Includes bibliographical references (p. 211-225) and index.

Preliminary Material -- Introduction -- 1 Lobbying at the Court: The Minxue (Fujian Learning) Network -- 2 Transforming Customs: Ethnicity and Gender in the Imperial Civilizing Project -- 3 Piracy Plots: Marine Predators in the Interregional Trade Network -- 4 Competing for Local Influence: Leading Families in Zhangpu County -- 5 Imagining the Empire: Fujian Guixiu (Genteel Ladies) at Home and on the Road -- 6 Sharing the Story: Imagination across Boundaries in the Lychee Mirror -- 7 Survival Strategies: Gender, Ethnicity, and Kinship -- 8 Going Overseas: Remittances and Letters across the Ocean -- Conclusion: Fujian in the Maritime World -- Appendix: Fujian Guixiu Poems Cited in Chapter 5 -- Bibliography -- Glossary -- Index.

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With the Fujian coast at its center, this book reveals the intellectual, migratory and gendered relationships that tied Fijian to the Chinese imperial domain and to its overseas networks. This Fujian study also offers ways to analyze local histories of late imperial China from a more global perspective. Based on a wide range of sources, such as business contracts, legal documents, women’s writings, and folksongs, Migrating Fujianese elucidates China’s southeast coast and its migration patterns. Examining this multi-ethnic migrant community through the lens of ethnicity shows the complex operation of linked chain migration (overseas male emigration and overland family migration by the ethnic She people) and its impact on the gender relations and family strategies of the coastal people. The study argues that examination of Fujianese migration through the lenses of gender and ethnicity is crucial to understanding the relationship between the flow of people and the society nourishing that flow.