Zhongping Chen traces the origins and rise of the Cantonese-dominated Chinese migration to Canada between 1788 and 1898. Combining a diaspora studies approach with both qualitative and quantitative analyses of Chinese and English-language documents, including many previously untapped archival sources such as documents of secret societies, community organizations, and family businesses, this book focuses on the transnational mobility of Chinese migrants across southern China, the American West, and Pacific Canada. Chen analyzes the cross-cultural development of Chinese migration networks through interactions with white and Indigenous peoples and related issues, ranging from racism and settler colonialism to constitutionalism. The book features the first intensive examination of Chinese migrants' involvement in the transpacific Anglo-American fur trade, the gold rushes spreading from California to British Columbia, the construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway, and community reforms across North American Chinatowns. Through innovative theoretical approaches and close analysis of previously neglected archival sources, Chen demonstrates how the Cantonese-dominated diaspora in Canada exerted profound but long-neglected and under-researched influence on sociopolitical changes in Qing China, Canadian society, and the Chinese communities across the Pacific Rim, including American Chinatowns, going beyond the nation-state frameworks in Chinese diaspora studies.