Four Centuries of Imperial Succession in the Comprador Pacific

This article aims to open the discussion of U.S. imperialism and Chinese comprador intermediaries in the Pacific to an enlarged historical analysis of inherited empires. Beginning with the formation of trans-Pacific Spanish commerce and the specialized role of Chinese intermediary commercial brokers, I introduce the notion of the comprador Pacific as a historical framework to understand the succession of imperial states, overlapping racializations, and the maintenance of a territorial assemblage bridging Asia and the Americas. The figure of the Chinese comprador is centered as a social and cultural icon of the enduring material circuits of Pacific empires. The article combines a commodity history of silver with a social history of the Chinese middleman occupation, along with exemplary biographical vignettes of key figures involved in imperial succession in the comprador Pacific.