The Chinese in Mexico is the first comprehensive English-language monograph on Chinese immigration to and settlement in Mexico as a consequence of legal exclusion from the United States after 1882. This engaging social history offers an intimate view of the lived realities of Chinese migrants while at the same time painting a larger picture of the Mexican nation in a transnational context. Romero traces the development of a “Chinese transnational commercial orbit” that created complex and sophisticated networks between China, Mexico, Cuba, and the United States. Drawing on myriad U.S. and Mexican sources, the book argues that the Chinese forged the transnational orbit “in resistance, and adaptation” to Chinese Exclusion in the United States (p. 5). Networks included highly organized schemes of human “smuggling” as well as transnational capital and wholesaling that facilitated the success of Chinese business enterprises in Mexico. Since much of the existing literature has focused on...

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