"Colonial Rangoon society embraced vast floating populations, constantly entering and leaving the territory of Burma, a province of British India until 1937. This situation made it difficult for the authorities to undertake police activities in the capital city of the province. Dealing with undesirable ?outsiders” in Rangoon was an issue related to both the governance of the city and the border control of the province. By the 1910s, the Government of Burma and Rangoon Town Police discovered that expulsion of undesirable ?outsiders” was helpful for preventing crime in the city. At first, this policy targeted Chinese riot ringleaders, but, during the 1920s, its scope was dramatically widened and the policy changed qualitatively. This paper deals with the early phase of this process. From the late 19th century to the early 20th century, overseas Chinese were present in large numbers in the South China Sea region. For the emerging modern states in that region, it was common to utilize the economic resources of the Chinese network as well as to incorporate autonomous local Chinese communities into one unified, ruling state. As previous studies correctly point out, the government of Burma constructed its policy regarding the local Chinese population, especially in Rangoon, by referring to the early experiences of the Straits Settlements. However, the similarity between the two colonies should not be overemphasized. Despite frequent cross-references, each emerging state developed a different system of governing the Chinese to meet its own needs and conditions. Because of a lack of primary sources, previous studies have not explained concretely how the policy was introduced and practiced in Burma. As a result, the chronology and the characteristics of the process remain obscure. Therefore, this paper aims to clarify these by analyzing previously unexamined documents and to locate the process in the wider context of urban governance in colonial Rangoon..."