What is the cause of Hokkien/Hakka exceptionalism?They are the only ones who attempted to colonize outside of China and the Hokkien were the only ones to succeed. Hokkiens forming Taiwan and Singapore while Hakka attempted to colonize Borneo but were defeated by the Dutch. One could argue that Leizou min speakers colonized Hainan island but the distance from the continent is astronomically small.
https://youtu.be/4IfAU5DcZJ4?si=zPCY0zPVv3zaHgqZA song sung in Hokkien
Sun yatsen and LKY were hakka. The rest of the Chinese seem to pale in comparison to these 2 groups.
China began trading via sea in a major way during the Mid-Late Imperial Period (1000s-1700s AD). From around 1000-1600s, every coastal community in China participated in that trade as merchants, sea captains, and even illegally as pirates & smugglers. The people of Fujian and Guangdong provinces had an advantage in the sea trade as the major trading sea lanes into/out of China (intersecting with the SEAsian trading scene & the Spanish Manila Galleons) found good harbors in these provinces.In the late 1600s-1700s shit changed. In an effort to combat piracy & funnel all the profits of overseas trade towards the Government, the Qing Dynasty set up the Cohong System in Guangdong. The Qingz basically said "anyone who wanna trade with China via sea should only do so through these appointed middlemen in ONE CITY in ONE PROVINCE. Cap." All of the overseas trade of China is suddenly bottled in Guangdong. Private trading outside of these approved channels was not allowed. The Cantonese Merchant clans became ridiculously rich, which caused other coastal Chinese communities to seethe.Seething angrily were the Fujianese (including the Hakkas), the other (former) big trading port in China.The Fujianese however were fucking smart: they figured that if they were not allowed to trade with the world from Fujian, then they'd simply go out into the world. Fujianese merchant clans began sending their relatives & employees into Southeast Asia to set up private trading posts (and in the case of Borneo, several independent private colonies) and trade & live there permanently. That way, Fujianese/Hakka Merchant Clans could corner markets in Southeast Asia by pretending to be "tributary barbarians" trading with China but in reality still very much connected to their mainland families. All without breaking the Qing Trade Monopolies. It's one of the greatest loophole exploits in Chinese history and it made the Fujian ethnics some of the richest people in China.
>>18630784They larped as SEA monkeys? Surely the Qing could have figured them out seeing as they spoke and dressed like Chinese.
>>18630784Does not explain why Shanghainese people didn't flood every corner of South East Asia and colonize Taiwan.
>>18630751You are being too westo-centric by calling it colonization.And that isn't even true, the Chinese Diaspora in SEA is older than the age of discovery and Multi-regional. There was one in Malacca.>>18630803The most important port of the empire at the mouth of the Yangzte seems like a uniquely bad starting to circumvent bans on foreign commerce and sea travel.
>>18630751>They are the only ones who attempted to colonize outside of ChinaManchuria is not China.Inner Mongolia is not China.Tibet is not China.Xinjiang is not China.Yunnan is not China.
>>18630906Clearly he meant the continent as China.
>>18630801>They larped as SEA monkeys? Surely the Qing could have figured them out seeing as they spoke and dressed like Chinese.Yes but you missed the important part: the merchandize of Fujianese/Hokkien Merchant Clans still went through the Cohong System. Sure the Fujianese Clans still reap a profit outside of the Imperial System but the Qing Emperor still got his cut when these merchandise & finances passed through Guangdong. This way everyone is happy & fellated: the Emperor, the Cohongs, and the Fujianese/Hakkas.Now you may argue: "well the private independent colonies violate the system," whelp, it seemed the Emperor forgave these when the oversees Fujewnese went through the Tributary System. Everyone, for example, in China knew that the Fujianese Merchant Clans kept literal private colonies BEIC style in Borneo (the Kongsi Republics), but these Republics larped as "Tributary barbarians" and regularly sent tributes to Beijing.
>>18631034What did they colonize borneo for
>>18631065Tin mines. It was an area in Borneo that was barely populated since most Malay States were agrarian/maritime stuck mostly by the coasts or floodplains. In the mid 1700s a bunch of Fujianese miners struck Tin there and asked the local sultans if they could buy the land. The Sultans went "whatever man, its yours, its in the middle of the fucking mountain jungles" and bam, the mining colonies grew to become private mining-merchant republics completely owned by Fujianese merchants and ran as, what the Dutch called, a Republic (but mostly the Governance was a board of shareholders and clan chiefs who elected a CEO among them and made decisions as a body, which was basically how Chinese merchant clans back home ran businesses.).
>>18631074On wikipedia it says hakka
>>18630784I would add to this that the Ming already tried a similar scheme, but instead of resulting in well-regulated trade, it just created massive piracy. The so-called "wokou" or "Japanese pirates" that plagued the Ming were mostly Chinese, merchants and sailors from Fujian and other places who had lost their livelihoods when the Ming clamped down on overseas trade. So they too went out into the world, but instead of becoming colonists or legal merchants, they were just smugglers and pirates.The Ming failed to "leave one side of the net open" as the Chinese saying goes. The Qing purposely allowed this channel of trade because the alternative was simply rampant piracy.
>>18631195Are hokkien/hakka all traders? I thought they were an agrarian society. What about the cantonese?
>>18631802Nah, they're not some merchant clique, they were mostly farmers like everyone else. But the southeastern area around Fujian is a rugged land with limited space for farming so they also had to rely on foraging, fishing, and indentured labor even more than your average peasant.Hakka were not even originally from Fujian. They migrated from the core Chinese lands in the north. There are two provinces called Shanxi and Shandong, which mean "west of the mountains" and "east of the mountains" respectively. Well, the Hakka lived in the mountains. They were sort of a "hill people" in the margins and continued to live as such when they migrated south (there were big waves of north>south migration in Chinese history because the north was ruled by barbarians many times)Honestly, I don't know how many of the wokou were Hakka or if they were related at all, but given the areas with wokou problems are where the Hakka lived, and how many must've been engaged in coastal work, it wouldn't surprise me if some were pirates or smugglers. It also wouldn't surprise me if they were scapegoats. The name "Hakka" means "guest family" which illustrates how they were thought of by the Han.Merchants were considered the lowest rung of the traditional Confucian societal order, but ironically during the Ming times they were one of the few groups legally allowed to actually travel a good distance from their home. (not sure about Qing) Which sounds like the kind of thing a Hakka man might do to support his family on their marginal land, traveling to find work.
>>18631074Except hokkiens were never miners and were all either fishermen or traders. The kongsi republics were entirely hakka and mining and inland hard labor was entirely dominated by the hakka, from the mines in borneo to the mines in northern malaya
>>18631867To be more accurate>HokkienTraders, bankers. They are the seafarers with centuries of maritime tradition and make up over half the Chinese diaspora in SEA>TeochewMostly cash crop farming and riverine trade. Most of thailand's chinese are these guys. They had a rice monopoly and maybe still do>CantoneseArtisans and sometimes hard labor alongside hakka. >HakkaMiners.
>>18631887The entirety of Philippine chinese are completely dominated (90%) by hokkien
>>18631887>Now you may argue: "well the private independent colonies violate the system," whelp, it seemed the Emperor forgave these when the oversees Fujewnese went through the Tributary System. Everyone, for example, in China knew that the Fujianese Merchant Clans kept literal private colonies BEIC style in Borneo (the Kongsi Republics), but these Republics larped as "Tributary barbarians" and regularly sent tributes to Beijing.So you are telling me the ones at Malacca were Hokkien? Then we can presume the ones in Manila were Hokkien, too. Right?
>>18631935Southern Malacca is predominantly Hokkien but the north was mostly Hakka or Canto. Every chinese in Philippine islands were Hokkien
