Making Chinese Australia: Urban Elites, Newspapers and the Formation of Chinese-Australian Identity, 1892-1912 (Monash Asia Series)

During the late 19th century, the Chinese press was the largest foreign-language press in Sydney and the only foreign-language press to publish without interruption from the 1890s into the 1920s. However, the story of Chinese-language newspapers during this period of emerging Australian and Chinese nationalism has, until now, been left untold. Beginning with a review of an especially bitter conflict that split the Sydney Chinese community in 1892, and ending two decades later with the establishment of the earliest political alliance between Chinese-Australian elites in Sydney and Melbourne, established to support the building of the Republic of China, Making Chinese Australia demonstrates how the interpretations and narratives of journalists and editors of Chinese-Australian newspapers played a powerful role in shaping the social identities and historical awareness of Chinese Australians. In the process of relating this important narrative, this book employs relevant new historical and philosophical frameworks to initiate a dialogue between Chinese-Australian history, as well as international and diasporic Chinese studies. (Series: Monash Asia Series) *** "Making Chinese Australia is a significant achievement in the field of Chinese -Australian history...and it should proudly take its place alongside John Fitzgerald's Big White Lie (UNSW Press, 2007) as one of the new classic texts on Chinese-Australian history." - Kate Bagnall, Inside Story, January 2014Ëœ