Speaker: Professor James Beattie

This talk examines the environmental dimensions of what Henry Yu has coined the “Cantonese Pacific.” It surveys how China’s market demand and later Chinese migration contributed to the great acceleration of environmental change in the nineteenth-century South Pacific. Framing these developments as eco-cultural networks that connected flows of labour, immigration, and capital to the process of commodifying nature, the talk provides case studies of Chinese resource demand. As well, it highlights the agency of Chinese migrants and merchants in establishing eco-cultural networks linking different Pacific places and resources.

About the Speaker

Professor James Beattie is Professor of Global and Environmental History at Sun Yatsen University, China, and Honorary Professor at the Centre for Sustainability Research, and the History Programme, University of Otago Ōtākou Whakaihu Waka.