Content area
Full text
In modern Chinese history, it seems to be common knowledge that Kang Youwei (康 有为 1858–1927), a leading political reformer of late-Qing China, initiated the Chinese Empire Reform Association (hereafter CERA) or Baohuanghui (保皇会, the Society to Protect the Emperor) in Canada in 1899. In the name of protecting the Guangxu Emperor (光绪帝 1871–1908), who had led the short-lived political reform in Qing China in 1898 but came under house arrest thereafter, the CERA developed more than 160 branches in the Americas, Asia, Africa, and Australia by 1905. Ironically, Kang's clashes with major leaders of Canadian CERA branches around 1909 also triggered the decline of this first global Chinese political organization.1
Kang Youwei's activities in Canada between 1899 and 1909 were crucial aspects of the global Chinese reformist movement, but they have rarely received scholarly attention. The purpose of this article is not only to fill this gap in textual research on Kang's activities in Canada but also to examine the impacts of his interactions with leaders of Canadian Chinatowns on the worldwide Chinese reforms. Moreover, it will also reveal the influence of this reformist movement on broad political change among overseas Chinese.
In 1958, Kang Tongbi (康同璧 1883–1969), Kang Youwei's second daughter, compiled relatively complete records about his four visits to Canada in a biographical work. This work was later expanded into an English version by her son, Jung-pang Lo (罗荣邦, 1912–1981), in 1967. Both Kang Tongbi and Lo's biographical works on Kang Youwei record his four visits to Canada as follows: The first visit of April 7–May 21, 1899; the second visit of June–October, 1899; the third visit of November 14, 1904–February 12, 1905; and the fourth visit in late June–late July of 1909.2 However, in Chinese Canadian history, Li Donghai's (李东海 1915–1988) pioneering work claims that Kang made only three visits to Canada, and so does the collective work of Edgar Wickberg and his collaborators.3 Furthermore, the two works contradict each other, as well as Kang and Lo's biographies, in the dates of Kang Youwei's Canadian trips, as is detailed below. In regard to Kang Youwei's founding of the CERA, two major monographs on the reformist organization also include differing records about its initiators and birthplaces in Canada.4