This is a brilliant, enchanting, and innovative book. Most important is the way that Diana Lary uses migration as a thread to review the history of China. The method turns out to be fitting and appropriate, and the result is uniquely illuminating. -- Arthur Waldron, University of Pennsylvania By offering a panoramic view of migration through four millennia, this extraordinary book remaps the history of China and redefines the scope and meaning of 'Chinese migration.' Truly ground-breaking. -- Elizabeth Sinn, University of Hong Kong Diana Lary has situated the epics of twentieth-century Chinese migrations on the broad canvas, and with the deepened perspective, of over four millennia of the Chinese past. Drawing on economic, social, cultural, legal, and gendered history, she shows how Chinese migrations may relate to universal themes, even as Chinese experiences often have differed from patterns elsewhere. This is a stupendous work that should provoke fertile comparative research in diverse disciplines, no less than it will inform fresh thinking within its own field of Chinese history. -- Bernard Luk, York University Lary (emer., Univ. of British Columbia, Canada) has written a very informative introduction to Chinese migrations over the course of four millennia through her skillfully woven account of the movement of people, goods, and ideas. Chronologically, the book includes prehistory to unification, imperial times, the Republic, and the PRC, with an emphasis on 20th-century Chinese migrations from a global perspective. Each chapter starts with a brief review of that period's history and follows with discussion of migrations, themes, and peoples, places, and things. Drawing on the most current scholarship on migration studies, maritime history, and gender history, Lary has situated Chinese migrations in a larger picture from cross-disciplinary perspectives. This book also points out diverse potential research projects and will inspire more scholars and students in their own fields related to Chinese migrations. Summing Up: Recommended. General and undergraduate collections. CHOICE
