Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin - Kultur-, Sozial- und Bildungswissenschaftliche Fakultät - Institut für Asien- und Afrikawissenschaften

Abstract:

Drawing on his research on the cultural and familial practices of Chinese merchant families in Manila from the late-nineteenth to the early-twentieth centuries, Chu analyses the historical factors that have created a distinct binary between “Filipinos” and “Chinese” in Philippine society today. He demonstrates how centuries of close interaction between the two groups has been promoted as well as obstructed by empire, colonialism and nationalism. He calls for Filipinos and Chinese alike to work toward resisting and challenging forces that tend to homogenize and reify their identities and that result in misunderstanding and long-standing prejudice between them, especially at a time when tensions between China and the Philippines have risen over territorial disputes of the islands in the West Philippine Sea.

About the speaker:

Richard T. Chu (A.B. Ateneo de Manila University; M.A. Stanford University; Ph.D. University of Southern California) is Five-College Associate Professor of History at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He has published various articles focusing on the history of the Chinese and Chinese mestizos in the Philippines and centering on issues of ethnicity, gender, and nationalism. He is the author of Chinese and Chinese Mestizos of Manila: Family, Identity, and Culture 1860s–1930s (E.J. Brill, 2010; Anvil 2012) and Chinese Merchants of Binondo during the Late Nineteenth Century (University of Santo Tomas Press, 2010). He is also editor of More Tsinoy Than We Admit (Vibal Publishing, 2015). Currently, he is working on his next book project, tentatively entitled “Building A Nation, Effacing a Race: The Construction of ‘Chinese’ and ‘Filipino’” that analyses the different newspaper articles and other textual materials dealing with the “Chinaman” question in the Philippines during the American colonial period. He teaches courses on the Chinese diaspora, Philippines, U.S. empire in the Pacific, and Asian/Pacific/America.