There is a considerable literature on the emigration of the Chinese, much of it focusing on the communities which they founded, the travails they endured to get there and to co-exist with host societies, and the patterns of chain migration which they established. There had been movement into mainland and island Southeast Asia for many centuries, but these early traders and settlers have attracted little attention from scholars, and almost all writings deal with the 19th and 20th centuries when increased contact with the West exacerbated economic and political turmoil in China and at the same time opened up new opportunities abroad. Despite the fact that from the early 18th century until 1893 it had been illegal (on pain of death) for Chinese citizens to leave the country, many were undeterred and it is estimated that over two million did so between 1840 and 1900 alone.

In this study Dr Sinn also concentrates on the last two centuries, but she does so not from neglect of earlier history – she has no choice, since Hong Kong was essentially a “non-place” before 1841 and it is the Hong Kong–United States connection that is the focus of her work. She begins at the beginning, the first lines of her Introduction drawing attention to the near simultaneous foundation of Hong Kong as a British colony and the discovery of gold 75 miles from San Francisco a mere five years afterwards in 1848. This was the signal for the great Californian gold rush that infected the Chinese no less than it did other nationalities, but clearly there could be little emigration from Hong Kong in the early decades of its existence when it was itself building a population, and the author accordingly sets out to document emigration through Hong Kong and in particular the role which the fledgling port rapidly came to play as “Asia's leading Pacific gateway” (p. 2). The result is a well-rounded picture of a historically important process, as well as an illuminating and informative assessment of Hong Kong's unique rise to prominence.

The same pattern of emigration from Cantonese-speaking Guangdong province through Hong Kong was followed when gold fever had abated and demand for labour on the American railroads began in 1868. Hong Kong was the preferred port of embarkation for the emigrants and of disembarkation for those of them who returned to China. By 1876 well over 200,000 had passed through on the way to California and 90,000 had returned by the same route. Dr Sinn believes that a majority were voluntary fare-paying passengers, and that such migrants chose to use Hong Kong because of the convenience of organization and the relative safety and freedom from abuses on vessels sailing from the harbour. Although this runs counter to the received opinion that the “coolie trade” was so ill regulated that it was all but indistinguishable from the African slave trade, she argues that passengers leaving Hong Kong were not coolies but came from many walks of life, and that even if they had borrowed their passage money with the obligation to pay it back from future earnings this was a course of action into which they entered of their own free will, they were not “bonded.” The distinction may seem a fine one, but she makes a convincing case, and she does not fail to note that there were indeed those, both Chinese and Western, who exploited the passengers by whom they profited.

The emigrants were at first almost all men, a pattern common to Chinese migrations throughout the world, and when a market for women was created by their lack, a thriving trade in prostitutes developed. In Hong Kong, zeal for regulation of this trade was noticeably absent, and British officials made little attempt to stem a migration which leaders of the Chinese community viewed tolerantly. The author shows clearly how it was as part of the wider Chinese Exclusion Policy of the US government that the trade in women was stopped.

Less well known is the great volume of trade that resulted from the emigration. Hong Kong was quick to spot that the emigrants in America would need supplies of familiar goods (including opium, in terms of value the most important product traded), and Chinese and non-Chinese merchants and ship-owners developed a sophisticated system of alliances and cargo-pricing. A reciprocal trade in flour, quicksilver and gold also developed.

A final chapter analyses the culture-induced repatriation of the bones of those who died in America. The exhumation, packing and shipment of bones was highly organized and frequently undertaken by charitable groups, who oversaw the entire process right through to ensuring safe delivery to the deceased's home village in China.

This is a tour de force: a closely focused history, rich in detail, well balanced, generously footnoted, yet eminently readable. Of particular value to those interested in Hong Kong, in migration or in Chinese cultural studies, the book is readily accessible to the non-specialist too.