| Popis: |
More than 3,000 Chinese seamen were stranded in Calcutta during the Second World War. The Chinese Nationalist government and the Government of India worked out a plan to discipline these seamen and turn them into a useful wartime labour force by establishing the Chinese Seamen’s Wartime Service Corps. The Chinese seamen, meanwhile, employed various strategies to turn the regulatory regimes to their own purposes. The seamen’s art of (not) being governed eventually led to the failure of the Chinese Seamen’s Wartime Service Corps. This chapter explores how the Chinese seamen in Calcutta negotiated with and responded to the authorities’ intention of incorporating them into the grand nationalist agendas. In telling the story, the chapter tries to restore ordinary people’s active role in modern Indian and Chinese history. |
