Seng Guo-Quan

Profile: https://discovery.nus.edu.sg/4516-guo-quan-seng

I am a historian of Chinese societies in Southeast Asia, with a special interest in how racial, gender and sexuality structures in the region have been shaped through the forces of Eurasian imperialism, nationalisms and global capitalism. Born and raised in Singapore, I have been trained in History at the University of Cambridge (BA), National University of Singapore (MA), and the University of Chicago (PhD). My first book, Strangers in the Family: Gender, Patriliny and the Chinese in Colonial Indonesia (Cornell University Press, 2023), is a gendered history of settler Chinese community formation in Indonesia during the Dutch colonial period (1816–1942). I also maintain an interest in debates in world history, historiography and social, gender and postcolonial theory.

I am currently involved in three projects. First, I am working on a second monograph tentatively titled, “A Diaspora of Shopkeepers: Empire, Race and Chinese Commercial Expansion in Southeast Asia (1870-1970s)”. With a focus on Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia, this project is both a bottom-up history of the ethnic Chinese wholesale and retail trade, and a history of the racializing processes of economic knowledge formation. Second, I am writing a socio-cultural history of early Chinese television in Singapore for the Popular Culture in Nanyang Conference (to be held in November 2023). Third, I have also been invited to contribute a chapter on Chinese migration and entrepreneurship in Southeast Asia for the early modern volume in the Cambridge History of Southeast Asia (forthcoming, 2025).

TEACHING AREAS:

GESS1037: Gender & Sexuality: A Singaporean History
HY1101E: Engaging Asia: A Global History
HY3243: China & Southeast Asia: Past & Present
HY3260: Chinese Migrations in World History
HY4223: Chinese Overseas: Sojourners and Settlers
HY4236: Topics in Singaporean History (AY2023/4, Sem 2: Gender & Sexuality)
HY5412: Studying Singaporean History (AY2023/4, Sem 2: The Chinese in Singapore)

RESEARCH FIELDS

Chinese migration to Southeast Asia
Empires and decolonization
Family, gender and sexuality
Transregional Asian businesses
History of capitalism

PUBLICATIONS:

Books:

Strangers in the Family: Gender, Patriliny and the Chinese in Colonial Indonesia (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, Southeast Asia Program Publications, 2023) - https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501772511/strangers-in-the-family/#bookTabs=1
The University Socialist Club and the Contest for Malaya: Tangled Strands of Modernity (Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam Press / Singapore: NUS Press, 2012) (Co-authored with Loh Kah Seng, Edgar Liao and Lim Cheng Tju) - https://nuspress.nus.edu.sg/products/the-university-socialist-club-and-the-contest-for-malaya

Articles and Book Chapters:

‘Revolutionary Cosmopolitanism and its Limits: The Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese in Singapore, Medan and Jakarta Compared (1945–1949)’ in Journal of Chinese Overseas, 16(1), 2020, 1-30.
‘The Gender Politics of Confucian Private Law: Contracts, Credit and Creole Chinese Bilateral Kinship in Dutch Colonial Java (1850s-1900)’ in Comparative Studies in Society and History, 60 (2), 2018, 390-414.
‘Provincial Idioms, Ancestral Names: A Peranakan Chinese Lineage and the Racial Politics of Belonging in West Java since 1900’ in Indonesia, no. 104, 2017, 65-89.
‘‘How I wished that it could have worked’: James Puthucheary's Political-Economic Thought and the Myth of Singapore's Developmental Model’ in Loh Kah Seng, PJ Thum and Jack Chia eds., Living with Myths in Singapore (Singapore: Ethos, 2017), 93-102.

Book Reviews:

‘Stan Neal, Singapore, Chinese Migration and the Making of the British Empire, 1819–67.’ Woodbridge, Suffolk, UK :The Boydell Press,2019. in The American Historical Review, Vol. 126, Issue 3, September 2021. 1267–1268.
‘Wasana Wongsurawat, The Crown and the Capitalists: The Ethnic Chinese and the Founding of the Thai Nation.’ Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2019 in Sojourn, 36.1, 178-182.
‘Michael Barr, Singapore: A Modern History. London: IB Tauris, 2019’ Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 92.2, 2019. 140-2.
‘Hew Wai Weng, Chinese Ways of Being Muslim: Negotiating Ethnicity and Religiosity in Indonesia. Copenhagen: NIAS Press, 2018.’ in Asian Culture, 42, 2018.
‘Alexander Claver, Dutch Commerce and Chinese Merchants in Java: Colonial Relationships in Trade and Finance, 1800-1942.’ Brill, Verhandelingen van het Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde, 2014.’ in Journal of Chinese Overseas, 12.1, 2016.
‘Hui Yew-Foong, Strangers at Home: History and Subjectivity among the Chinese Communities of West Kalimantan, Indonesia. Leiden: Koninklijke Brill NV, 2011’in Southeast Asian Studies, Vol. 3, No. 1, April 2014.
‘Julia María, Chiavone Camacho, Chinese Mexicans: Transpacific Migration and the Search for a Homeland, 1910-1960. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012.’ In Frontiers of History in China, 7, No. 4, 2012.