Category Archives: language

by Joel | 29 June 2025 · 5:18 am

Reuniting Polish Lands, 1300s

From Poland: The First Thousand Years, by Patrice M. Dabrowski (Cornell University Press, 2014), Kindle pp. 52-55:

Even if Poland was in pieces, the lands were developing and its people were thriving. Nor had the broader population lost its identity and connection to the Polish past. Indeed: despite a series of hurdles, an entity to be called Poland once more would come together, as a monarchy, in the early fourteenth century.

…

This coming together was the work of one of the Piast princes, Władysław Łokietek. A grandson of Duke Konrad of Mazovia, Łokietek hailed from neighboring Cuiavia, in the central-northern reaches of the Polish lands. His sobriquet was “Elbow-High,” which suggests the prince was short of stature. What Łokietek lacked in height, he surely made up for in chutzpah. This plucky—and lucky—Piast prince would begin what can be seen as an upward trajectory for the Poles. The vertically challenged Łokietek was chosen prince of Greater Poland after the death of a different Piast ruler, Przemysł II (1257–1296), who was assassinated on Ash Wednesday on orders of the margraves of Brandenburg. The German margraves were unhappy with Przemysł’s attempts to unify the Polish lands: Przemysł had brought together Greater Poland and the seacoast region known as Gdańsk-Pomerania, and in 1295 was even crowned king in Gniezno, albeit of those two regions alone. Łokietek hoped to build on these achievements.

…

The Piast was aided in other, more prosaic ways as well. One was the problem faced by many a medieval dynasty: life was brutish and short. The reign of King Václav II came to an end with his sudden death in 1305. His son and successor, also named Václav (who had become king of Hungary before inheriting Bohemia and Poland from his father), was assassinated in Bohemia the following year. The extinction of the Czech Přemyslid dynasty left the throne open (in fact, it left several thrones open), which was then contested from all sides. Habsburgs, Luxemburgs, as well as a number of Piast princes (if not Łokietek) all sought to claim the throne. Married to a Bohemian Přemyslid princess, John of Luxemburg ultimately proved victorious—thus initiating a new Bohemian dynasty. He would consider himself also heir to the Polish throne.

Tiny but tenacious, Łokietek was not one to abandon the cause of conquest and unification so lightly. Whereas Václav II and subsequent Bohemian monarchs had found support in the Germanized towns, the Piast prince managed to rally the knights (if not the towns) to his side. And he was willing to fight. With Hungarian help, Łokietek reconquered Lesser Poland, Cuiavia, and other territories, thus establishing himself as a legitimate ruler of the Polish lands circa 1306. Holding onto them proved a challenge: for example, at one point burghers rebelled in Kraków and other towns of Lesser Poland, and they had to be subdued. The Polish unifier sought to rid Kraków of the miscreants by use of a shibboleth. Those burghers who could pronounce the four words “soczewica, koło, miele, młyn” [emphasis added] (lentil, wheel, grinds, mill) were allowed to stay. Native German speakers stumbled over the pronunciation of the Polish letters “ł” and “s,” which allowed the authorities to shuffle and rearrange the city’s population. Henceforth, the Kraków burghers would find it politic to Polonize. The process of unification was anything but smooth.

Nonetheless, the Piast was persistent—and his persistence paid off. The sixty-year-old Łokietek was crowned King Władysław Łokietek in 1320. His coronation on January 20 of that year took place not in Gniezno but in Kraków, which had been gaining in political significance since Kazimierz the Restorer moved there in the eleventh century. Still, the Elbow-High succeeded in unifying only two provinces: Lesser Poland and Greater Poland. His Poland had no Mazovia, no Prussia (despite Łokietek’s best efforts, the Teutonic Knights had seized control there), no Gdańsk-Pomerania (treacherously taken by the Teutonic Knights), and no Silesia (the Silesian Piasts did not feel compelled to subordinate themselves to the upstart Łokietek, and they remained firmly in the Bohemian orbit). Once again coronation was an important symbolic act, if still just a beginning.

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by Joel | 27 June 2025 · 6:01 am

How Ryukyu Became Less Japanese

From Maritime Ryukyu, 1050–1650, by Gregory Smits (University of Hawaii Press, 2018), Kindle pp. 400-403:

Migration was the driving force in early Ryukyuan history. The initial king of the first Shō dynasty, Shō Shishō, may have been a first-generation immigrant to Okinawa. Moving ahead to the early seventeenth century, Yamazaki Nikyū [Morizō, 山崎二休守三, not “Nikyūshuzan”!], Kian Nyūdō, and Sōmi Nyūdō were examples of first-generation Japanese immigrants to Ryukyu who served Shō Nei….

Were language barriers significant in the Ryukyu islands or between Ryukyu and Kyushu? Probably, although these barriers are difficult to map from documentary sources. Moreover, sociolinguistic circumstances were probably significant. For example, the two Ryukyuan envoys to Satsuma in 1575 could make themselves understood only with difficulty and therefore had to use interpreters to facilitate negotiations. Those interpreters were sailors. Recall the difficulty that Chinese-employed interpreters experienced during the 1590s distinguishing between Ryukyuan and Japanese sailors on cultural grounds, including language (see chapter 13). It suggests that, at least among seafarers, sharp cultural differences between Japanese and Ryukyuans had yet to emerge. Based on the limited evidence appearing in these pages, there may have been few sharp cultural dividing lines between the Ryukyu islands and maritime regions of Kyushu, even as late as circa 1600. Government officials in Naha and Kagoshima may not have been able to converse freely in 1550, but sailors in the region and Buddhist priests probably would have experienced fewer difficulties. Insofar as cultural barriers remained relatively small across the region through the sixteenth century, the circulation of people must have played a key role.

Closed-off Ryukyu

We know that a significant cultural divide existed between “Ryukyu,” however defined, and Japan circa 1900. If my hypothesis that this divide was present but relatively minor around 1600 is correct, then how did a significant cultural divide develop over the relatively short span of approximately three centuries? Stated differently, what accelerated the rate of cultural change in Ryukyu? There were probably three major contributing factors. The most important was the cessation of the flow of people. During the early seventeenth century, Ryukyu became part of the Shimazu territories, and the practical effect of this change was for it to be closed off from the rest of Japan. The diverse wajin community or communities in the Naha area faded into the broader society. Satsuma prohibited Japanese from traveling to or residing in Ryukyu except for one Satsuma official and his small staff, who kept a low profile, and occasional ship crews from Satsuma, whose range of motion on shore was restricted. At approximately the same time that Satsuma severely restricted the flow of people into and out of Ryukyu, the bakufu was doing the same thing with respect to Japan as a whole. The boundaries of Japan and of Ryukyu became clearer than they had ever been before, and also distinct from each other.

Cultural Policies

Another contributor to the acceleration of cultural divergence were active de-Japanification policies. Satsuma initiated these policies, but Ryukyuan officials carried them out with vigor because they were connected to the very survival of the kingdom. After the failure of bakufu attempts to forge a diplomatic relationship with China in 1615, Satsuma began to fashion Ryukyu into an ostensibly independent country that could serve as a conduit to China. Maintaining the China connection became essential to the continued survival of the Shuri royal court and its officials. In this context, Kumemura, which had been languishing for a century or so, became a magnet for talent throughout the capital area during the latter half of the seventeenth century. Knowledge of Chinese high culture gradually improved among the Ryukyuan elites, some of whom took Chinese names and relocated to Kumemura. The modern notion that Ryukyu was culturally Chinese stems from these early modern circumstances.

Specific de-Japanification policies were intended, not as attempts deeply to transform people’s cultural identity, but to ensure a plausible non-Japanese appearance for Ryukyu in Chinese eyes. Regulations forbade Ryukyuans to appear as Japanese with respect to names, clothing, hairstyle, and language. Similarly, Ryukyuan ships no longer received a -maru name. After the 1620s, Shuri went to great lengths to mask any ties with Japan when Chinese investiture envoys were in Okinawa or when Okinawans were in China. When a disabled Ryukyuan ship drifted toward the Shāndōng coast in 1673, for example, its crew threw all Japanese items overboard. In Miyako, an overseer from Shuri arrived in 1629, in part to ensure that no Japanese language, songs, clothing, names, or other ties to Yamato would be evident when there was even a remote a possibility of any Miyako resident encountering Chinese (for example, when investiture embassies were at sea).

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by Joel | 23 June 2025 · 11:47 am

Buddhism in the Ryukyus

From Maritime Ryukyu, 1050–1650, by Gregory Smits (University of Hawaii Press, 2018), Kindle pp. 326-328:

Ryukyu’s temples were either Shingon or Rinzai Zen. Until approximately the sixteenth century, all or most of their abbots and priests came from Japan. During Shō Shin’s reign, native Ryukyuan priests became increasingly common, although the leadership posts in large temples typically remained in the hands of priests from Japan. As part of their training, Ryukyuan priests often resided in Japan. Therefore, Buddhist temples constituted an important network linking Ryukyu with Japan. Geographically, the most important of these priest-mediated connections to locations in Japan were Kagoshima, Suō Province in western Honshu (the domain of the Ōuchi), and especially the Kyoto Gozan temples.

Buddhist priests served as Ryukyu’s diplomats to powers in Japan, and they typically drafted and transmitted diplomatic correspondence. Because well-trained Buddhist priests could write classical Chinese, they were also in a position to facilitate trade and diplomacy with China. When in 1525 Ryukyu intervened to reduce tensions between Japan and China, priests served as the envoys. During the sixteenth century, priests performed many of the functions that resident Chinese had performed in the previous century. Recall that the population of Kumemura declined significantly during the sixteenth century.

Priests with diplomatic experience sometimes served as foreign-policy or general political advisers. For example, it is likely that the Ryukyuan Rinzai priest Kakuō (dates unknown) of Tenkaiji served as a political adviser to Shō Sei circa the 1530s. We have seen that the Satsuma Rinzai priest Nanpo Bunshi was an influential political adviser and diplomat during the years leading up to the 1609 war. When that war broke out, the king called on the Ryukyuan priest Kikuin (d. 1620) to serve as lead negotiator, in part because he had lived in Satsuma and was on good terms with Bunshi and several leaders of the invading force. Trusted by both Satsuma and the king, Kikuin served as Ryukyu’s prime minster (kokusō) until 1616.

Buddhist temples functioned as academic centers that could provide knowledge and know-how to Ryukyuan rulers. Priests were involved in culture, scholarship, and essential functions of state. Their activities included inscribing Shō Taikyū’s bells, creating the Omoro sōshi by writing down the songs, inscribing many of the monuments of Shō Shin and his successors, and drafting letters from the king to send to powers in Japan. During the sixteenth century, Buddhist priests served as tutors to elite Ryukyuans, Kaiin being the outstanding example (chapter 8). Moreover, we have seen that Enkakuji played a role in the education of the sons of elite families in Amami-Ōshima, and it likely functioned similarly vis-à-vis other islands.

Although Buddhism, Chinese thought, and native religion often occupied separate textual, rhetorical, and ritual realms, Shō Shin and his successors combined all three into a potent synthesis to enhance royal authority and defend the state. Some priests undoubtedly pursued Buddhist enlightenment through their own study and practice. Nevertheless, Buddhism in Ryukyu functioned mainly as a public state institution, not as a private spiritual path.

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by Joel | 21 June 2025 · 4:49 pm

Ryukyu Seacraft

From Maritime Ryukyu, 1050–1650, by Gregory Smits (University of Hawaii Press, 2018), Kindle pp. 288-291:

During period two [1450-1520s], Ryukyu continued to obtain vessels from China. However, instead of receiving used military vessels for free, Ryukyu bore the costs of vessel construction and subsequent repairs. Ship size did not change, an indirect indication of the continuing vigor of the tribute trade. During this period and the previous one, each ship received a single-character name such as “vigor,” “wisdom,” “courage,” or “longevity” at the shipyard when built. After arriving in Ryukyu, the ship received a Japanese name ending in -maru. Probably from around the late fifteenth century onward, ships also received a Ryukyuan name ending in -tomi. These names of ships are found in the Omoro, and vessels appearing in the songs would usually have had alternative Chinese and Japanese names.

…

During this period [1520s-ca. 1570], the Ryukyuan fleet continued to consist of relatively small ships, possibly even smaller than before. The question is whether Ryukyu continued to purchase ships from China or whether it built its own. The first ship of the designation “small ships of [our?] country” (honkoku shōsen) appears in documents in 1541, and ships with this description, as well as other terms with “small” in them, were common from 1549 onward. Okamoto and Tomiyama Kazuyuki regard these ships as having been made in China. However, it is likely that they were civilian merchant ships. Tomiyama points out that in 1555 Shō Sei asked to purchase such a ship from the Ming court with the express proviso that “it need not be large.” By contrast, Mamoru Akamine states that during Shō Sei’s reign (1527–1555), “the shipbuilding industry shifted to Ryukyu itself and Ryukyuan-built hulls came to be used in the tribute trade.” Recall from chapter 3 that Ikuta Shigeru also regarded the smaller ships built after 1548 as Ryukyuan-made vessels.

We cannot be absolutely certain where ships were made during this period or precisely when the first Okinawan-made ship (other than vessels of a relatively simple dugout design) was built. Nevertheless, Okamoto and Tomiyama present good evidence that the 1540s or 1550s marked a transition from smaller military ships to somewhat smaller Chinese-made merchant ships as the mainstay of Ryukyu’s fleet. It is likely that the first Okinawan-made ships used in trade and diplomacy were built in the 1570s, during the reign of Shō Ei (r. 1573–1586). In documents, these ships are called “local ships” (tsuchibune), “small ships,” and possibly by other terms.

…

As we have seen, Omoro songs often mention ships. One describes the ship of an elite lord (aji) as having a cloth sail and the ship of a low official as having a sail made from matting. The details of local boat and ship manufacturing in the Ryukyu islands are unclear in most cases. However, extrapolating backward from the early modern era and piecing together other information such as the omoro mentioned here, it is almost certain that early Ryukyuans manufactured boats and small ships (known by sabani and other terms). These were dug out from large trees to form canoe-like hulls that could be rowed or sailed. Tying four of these hulls together and placing boards across the top created a henzabune, which during the early modern era were sometimes used to transport liquor (awamori) to Amami-Ōshima and return with as many as eight head of cattle. It is almost certain that Ryukyuans manufactured a variety of dugout vessels for use in local and island-to-island transport between Okinawa, Amami-Ōshima, and other northern Ryukyu islands.

Did Ryukyuans manufacture ships more complex than dugout vessels before the 1570s? A shipbuilding tradition in Uruka in Miyako began in approximately the early fifteenth century and continued into the early modern era. These Uruka ships (Uruka-miuni) were built mainly in the Japanese manner by attaching two layers of planks to a keel, with the mast located in the middle of the ship and capable of being lowered during severe weather. Uruka ships conducted trade and transported tribute shipments across the Kerama gap to Okinawa, and Inamura Kenpu regards them as part of the wakō legacy in Sakishima. There is some evidence that mariners from Miyako were able to sail as far as Southeast Asia during the fourteenth century.

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by Joel | 20 June 2025 · 5:03 am

Histories of the Ryukyu Archipelago refer a lot to important sites called gusuku, a term whose etymology is the subject of much disagreement. Here is a an admirably open-minded summary from Wikipedia:

There is no consensus about the etymology of gusuku. [Basil Hall] Chamberlain analyzed the word as the combination of gu (< honorific go 御) and shuku (宿). Kanazawa Shōzaburō also segmented gusuku into gu and suku but considered that the latter half was cognate with Old Japanese shiki, in which ki was a loan from Old Korean. Iha Fuyū proposed that suku was cognate with soko (塞, fortress). Hirata Tsugumasa considered that suku was cognate with Japanese soko (底, bottom). Similarly, Higashionna Kanjun raised doubts over the analysis of gu since older records always used honorific u (< o) instead of gu (< go). Nakahara Zenchū identified gu as go (stone).

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Filed under Japan, Korea, language, migration, military, nationalism, war

by Joel | 11 June 2025 · 1:31 am

Origins of Ryukyu People & Culture

From Maritime Ryukyu, 1050–1650, by Gregory Smits (University of Hawaii Press, 2018), Kindle pp. 58-61:

The flow of people, culture, and technology into Okinawa, Kumejima, and Sakishima was mainly from north to south. Some of this flow came from Michinoshima, some from Korea, and most of it from Japan, especially western Kyushu and nearby islands. Tanigawa Ken’ichi has metaphorically called it an “attack of northern culture.” Subsequent sections and chapters explore this topic further. Here I mention several physical manifestations of the north-to-south flow.

The climate in Okinawa is not suited to preserving skeletal remains, but there has been sufficient excavation and testing to warrant several conclusions. One is a significant break between the physical structure of prehistoric residents of Okinawa and those of later eras. Okinawan skeletal remains from about the eleventh or twelfth centuries onward begin closely to resemble their counterparts in Japan during the Kamakura and Muromachi periods. As Thomas Pellard points out, “The bearers of Gusuku [castle walls] culture expanded within the whole Ryukyu Archipelago, and preexisting foragers, who were few, simply died out or were assimilated without leaving a significant trace.” Omoro descriptions of the clothing and other aspects of the appearance of local rulers suggest that at least some were direct arrivals from Kamakura-era Japan. Furthermore, excavations of Okinawan weapons and armor reveal that they were the same as those used in Japan during the era of the Northern and Southern Courts (ca. 1335–1392) and the Muromachi period. In general, most military items excavated in Okinawa were made in Japan.

DNA evidence from recent studies is consonant with this situation. Studies of both modern and ancient DNA “tend to show that Ryukyuans form a group closely related to Mainland Japanese.” Moreover, despite geographical proximity, “Southern Ryukyuans do not show any particular affinity with the Austronesian populations of Taiwan, and they form a clear subgroup with Northern Ryukyuans.” Genetic diversity in the Ryukyu islands is relatively low, which indicates a lack of long-term isolation. In other words, the Ryukyu islands were part of a larger network, and the migration from regions to the north that populated the Ryukyu islands and brought Gusuku culture, “agriculture, ceramics, and the Proto-Ryukyuan language,” took place between approximately the tenth and twelfth centuries. Most likely the [turbo] shell trade was the major economic driving force behind much of this migration.

…

Early Okinawa’s ties with China are well known and frequently discussed, whereas ties with northern areas typically receive less attention in survey histories. China played a vital role in early Ryukyuan history as a conduit of material wealth. Nevertheless, prior to the seventeenth century, Chinese high culture had little impact on Ryukyu. Early Ryukyu’s technology (metallurgy, agriculture, weapons), literary and aesthetic culture (including oral traditions), religious culture (including Buddhism), the various Ryukyuan languages, and the vast majority of Ryukyu’s people came from the north. Much of the region’s economic activity also took place north of Okinawa. One additional indication of the interconnectedness of the northern routes was the fact that distinctive Ryukyuan place-names found in the Omoro [ancient poems] were known to Hakata merchants and to Koreans and appeared on their maps.

The Takase-Fujian route mentioned above became popular around the 1340s, diverting maritime traffic from the previous route, a line from Hakata to Níngbō. The new route greatly increased traffic through the southern Ryukyu islands, but smaller-scale private trade, piracy, and smuggling based at locations in Okinawa and points to the southwest had been occurring since the twelfth century and probably earlier.

During the thirteenth century, Chinese ceramics began to appear at major gusuku sites in Okinawa and the southern Ryukyu islands. Fragrant wine and other products from as far away as Thailand and Vietnam also began to make their way into the Ryukyu islands at this time. For example, a four-eared jar from the Khwae Noi River in Thailand was excavated at Nakijin. After the start of formal tribute relations with Ming China in 1372, the material wealth of several major gusuku sites such as Kumejima, Katsuren, Shuri, and Nakijin increased dramatically. Celadon (green ware) ceramic dolls, Buddhist statues, candleholders, and other specialized products have been excavated at these sites, as well as a wide variety of metal goods. China was a source of great wealth, both directly and indirectly. To understand Ming China’s role in the development of Ryukyu, it is necessary to undertake a close study of wakō, the topic of the next chapter.

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by Joel | 8 April 2025 · 9:49 pm

Zhang Deyi, Qing Ambassador to U.K.

From The Chinese Question: The Gold Rushes and Global Politics, by Mae Ngai (W. W. Norton, 2021), Kindle pp. 204-206:

DESPITE ANOTHER ROUND of protest—including a trade union rally of eighty thousand in London’s Hyde Park—the Chamber of Mines and the Transvaal government moved with dispatch to set up a program. Transvaal agents, who had already laid the groundwork for recruiting in China, went into high gear. In fact, recruitment in Yantai (Chefoo) in Shandong province had started in January, before the ordinance was finally approved.

But there was just one problem: China had not approved the program. The lapse violated long-standing diplomatic protocols, established in 1860, regarding the recruitment of Chinese labor to territories within the British Empire. The Foreign Office did not show Ordinance no. 17 to the Chinese ambassador in London, Zhang Deyi, until mid-February. Zhang promptly intervened via the Foreign Affairs Department in Beijing (Waiwubu, the successor to the Zongli Yamen). Everything ground to a halt while Zhang Deyi and the Foreign Office commenced negotiations in London in March. The Transvaal Chamber of Mines called the delay “quite unexpected” and “much to be regretted.”

When Harry Ross Skinner had recommended importing Chinese indentured labor for the gold mines, he had predicted that China would respond “passively” to such a project. The Foreign Office should have known better. Zhang Deyi was no naïf—he was a seasoned diplomat with forty years of experience in the Qing foreign service. His appointment as Qing ambassador to the Court of St. James’s in 1902 was his eighth assignment abroad. He had begun his career as a young translator on the Qing’s first overseas mission in 1866 and in the Burlingame delegation in 1868; he had then served in various capacities in Chinese embassies, mostly in Europe. Zhang was also one of China’s most prolific diplomat-diarists, who wrote and published eight books chronicling his trips (Figure 20).

Nor was Zhang a stranger to South African affairs. From 1896 to 1900, he had served as councilor in the Qing legation in London, and from there he closely followed the South African War. As ambassador, Zhang was well aware of the debates taking place in South Africa over proposals to import Chinese labor. He worried that the mining companies would abuse Chinese workers in the manner that had made Peru and Cuba the most notorious destinations of the nineteenth-century coolie trade. He further worried that ill treatment of indentured Chinese in South Africa would have negative effects on overseas Chinese communities throughout Africa, from Mauritius to Tanganyika to the Cape Colony. He knew indentured Chinese labor emigrants were vulnerable to the “three harms”—low wages, tight controls, and poor benefits. As early as February 1903—nearly a year before the Transvaal passed Ordinance no. 17—Zhang reported to Beijing that South Africa was likely to recruit Chinese labor. He wrote repeatedly throughout the year that China should forbid labor from going to South Africa without a convention with Great Britain. He was furious when he learned that recruitment was already taking place in Yantai before China had agreed to the program.

On May 13, after three months of negotiation in London, Foreign Secretary Lord Lansdowne and Ambassador Zhang Deyi signed the Emigration Convention of Great Britain and China of 1904. The convention underscored the distance traveled from the mid-nineteenth-century heyday of the coolie trade. It stipulated a minimum age of twenty for emigrants and inspection to ensure that laborers were of sound body and mind. Contracts were to be written in Chinese and English and specify wages, hours, and rations; free passage and return; and the right to free medical care and medicine. It required witness from both Chinese and British officials. It gave China the right to station a consul or vice-consul in the colony and gave Chinese workers “free access to the Courts of Justice to obtain the redress for injuries to his person and property” as well as access to postal facilities for sending letters and remittances to their families.

Zhang pressed hard for a prohibition on corporal punishment, but he was unable to insert an outright ban into the agreement because, the Foreign Office informed him, Transvaal law provided for corporal punishment for certain offenses for “everybody, including whites.” The British assured Zhang that floggings would be administered only by order of a magistrate or judge after trial and conviction, and only with government-approved instruments, and that it would not exceed twenty-four lashes. Although the agreement showed improvement in China’s ability to negotiate protections for its emigrant workers, enforcement of the terms of the ordinance would be determined on the ground.

Brief articles about Zhang Deyi (張德彜) can be found in Chinese, Japanese, and German Wikipedia, but not in English Wikipedia.

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by Joel | 3 April 2025 · 8:23 pm

Effects of Witwatersrand Gold

From The Chinese Question: The Gold Rushes and Global Politics, by Mae Ngai (W. W. Norton, 2021), Kindle pp. 193-195:

THE MINING OF Witwatersrand gold had both global and regional effects. At the level of world trade and finance, the economic historian Jean-Jacques Van Helten argues that expansion of international trade in the 1880s and ’90s required an enlargement of the overall money stock and hence the world supply of gold. The gold standard was not yet universal, but since the 1870s it had become the basis of international payments among the leading industrial countries. Witwatersrand gold, along with gold discoveries in the 1890s in Western Australia and Canada, increased the global supply of gold and strengthened the position of Britain, which was already the center of the international financial market.

Van Helten presents the late-century gold discoveries as a fortuitous meeting of a demand, but it also might be considered a stimulus, a new phase of capital accumulation, that powered the expansion of trade and foreign investment. Although this accumulation built on previous decades of gold discoveries in North America and Australasia, South African gold helped inaugurate a new period of capitalist development, the so-called New Imperialism, in which monopoly and finance capital came to the fore; when the great powers scrambled to carve up Africa, the last continent to fall to European colonialism; and Germany and the United States nipped at Britain’s heels for position at the top of the world economic order.

The supremacy of the pound sterling (i.e., gold) in international finance and trade lay at the heart of Great Britain’s strategy to maintain global dominance. The City of London reaped handsome profits from international investment and trade, both within the empire and without: the British compensated for desultory investment in domestic industries by exporting “old” English manufactures to sheltered markets within the empire. The colonies were induced to buy these products (often at artificially high prices) while they in turn sold primary products to the rest of the world (wool from Australia, cotton from India). These enabled Great Britain, in turn, to offset its trade deficits from importing wheat from the United States and Argentina for domestic consumption.

In southern Africa, labor patterns that had been established on the diamond fields carried over to the Rand. The rapid capitalization of diamond mining had reduced independent diggers to wage workers while the industry relied increasingly on African migrant laborers contracted on meager wages and confined to compounds. White miners adopted an aggressive racism to police the color line in order to protect their superior position and wages.

The mining of gold also shifted the center of economic power from the Cape Colony to the heretofore isolated and undeveloped Transvaal. Lord Selborne, who served as undersecretary to Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain, considered the Transvaal “the richest spot on earth,” the key to South Africa’s future. “It is going to be the natural capital state and centre of South African commercial, social and political life,” he wrote in 1896.

By then, Johannesburg had grown to a cosmopolitan city of 100,000, with a large population of uitlanders (foreigners), British and other Europeans, who were aggrieved over political exclusions (fourteen years residency for naturalization and the franchise) and high taxes. Mine owners agitated against high railway tariffs and inflated prices set by state monopolies over essential resources (especially dynamite). More broadly for the British Empire, political instability in the Transvaal threatened to unravel the assumptions of its superior position in southern Africa based on commercial and financial domination, British immigration, and geopolitical power. After the failed Jameson raid of 1895 (a botched coup d’état backed by Cecil Rhodes and other leading mine magnates), ZAR president Paul Kruger stiffened his resolve. The British did not want the vote, he said. They wanted his state.

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Filed under Australia, Britain, Canada, China, economics, language, migration, nationalism, Netherlands, South Africa

by Joel | 24 March 2025 · 12:05 pm

Gold Rush Translation Needs

From The Chinese Question: The Gold Rushes and Global Politics, by Mae Ngai (W. W. Norton, 2021), Kindle pp. 72-74:

THE PROBLEM OF TRANSLATION shaped Chinese interactions with Euro-Americans from their very arrival at the two gold mountains. Among the earliest emigrants, those who were bilingual had usually acquired their linguistic skills in China or Southeast Asia. The San Francisco merchant Yuan Sheng went to a missionary school in Macao, and the Australian impresario Lowe Kong Meng attended an English private school in Penang; both men had experience in business dealings with Europeans and Americans before arriving on the goldfields. The first Euro-American missionaries in California and Victoria had previously served in China or Southeast Asia.

Chinese who went to the goldfields in groups often included one person who spoke English. Headmen accompanying Chinese emigrants to Australia all knew enough English to navigate their groups’ travel to and settlement on the goldfields. The same pattern existed in California. For example, the American miner Timothy Osborn wrote in his diary that a group of Chinese miners who were camped near him included a friendly English speaker, who wrote down various Chinese words and their translations for the curious American. Few Americans went so far as to learn Chinese. Jerome Millard was a rare exception.

Many Chinese merchants learned enough English to conduct business with local whites, or they employed a young clerk who learned enough to do so. Most were barely proficient in English, learning key words and phrases but rarely grammar. Often they inserted English words into Cantonese sentence structure. For example, Jung Ah Sing, a gold digger in Victoria, wrote a journal while imprisoned after a knife fight. Because the journal was actually a brief attesting to his innocence, he wrote in English: “My buy that hatchet that day months of January 1867 Cochran Diggings Chinamen gone away sell the my, my buy that hatchet that time my been Chinamen tent go home.” (“I bought that hatchet in January 1867 from Chinamen at Cochran Diggings. They were moving away and sold it to me. Then I left the Chinamen’s tent and went home.”)

Missionaries in California offered English classes to bring Chinese to Christianity, a strategy that attracted many students but few converts. The Rev. William Speer conceded that the young men who came for English classes stayed long enough to learn a few words and phrases. It would be fairer to say that, apart from well-educated men like Yuan Sheng and Lowe Kong Meng, most Chinese communicated with Euro-Americans not really in English but in pidgin. The limits of pidgin were most clearly displayed when Chinese tried to express themselves in the courtroom and in other legal matters, usually to sad outcomes.

It was necessary, therefore, to use interpreters when there was important business to conduct. The larger huiguan had “linguists” on their staffs to assist individual members as well as to represent the association to mainstream society. San Francisco’s police courts employed on an ad hoc basis not only Chinese but also French, German, Russian, and Spanish interpreters, reflecting the city’s international population. But even in San Francisco, few Chinese could speak English well enough to meet the needs of the police and the courts; the situation did not improve until a second generation of Chinese Americans came of age in the 1870s.

During the 1850s and ’60s, the city’s interpreters included Euro-American missionaries and educated Chinese merchants. Yuan Sheng frequently appeared in court when Chinese faced criminal charges and acted as both interpreter and as advocate. In one case of larceny, for example, Yuan successfully persuaded the judge to discharge A-He, who was accused of stealing ten dollars, on grounds that he was a “crazy man.” Yuan promised to send him back to China.

In Australia the goldfield commissioners in each district hired Chinese interpreters and “scribes” to support the heavy work of issuing mining licenses and compliance with goldfield regulations. Two brothers, Ho A Low (He Yale) and Ho A Mei (He Yamei), were typical of the first Chinese interpreters in Victoria. They had been educated at the Anglo-Chinese school at the London Missionary Society station at Malacca. Ho A Low first came to Victoria as a missionary worker in 1857 and was fast recruited to work as an interpreter by the Beechworth resident warden. Both brothers held positions as interpreters, but neither stuck with the job.

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by Joel | 23 March 2025 · 10:48 pm

Roles of Chinese Huiguan

From The Chinese Question: The Gold Rushes and Global Politics, by Mae Ngai (W. W. Norton, 2021), Kindle pp. 51-52:

The huiguan [会馆] were Chinese versions of the mutual aid organizations that virtually all immigrant groups formed on the basis of a common regional origin, known among eastern Europeans as Landsmannschaften and among Mexicans as mutualistas. In China huiguan dated at least to the Ming Dynasty, when traders and sojourners in big cities formed hostels and guilds where they could commune among people from their home districts, speaking their own dialect. Chinese formed native-place huiguan wherever they emigrated abroad, including North America and Australasia.

Chinese in America translated huiguan as “company,” not in the narrow sense of a business but more generally as a corporate entity. The first huiguan to organize in California were the Siyi (Sze Yup) Company and the Canton Company or Sanyi (Sam Yup) Huiguan, both in 1851. The Siyi people were the most numerous, but the Sanyi Huiguan’s concentration of cosmopolitan merchants from Guangzhou and its three surrounding counties gave it disproportionate influence. In the 1882 the California huiguan formed a coordinating body called Zhonghua Huiguan, formally translated as Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association but familiarly known as the Six Chinese Companies. In Victoria, Siyi and Sanyi people also formed huiguan, as well as associations for people from Xiamen in Fujian province (Figure 9).

Huiguan served as organizations of both solidarity and social control. A new immigrant arriving at San Francisco or Melbourne would find a representative from his home district at the dock, who would take him to the huiguan’s headquarters in the Chinese quarter. There he would find a place to sleep, a hot meal, information about mining and other job prospects, and where he might find his cousins and village friends. The individual merchants who financed credit-tickets that covered emigrants’ passage collected debt payments through huiguan. The associations adjudicated disputes among members, cared for members who were sick or indigent, buried those unlucky enough to die in America, and at a later date, sent their bones back home. Some huiguan provided translators and paid legal fees for members who ran afoul of the law.

Huiguan leaders represented the community to white society in public discourse, in formal meetings, and in bringing civil rights lawsuits. The larger and wealthier huiguan bought land and erected buildings in San Francisco and Melbourne for their headquarters. Their offices boasted full-time officers and staff, including a secretary, a treasurer, clerks, a translator, cooks, servants, and altar-keepers. They often had representatives in the goldfield towns wherever there was a concentration of Chinese.

Merchants traditionally ranked at the bottom of the Confucian social hierarchy, below farmers, workers, and soldiers. But through their leadership roles in emigrant communities, Chinese merchants found prestige and power. Their social status would filter back to China as well. But Euro-Americans imagined that huiguan were despotic organizations that brokered slave labor and exercised total control over their members. White Americans and Australians who were actually familiar with the Chinese community understood that huiguan were mutual aid associations similar to those organized by other immigrant groups. Chinese themselves considered their membership in huiguan not as enslavement but as integral to the networks of trust forged through native-place and clan lineage. They also considered the repayment of debts a matter of honor, and most Chinese cleared their debts fairly quickly, in less than a year in Australia.