THE CHINESE QUESTION

A Columbia University professor of Asian American studies tracks Chinese immigration to California, Australia, and South Africa from 1848 to 1899 and the subsequent racist backlash.

In an ambitious, diligent work of archival research that spans three continents (Northern California and the Yukon, the Victoria midlands, and South Africa) Ngai tracks the influx of Chinese immigrants in response to the discovery of gold—and the ugly dynamics surrounding what became known as the “Chinese Question”: “Were Chinese a racial threat to white, Anglo-American countries, and should Chinese be barred from them?” The rushes to the gold fields attracted not just Chinese, but many other immigrant groups. However, it “occasioned the first mass contact between Chinese and Euro-Americans” and provoked new challenges in an already racially divided society. The Chinese immigrated in order to chase fresh opportunities, many as indentured servants or volunteer free labor. As the numbers increased and they vied for work with poor White laborers, the Whites viewed them as threats, incapable of being assimilated. “Americans and British alike opposed the ‘slavery’ of the Chinese—but did not support their freedom,” writes Ngai. In Australia, the large numbers of Chinese immigrants led to racist hysteria, perpetuated by White colonial settlers, of being overrun by “devouring locusts.” In South Africa, the experiment to lure Chinese through contract labor to work the mines when not enough African laborers would do it proved costly and politically disastrous. Ultimately, exclusion laws were erected, prompting debate over free trade and hurting the once-thriving import-export businesses between China and the rest of the world. The author also examines the makeup of the Chinese communities that immigrated—with illuminating archival photos—the businesses they created, and the sustained racist backlash against them. This is intricate history that may lose some general readers, but students of the subject will be well rewarded.

A multilayered world history that adds materially to the sadly evergreen topic of immigration exploitation and exclusion.