My mother is a Chaozhouese; I have always been fascinated by the culture and history of this promising region situated on the eastern seaboard of the province of Guangdong. Despite the recognized significance of the Chaozhouese community in Chinese and Asian history, we have long been waiting for a solid and comprehensive study in English that brings to life the vibrant story of this maritime prefecture. How did this initially poor and “phenomenally ungovernable corner” (p. 3) of Southeast China eventually emerge among the trading masters, such as the Fujianese and Cantonese, in the South China Sea at the turn of the twentieth century? Melissa Macauley's delightful and inspiring book, published in 2021, will be read with interest and enjoyment by historians and laypeople alike. Consisting of eleven chapters, Distant Shores is structured both chronologically and thematically, with references to primary sources written in Chinese and English, as well as key relevant literature published over the past few decades. Each chapter, to a certain extent, could stand alone as a meaningful essay on one aspect of the fascinating story of maritime Chaozhou. But the entire book is skillfully and deliberately tied together by Macauley under various thematic focuses, including empire, frontier, colonial expansions, territorialism, translocality, mass migration, gender and environment, and interregional interactions.

This book also infuses critical energy into the ongoing discussion of the Great Divergence, suggesting that the conclusion made by Kenneth Pomeranz would have been different if Chaozhou, alongside southern Fujian and Canton, had been taken into proper consideration. One might question to what extent the commercial expansion of Chaozhouese into Southeast Asia resembled the colonial aggrandizement of Great Britain, Spain, France, the Netherlands, the United States, and Japan, probably because the former type of expansions were, after all, relatively short-distanced compared with those long-distance voyages conducted by the Europeans in the Age of Sail. Not to mention that the Chinese had already established close connections with Southeast Asia (the Nanyang) during the Three Kingdoms Period, if not earlier. As a result, unlike the Europeans, who were mostly exploring something entirely new to them beyond the Mediterranean and Atlantic regions, the Chaozhouese of the late eighteenth century were venturing into territories they had been fairly familiar with for centuries. Macauley, however, is to the point when she argues that the manner in which the Chaozhouese benefited from access to underpopulated lands and resources of Southeast Asia closely resembled what European settlers did to the natives of the so-called New World. There were even examples of European officers and missionaries referring to the Chaozhouese living in Southeast Asia at the time as “colonials” and “Chinese colonists” (p. 7). In a way, Macauley's approach to considering the Chaozhouese in Southeast Asia as colonists enables us to better situate (South) China, represented by the Chaozhouese community, in a global context.

Some critics might continue to question to what extent the Chaozhouese could represent (South) China as a whole. This is like asking to what extent the British East India Company could represent the British Empire, which consisted of England, Wales, Scotland, and other overseas territories. There are always counterexamples one could use to argue that the Chaozhouese community was not that representative of colonialism if we were to selectively feature a particular event or period of time. But if we examined the “representativeness” in question from a long historical perspective, it would not be an exaggeration to argue that the Chaozhouese had been playing a vital role in fostering those “colonial dynamics” (p. 9) across the South China Sea. The commercial expansions facilitated by the Chaozhouese also serve as an effective platform from which to compare it with the Hakka influence in Siam, as well as the Cantonese penetration of the Vietnamese society. Nonetheless, we need to be aware of the subtle differences between these “colonial activities [in a Chinese way]” and the very idea of a colonialism that is fundamentally based on European experiences. As Macauley reminds us, “colonialism is too limited a term to apply to the variegated experience of overseas Chinese. Chaozhouese expansion into Southeast Asia reflected less a colonial than a territorial dynamic” (p. 11). Was the history of maritime Chaozhou a colonial history? Interested readers will find an extremely satisfying and stimulating discussion in the final section of the book, “Territorialism and the State” (pp. 282–92). Macauley tackles this question not only from a historical point of view but from two other pairs of lenses: theoretical and transnational.

The final strength of this book that is worth highlighting, in my assessment, is that Macauley provides many richly detailed case studies that significantly enhance the quality of her arguments. These historical examples not only cherish the good old days of the Chaozhouese community in Southeast Asia, but also signify their decline in relation to the collapse of the global economy in 1929. Despite the many engaging stories presented in this book, one might also want to know more about the extent to which the Chaozhouese culture, such as the Chaozhou opera and the region's rituals, traditions, and culinary habits, had spread across other parts of China and Southeast Asia. The Chaozhouese had long been regarded as diligent and protective compared with many other Chinese clans, but do these attributes have anything to do with their characteristic adventures overseas? In addition, how did the Chaozhouese maintain their traditional culture in Southeast Asia? To what degree did Chaozhouese culture help consolidate their power so they could overcome competition from Asian and European traders? These questions might also prove to be useful especially during a time when we have begun to recognize the value of converging Chinese maritime history with cultural studies as one potential attempt to add fuel to the field down the road.