Sinophone Australia

Sinophone Australia

Edited by Craig A. Smith

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Format: paperback
296 pages
ISBN: 9781761540592
DOI: 10.30722/sup.9781761540592
Publication: 01 May 2026
Series: China and the West in the Modern World
Publisher: Sydney University Press

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Sinophone Australia opens a new window onto Australian history by foregrounding Chinese-language sources as a lens through which to reinterpret the nation’s past. Understanding Australian history through sources written in a different language offers a familiar yet fundamentally different perspective on the Australian experience.

This groundbreaking volume brings together a rich collection of primary sources – letters, essays, travelogues – written in Chinese and now translated into English, spanning from the gold rush era of the 1850s to the postwar reflections of the 1950s. Each chapter includes primary sources translated into English and preceded by an academic introduction written by a historian who has engaged with these sources. In this respect, Sinophone Australia revises the Anglo-hegemony of historical writing, providing glimpses of non-English historical documents with the hopes that this will lead to the expansion of Australian history, just as a new multilingual generation of historians stands up to interpret the vast amount of source documents written in other languages.

Beyond its contribution to Australian history, Sinophone Australia positions these narratives within the broader framework of the global Sinophone, addressing themes that resonate across settler colonies and Chinese-speaking communities worldwide. Sharing analysis from historians who have extensive experience working with Chinese-language sources on Australian history, Sinophone Australia invites scholars and readers to reconsider the intersections of language, migration and identity in shaping historical knowledge.


Subjects: Asian studies, History

Craig A. Smith is Associate Professor of Translation Studies at the University of Melbourne’s Asia Institute. He is a historian of modern East Asia and an avid translator. He is the author of Chinese Asianism (Harvard University Asia Center, 2021) and the co-editor of Translating the Occupation (University of British Columbia Press, 2021).

List of figures

Introduction: A multilingual people and a monolingual state by Craig A. Smith

  1. Bespattered with Chinese hieroglyphics: Rewriting Chinese into nineteenth-century Australia by Ely Finch and Michael Williams
  2. The dynamics of publishing Chinese-language newspapers in White Australia by Mei-fen Kuo
  3. Liang Qichao’s visit to Australia by Sophie Loy-Wilson
  4. Sinophone writings on Indigenous Australians by Austin Tseng
  5. The Sino-Japanese War in Sydney’s Sinophone theatre and literature, 1943 by Chao Guo and Josh Stenberg
  6. The traveller: Elite voyages to Australia by Craig A. Smith
  7. Narratives of Chinese Australian history: Taam Sze Pui and Liu Wei-ping, 1925 and 1956 by Craig A. Smith
  8. Dismantling the White Australia Policy by Craig A. Smith

Conclusion by Sophie Loy-Wilson

Bibliography

Glossary and index

“This volume of contextualised translations of Chinese is welcome and long overdue. Craig A. Smith has brought together the expertise of some of the leading historians and translators as well as facilitating the training of new translators. Sinophone Australia makes a significant contribution to demonstrating the range of Chinese language sources available and making some key sources accessible.” – Dr Juanita Kwok

“This collection brings together a fascinating and rich variety of Chinese texts previously inaccessible to most Australian historians. There are poems, newspaper articles, travelogues, legal documents, political tracts, private correspondence, gravestones and even characters traced on gum trees. A ground-making initiative, based on the careful work of skilled translators.”

– David Walker, Inaugural BHP Chair of Australian Studies, Peking University

“This is an innovative, insightful, readable and fascinating work focusing on Chinese Australians – including their struggle for justice in a white-dominated society. Strongly recommended.”

– Colin Mackerras AO FAHA, Griffith University

Sinophone Australia, edited by Craig A. Smith, is a major new collection of critical essays and translations into English, presenting for the first time a wide range of Chinese-language texts produced in Australia from the 1850s to the 1950s.

  • David Carter, University of Queensland

Format: paperback
Size: 210 x 148 mm
Pages: 296
Illustrations: 16
Copyright: 2026
ISBN: 9781761540592
Publication: 01 May 2026
Series: China and the West in the Modern World