Preface: In Pursuit of a New Network Approach to Overseas Chinese Political History

In Pursuit of a New Network Approach to Overseas Chinese Political HistoryI first became interested in the political history of the overseas Chinese (Huaqiao 华侨) after I started my doctoral program at the University of Hawai'i in 1990.Sun Yat-sen 孙逸仙 (1866-1925), known as the "father of Republican China" (Guofu 国父, see Figure 1), had initiated the revolution against the Qing dynasty (1644-1912) and the revolutionary struggle for a Chinese republic from Honolulu in 1894.After I moved to the University of Victoria in Canada in 2002, I also developed a research interest in the overseas activities of the late Qing reformist leader, Kang Youwei 康有为 (1858-1927, see Figure 2).Soon after Kang promoted the first but short-lived political reform of the Qing government in 1898, he arrived in this Canadian city and initiated an overseas Chinese reformist movement, including a plan for constitutional monarchy in China.What really piqued my interest, however, was my preliminary research on the assassination, in Victoria in 1918, of Tang Hualong 汤化龙 (1874-1918, see Figure 9 in Chapter 4), a main leader of late Qing constitutional reform and a prominent statesman of early republican China.The assassin, Wong Chong (Wang Chang 王昌, 1886-1918, see Figure 10 in Chapter 4), a barber in Victoria's Chinatown and a member of Sun's revolutionary party, became one of its heroic martyrs following his suicide moments after the assassination. 1 My initial probe into the assassination case and its unsolved issues-Tang's purpose for his North American trip, Wong's motive, and suspicious co-conspirators in the murder-led me on a special research trip to China, specifically to the home provinces of both the victim and his killer, x Preface in 2009.During this visit, I was surprised to find that Tang and Wong received opposite treatment both in Sun Yat-sen's party and, later, in Mao Zedong's China.Tang was defamed by Sun's party before and after his death in 1918, and his tomb was damaged during the Mao-led Cultural Revolu- tion (1966-1976).Wong, however, was honored as a hero by Sun's party, and his coffin and tombstone have been well preserved in the Yellow Flower Hill Cemetery (Huanghuagang 黄花岗) of revolutionary martyrs, a major tourist attraction in Canton (Guangzhou 广州).My subsequent research on this case in numerous Chinese, Canadian, and American archives and libraries made me gradually realize that, far from an accidental event, this assassination case was the result of decades of reforms and revolutionary movements among North American Chinatowns.The case was rooted in long-term transpacific Chinese politics prior to 1918, which continued to impact modern China and overseas Chinese communities, particularly North American Chinatowns, thereafter.This book covers both the transpacific reform and revolution of the Chinese in North America from the 1898 Reform and the overseas Chinese

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