摘要
Studies on colonial history have long been trapped either by the binaryframework of the imperial history or by the linear narrative of thenational history. However, the past of transnational subjects such as theSikh policemen in Southeast and East Asia cannot be properly studiedin both paradigms. This article tries to reconstruct the experience ofthose overseas Sikh servicemen by employing a transnational approach.Through connecting the colonial rule in India with what happened inSingapore, Hong Kong and Shanghai in the late nineteenth and earlytwentieth centuries, this paper examines how the mechanism of acolonial network shaped the birth and development of the Sikh policeunits in different colonies and settlements.
