This study is intended to explore the nature of overseas Chinese nationalism in British Malaya. In the studies on overseas Chinese nationalism, much attention has been given to an academic loyalty test, which tends to identify overseas Chinese nationalists as either loyal to China or loyal to the countries where they resided. Influenced by this dichotomous approach, existing literature in this area of historical study holds that overseas Chinese nationalism was merely an extension of China's nationalism. As a result, the history of the overseas Chinese nationalist movement in British Malaya is treated as a collection of discrete events motivated by the changes in China, rather than as a self-sufficient process developing in the setting of overseas Chinese society.; The fundamental flaw of this dichotomous approach is that it ignores important facts that there was an "imagined community" called overseas Chinese society emerging and developing between China and local nation-states since the late 19th century, and that overseas Chinese nationalism in Nanyang generally and in British Malaya particularly was a stateless and popular nationalism, which expressed overseas Chinese feelings of belonging to this imagined community and which was built on overseas Chinese networks and associations.; To reveal the real nature of overseas Chinese nationalism, this study will re-examine, from a new perspective, the events which happened in British Malaya during the overseas Chinese nationalist movement. It will relate how overseas Chinese nationalism emerged in British Malaya at the turn of this century, when old social networks dominated by secret societies in connection with opium farming were replaced with new social networks based on volunteer organizations such as huikuan. It will also discuss how overseas Chinese nationalism integrated the fragmented overseas Chinese population into a more united group between 1911 and 1936, when the overseas Chinese community came to maturity. Finally, it will depict how overseas Chinese nationalism mobilized the overseas Chinese against both the Japanese and the Kuomintang in the period of 1937 to 1941, when the survival of their community was threatened by the former and its independent attitude was attacked by the latter. Through this examination, this study will argue that overseas Chinese nationalism was an expression of the feelings of attachment to their community among overseas Chinese rather than an extension of China's nationalism.
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