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Search Inside the Book, Research for Transnationalism Paper
Amazon's "Search inside this book" is a great tool for research. I used it tonight to search for more material for my paper on transnationalism, and was able to browse much of Aihwa Ong, et al.'s Ungrounded Empires: The Cultural Politics of Modern Chinese Transnationalism online. Users of the service are limited to seeing 20% of the pages in a single book but this is a minor limitation for research, especially in volumes where only several chapters or essays are relevant. I have all the information I want from the book, including many references to other sources.
The book, particularly the essays by Ong and Xin Liu, provides excellent support for my thesis, that certain characteristics of transnationalism (social, kinship, and economic ties that transcend political borders) have been present not only in modern migrations such as early twentieth century Italian migration to the United States and contemporary international migration (both skilled and unskilled), but also in early modern migrations and in "internal" migrations across the centuries. The borders involved do not have to be the rigidly-defined borders of a modern nation-state, nor do they have to be international borders at all. Transnationalism, migration, and the association of geographic mobility with the possibility of upward economic mobility, seem to be global historical constants.
The following quote from Liu is especially enlightening, and combined with sources I have read on labor migration and remittances in early modern Britain and on medieval Italian mercantile capitalists, helps make what I believe is a good case for pre-modern transnationalism:
"It is important to note, however, that the current reordering of social meanings of space is the latest shift in an age-old tradition that associated social power with upward mobility. For centuries in China, upward social mobility often also meant physical movements - traveling within the imperial domains. In order to gain access to commercial opportunities, education, or high office, Chinese people traveled from rural areas to urban centers (Skinner 1997). In particular, after the institutionalization of the national examination system through the Tang (618-907 A.D.) and Song (960-1297 A.D.) periods, scholarship became a possible route for rural elites to climb "the ladder of success" (Ho 1962; see also Johnson 1985). Mobility and traveling were an integral part of the social hierarchy in late imperial China. The closer one moved to the top and the center, the greater one's social power; power and prestige diminished as one moved toward the peripheries. It can be said that this model of stratified, vertical arrangement of space informed the imaginations and strategies of many social groups, such as local elites, merchants, and rebelling peasants.
It's good to be excited about research again.
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