Mobilities of Relief: Chinese Australian Responses to the North China Famine, 1878

This thesis investigates the Melbourne China Famine Relief Fund Committee for the North China Famine in 1878. The Committee comprised both Chinese and European merchants and elites in Melbourne and demonstrates collaborative relationships in a climate of increasing anti-Chinese sentiment in colonial Victoria. The thesis explores these relationships to better understand local Chinese elites in 1870s Melbourne. The thesis also interrogates the relationships that Chinese Committee members had towards China, and the global influences and flows that contributed to the Committee’s formation and humanitarian action in nineteenth century colonial Victoria.