ABSTRACT
In some colonies set up by western powers, Chinese formed big minorities led by intellectuals or entrepreneurs. Although relegated to the fringes in the United States, Australia, and Europe, in poorer countries they sometimes derived political and economic clout from their ethnic cohesion, trading networks, transnational ties, or relations with the colonial power. Where the community was largely entrepreneurial, proletarian alliances of the sort promoted by the Comintern were generally ruled out. However, in Cuba and a handful of other colonised countries, Chinese joined local communists in anticapitalist or anti-imperialist alliances.
