British subjects by birth, imperial citizens by choice the Straits Chinese and cultural citizenship in colonial Malaya

British subjects by birth, imperial citizens by choice the Straits Chinese and cultural citizenship in colonial Malaya

In 1897, a diplomatic incident involving a Straits Chinese trader in Amoy who was arrested by Qing authorities, despite his claims of being a British subject rather than a Chinese national, set into motion a series of public and private debates about British subjecthood and the rights that it ought to accrue to those that held said status. Drawing from contemporary accounts from the time, this paper investigates how Straits Chinese with the stat…