall, these layers of mediations, as exemplified by each story, constitute the mechanisms of the entanglements of the world. The project is based on sources in Arabic, Chinese, and English, from multi-sited research in China, Egypt, Syria, Taiwan, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The various primary sources include travel writing, newspaper reports, diplomatic and customs records, agricultural journals, the records of missionary societies and of the American Expeditionary Forces in WWI. By examining Chinese-Arab connections, I try to show that the modern histories of the Middle East and East Asia are best understood not as separate scholarly domains in isolation from one another, but as inter-related fields with overlapping lines of inquiry. Therefore, this project weaves together what have been conventionally considered disparate historiographies of different regions and contribute to the growing field of world history. I hope that the concept of "mediated imaginations" can transgress regional boundaries and be applied to analyze other cross-cultural interactions between non-western societies. iv The research and writing of this thesis is dedicated to my mom, who gives me life and strength to persevere while enduring my absence over these many years; and to the loving memory of Hend Abdel, who taught me how to live a meaningful life. Many thanks, Shuang Wen v Acknowledgements Pursuing knowledge and understanding of the wider world outside one’s native place is an often-time disorienting and solitary journey. I am graful to everyone who helped along the way. At Georgetown University, Professors of the History Department Osama Abi-Mershed, Mustafa Askasal, Carol Benedict, David Collins, Alison Games, Sandra Horvath- Peterson, John McNeill, James Millward, Micah Muscolino, Aviel Roshwald, Adam Rothman, Jordan Sand, Judith Tucker, and John Voll taught me how to become a professional historian; Kathy Gallegher, Janice Liverance, Carolina Madinaveitia, and Djuana Shields navigated the university administrative matrix for graduate students. Profs. Patrick Laude, Tom Michel, Reza Pirbhai, and Amira Sonbol at the School of Foreign Service in Qatar gave me guidance during a year of intensive writing. Profs. Amin Bonna and Hanan Kilany of the Arabic Department improved my command of an enigmatic language. At the libraries in DC and Doha, Brenda Bickett, Ding Ye, Liz Graham, and Stefan Seeger assisted me tracking books. Outside Georgetown, Raja Adel, Cemil Aydin, Joel Beinin, Zvi Ben-Dor Benite, Prasenjit Duara, Khalid Fahmy, Richard Fogarty, Pascale Ghazaleh, Mac Gilbert, Engseng Ho, Hanan Kholoussy, Man-hong Lin, Masumi Matsumoto, Patrick Manning, Alan Mikhail, Hyunhee Park, Peter Perdue, Mark Sedgwick, Sherene Seikley, Relli Shetcher, Heather Street-Salter, Selim Tamari, Emma Teng, Qingguo Xue, Hongyuan Zhu and his wife Yueli Zheng have been generous with critique, support, and encouragement at different stages of my graduate career. Muhannad Salhi at the Library of Congress, Grace Gu at Stanford University East Asian library, Emad Helal at Egyptian National Archives, and Eric Vanslander at the US National Archives at the College Park were especially patient in helping me locating primary sources. Friendship with Emad El-Din Aysha, Mohammed Ezzeldin, Xin Fan, Sean Foley, Yi Liu, Ke Ren, Yichao Tu, and Chris White offered ideas for research; Paul Charlton and his wife Jessie Bay, Yanyan Cui and her husband Dun Deng, Hanadi Kerem and her Chinese husband, Qiaoqiao Gu and her husband Jingfang Li, Adeel Khan, Jerry and Ann Leach, Charlotte Perry and her daughters Eleanor and Margaret, Mike and Marty Reimer together with their children, Christina Rust and her entire family, and Zeynab Sayilgan and her husband Salih kept me company, especially during the many holiday seasons when I was alone in Egypt or in the US. The Ba’alabakis in Syria—Manal, Zainab, Walid and Muhammad—welcomed me into their family with the joys of Arabic learning, home-cooked food, and warm hearts. Last but not least, the financial support came from the Chiang Ching-Guo Foundation, Qatar Foundation, the Association for Asian Studies, and the American Historical Association. vi Table of Contents Introduction………………………………………………………………………………1 Conceptualization………………………………………………………………………..1 Dissertation Structure…………………………………………………………………….7 Historical Framework: Chinese-Arab Interactions in History…………………………...11 Literature Review: A Brief Sketch of the Fields………………………………………...17 Historiographical Contributions………………………………………………………….37 Chapter One Lessons and Inspirations: Textual Mediation in Chinese-Arab Intellectual Connections.41 Burgeoning Modern Print Media as Vehicles for the Transmission of Ideas……………47 Chinese Understanding of the Arab World………………………………………………50 Arab Understanding of China……………………………………………………………71 Conclusion……….………………………………………………………………………78 Chapter Two Invisible Bonds: Material Mediation in Chinese-Arab Commercial Connections………80 Soybeans’ Journey from Manchuria to Egypt…………………………………………...80 Tobacco and Cigarette Trade between Egypt and China………………………………..99 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………..……….116 Chapter Three Unexpected Encounters: Spatiotemporal Mediation in Chinese-Arab Interpersonal Connections……………………………………………………………………………..120 Chinese-Egyptian Muslim Encounter in Meiji Japan…………………………………..123 Chinese and Arab Laborers in the American Expeditionary Forces in WWI France…..139 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………..161 Chapter Four A Floating Life: Mediations on the Globe-Trotting Life of Ahmad Fahmi……………163 Linguistic Mediation……………………………………………………………………168 Material Mediation……………………………………………………………………...178 Spatiotemporal Mediation………………………………………………………………187 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………..201 Conclusions……………………………………………………………………………204 Appendix: A Timeline of Chinese-Arab Interactions throughout History……………. 209 Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………212 vii Introduction Conceptualization The concept of “mediated imaginations” generated from investigating Chinese- Arab linkages in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries encompasses multiple meanings. It is analytically useful to grasp the complexity and nuances of the intanglements of the world. It can also be applied to understand the cross-cultural interactions between other peoples and societies.1 The textual mediation in intellectual connections refers to a phenomenon that Chinese and Arab thinkers read a cluster of texts, including history books and newspaper reports, translated from European and Japanese languages, to acquire information about each other and formed imagined communities of fraternal equals. As a result of such intellectual encounters, ideas traveled from one periphery of the world to another periphery through networks of translations. Understandings of the “other” were formed along the way and appropriated for one’s own purposes. For example, in reading