too did a host of extralegal battles. Violent racial politics swelled in popu-
larity in the Reconstruction South and in western territories where white
citizens lacked more recognized forms of po liti cal power. This racial vio lence
terrorized local populations, shaped local politics, and, at times, advanced a
national agenda. In the mid- nineteenth century, po liti cal vio lence, and the
rhe toric that accompanied it, challenged the federal government’s reserva-
tion of Indian lands, enfranchisement of African Americans, and toleration
of Chinese migration. By the century’s end, the federal government had ac-
quiesced to violent demands for Indian dispossession, black oppression, and
Chinese exclusion.14
The principal result of anti- Chinese vio lence was the modern American
alien. The term “alien” has long referred to foreigners, strangers, and out-
siders, and in U.S. law has come to define foreign- born persons on American
soil who have not been naturalized. Admittedly, “alien” has become un-
pleasant or even offensive to our modern ears, and recently scholars and
8
THE CHINESE MUST GO
journalists have begun to replace it with “noncitizen.” This more neutral
alternative, however, is too imprecise for the subject at hand. In the nine-
teenth century, the term “noncitizen” would have encompassed a large and
diverse group, including, at vari ous times, slaves, free blacks, Native Ameri-
cans, and colonial subjects.15 We cannot simply do away with the word
“alien,” therefore, since it offers historical accuracy and specificity. In this
book, the term is used cautiously to describe a par tic u lar legal and social
status, not an intrinsic trait. The Chinese entered Amer ica as mi grants and
were made into aliens, in law and society. Through a halting pro cess of ex-
clusion at the local, national, and international levels, the Chinese mi grant
became the quin tes sen tial alien in Amer i ca by the turn of the twentieth
century.16
At the local level, vio lence hardened the racial bound aries of the U.S.
West. Men like Tak Nam had established themselves in polyglot communi-
ties, living and working alongside white and Native Americans. He had
resided in Tacoma for nine years before his expulsion, and in the country for
thirty- three. Then vio lence made neighbors into strangers, figuratively and
literally, as vigilantes disavowed any connection to the Chinese and drove
them into unfamiliar surroundings. In addition to killing scores in the mid-
1880s, the vio lence displaced more than 20,000. In the pro cess, it acceler-
ated Chinese segregation in the U.S. West, spurred a great migration to the
East, and hastened return migration to China.17
As violent racial politics removed Chinese from local communities, it
proved similarly effective at excluding them from the nation. Before the out-
break of vio lence in 1885 and 1886, Congress attempted to balance com-
peting demands to close Amer i ca’s gates and open the door to China. In
1882, American leaders created a temporary bilateral compromise: a law
known as the Chinese Restriction Act. Only after the law’s public failure
and the ensuing vio lence did Congress turn to a long- term policy of unilat-
eral “Chinese exclusion” in 1888. The change in nomenclature signaled a
major shift in law, enforcement, and intent, as Congress narrowed the ave-
nues for Chinese migration, dedicated more resources to enforcement, and
expanded U.S. imperialism in Asia. Historians, with their eyes trained on
what Chinese exclusion would become, have overlooked the distinction
between the Restriction Period (1882–1888) and Exclusion Period (1888–1943).
To understand the radicalism of Chinese exclusion and the contingent
INTRODUCTION
9
history of its rise, we must recognize the period of restriction, experimenta-
tion, and contestation that preceded it.18
Together, the restriction and exclusion laws dissuaded untold thousands
of Chinese mi grants from settling in the United States and, by separating
men from women, stunted the growth of an American- born Chinese popu-
lation. With time, Chinese exclusion became Asian exclusion as policies first
practiced on the Chinese provided a blueprint for laws targeting Japa nese,
Korean, South Asian, and Filipino mi grants in the early twentieth century.19
As a consequence, in 1950 these groups made up only 0.2 percent of the U.S.
population; even in the twenty- first century, only a small fraction of Asian
Americans can trace their American roots back more than one generation.20
We can appreciate the significance of exclusion if we imagine what could have
been.
To describe this history, scholars have relied on meta phors, resorting to
towering walls, global borders, and closed gates. Despite their power, these
meta phors can be misleading. They suggest that Chinese exclusion success-
fully excluded the Chinese, but it did not. Though the laws slowed Chinese
migration, historians have estimated that there were more than three hun-
dred thousand successful Chinese arrivals between 1882 and 1943.21 These
meta phors also imply that exclusion’s power was specific to a par tic u lar place
and time, that is, the territorial boundary and the moment of entry. In fact,
long after they walked through Amer ica’s gates, Chinese mi grants continued
to carry their alienage with them in their daily lives, along with its legal and
social disadvantages. Moreover, these meta phors, by orienting our gaze
toward the edges of the nation, can inadvertently make Chinese exclusion
appear marginal to histories of Reconstruction, Indian dispossession, and
Jim Crow.
Though Chinese migration was a transnational phenomenon that spanned
much of the Pacific World, the making of the alien in Amer ica must be un-
derstood within a national context. It was not coincidental that Chinese
became aliens at a time when the federal government was dramatically re-
making the concept of the citizen. After the Civil War, Congress constructed
a new form of national citizenship with the Fourteenth Amendment, explic-
itly granting citizens certain rights and immunities, and extending formal
citizenship to broader numbers of African Americans and Native Americans.
At this critical moment, the social and legal meaning of alienage was also
10
THE CHINESE MUST GO
transformed. During a period known for the invention of the modern
American citizen, the forces of local expulsion, national exclusion, and
overseas imperialism produced the modern American alien and an illegal
counterpart.22
Traditionally, assumptions of scale and field have divided Chinese American
history into disparate stories of local expulsion, national exclusion, and in-
ternational imperialism.23 It would be straightforward to synthesize these
stories, to take these three narrative strands and weave them together to make
a strong, tidy braid. This would be a multiscalar approach. But the intent
here is not to combine the strands, but rather to break them down into their
; constituent fibers and to begin again. Only in starting afresh is it pos si ble to
see how lines of causation cross traditional scales of analy sis. This approach is
better understood as “transcalar . ”
This transcalar history takes a single phenomenon in a specific place,
namely the anti- Chinese vio lence of the U.S. West, and shifts across tradi-
tional scales of analy sis to unearth its interlocking roots and sprawling
ramifications. This retel ing recognizes that federal failures created local prob-
lems, and local crises had national and international consequences. Seeking
to reveal the entanglements between local and global pro cesses, it empha-
sizes that history is multilayered. Each layer must be seen as distinct— with
diff er ent forces at work, state logics in play, and constraints on human
agency— but linked by ideas, structures, and networks. This transcalar his-
tory keeps these multiple layers si mul ta neously in view, with an eye for
conflicts and connections. In doing so, it reveals how Tak Nam could be
defenseless on the streets of Tacoma but could still influence diplomatic rela-
tions through his demands for redress.24
Central to this transcalar history is the recognition that scale itself is con-
structed, first by the historical actors and again by the historians who tell
their tales. In the nineteenth century, people defined the local, national, and
global (to the extent they existed) through loose and shifting networks,
institutions, ideologies, and flows of capital. These nested levels of human
activity and the terms used to describe them were born of practice and belief.
Historians also construct scales, name them, give them bounds, and imbue
them with meaning.25
INTRODUCTION
11
Once formed, scales have the power to shape the thoughts and actions of
historical actors and the scholars who study them. Instead of naturalizing
the effects of scale, this book seeks to expose them. Part I, “Restriction,”
traces the contested politics and geopolitics that gave rise to the Chinese
Restriction Act and then considers how uneasy compromises at the national
level affected immigration enforcement at the local level. These chapters con-
tend that Americans’ views on Chinese migration were determined, in large
part, by the scale in which they viewed their world. Part II, “Vio lence,” ex-
amines the outbreak of anti- Chinese vio lence that followed the public
failure of restriction. Whether enacting vio lence or resisting it, Chinese
mi grants, anti- Chinese vigilantes, and white elites made bids for po liti cal
power across multiple scales and through vari ous means. Part III, “Exclu-
sion,” explains how local racial vio lence became an international crisis and
spurred a new federal immigration policy. By the turn of the century, the
confluence of local vio lence, national exclusion, and imperial expansion
shifted the nature of U.S. border control, extending it deep within the do-
mestic interior and across the Pacific.
In addition to moving across scales, this book uses multiple perspectives.
Its three central chapters, which make up Part II, tell the history of expul-
sion from three distinct viewpoints. These narratives capture the triangular
conflict between the banished Chinese, anti- Chinese vigilantes, and cosmo-
politan elites who fought to end the vio lence. The intent of these chapters is
not to suggest moral equivalence between diff er ent viewpoints, nor to recon-
cile conflicting perspectives. Instead, it is to make these viewpoints, with all
their apparent contradictions, si mul ta neously intelligible.26
Seeing this conflict from three distinct perspectives risks erasing the di-
versity within each group while naturalizing the divisions between them.
In fact, “the Chinese,” “anti- Chinese,” and “pro- Chinese” factions were all
rife with internal divisions. Before they arrived in Amer ica, few mi grants
from China would have seen nationality as a central marker of their iden-
tity. Trade, clan, guild, dialect, and native place divided the so- called
Chinamen, and it was these forms of social membership that defined their
community and sense of self.27 Similarly, the men and women who spear-
headed the anti- Chinese movement differed by class, national origin, lan-
guage, religion, and citizenship status. Though the vast majority proudly
claimed whiteness, their ranks occasionally included African Americans and
12
THE CHINESE MUST GO
Native Americans, who were hardly unified themselves. Fi nally, cosmopol-
itan expansionists who opposed the vio lence, while united by their class
status, conservative politics, and stance on Chinese migration, shared little
else. Even so, the rifts that divided the three groups ran deeper than the fis-
sures within each group during the mid- nineteenth century. For a time, these
three constructed identities played an outsized role in determining an in-
dividual’s loyalties, actions, and memories. This book’s thrice- told tale
bares the depth and complexity of this conflict, its shifting terrain, and
human toll.
While previous histories sought to cata logue numerous anti- Chinese in-
cidents, this book dives into a carefully selected case study to capture these
multiple perspectives. Along the way, we meet a Chinese woman who was
driven insane by expulsion, a white vigilante who offered a “good cussing”
to anyone too cowardly to join him, and a gun- toting preacher who declared
he would defend his Chinese servant. The three chapters of Part II focus on
expulsions in Washington Territory as examples of anti- Chinese vio lence in
the mid-1880s. The vio lence there was disproportionately significant and em-
blematic of the larger phenomenon. This was made clear by media reports
that quickly declared the Tacoma expulsion to be an “ideal model.” “Now that
the example of lawlessness triumphant has been set and copied,” opined the
Los Angeles Times, “we may expect it to find ready advocates in every town
on the coast.”28 This prediction proved prescient as the vio lence spread across
the U.S. West. Earlier acts of historical recovery make pos si ble this case
study of the Pacific Northwest and its interpretation of the vio lence at large.
The Pacific Northwest has received only limited attention in the history
of Asian Amer i ca, and yet it boasts a more complete archive of the lived
experience of anti- Chinese vio lence than all other regions. This is due, in
part, to the federal government’s involvement in Washington Territory, which
resulted in more extensive rec ord keeping. It is also due to the destruction
of many California rec ords in the San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906.29
Even in Washington Territory, however, the historical rec ord is incomplete.
Not surprisingly, educated white men produced vastly more rec ords than
anyone else. In the archives it is especially difficult to hear voices of the
working- class Chinese, whose illiteracy and transiency make them particu-
larly elusive. These archival silences represent a central prob lem for the his-
tory of the
Chinese in Amer ica. With few first- person accounts, historians
INTRODUCTION
13
risk depicting the Chinese in simplistic terms, either as hapless victims of
events beyond their control or as valorous heroes resisting the mob at every
turn. Through a cautious reading of imperfect sources, this book strives to
be faithful to the uneven nature of the mi grants’ knowledge, power, and
suffering.
Near where Chinese homes once lined the Tacoma harbor, Reconciliation
Park now stands. It is built in the style of a Chinese garden of no par tic u lar
provenance. Down a winding path of crushed rock, across the “string of pearls
bridge,” there is a “dragon mound,” a series of historically sensitive plac-
ards, and a red pavilion that can be booked for weddings. This is Tacoma’s
bold attempt to remember the vio lence against the Chinese long after most
of Amer ica has forgotten.30
Yet it is an odd sight, out of place and from another time. Chinese mi-
grants like Tak Nam lived near here, alongside a spur line of the Northern
Pacific Railroad and among buildings of the Hatch Lumber Mill in make-
shift wooden shacks on stilts.31 But there is nothing from that unkempt world
in this manicured space. Standing in the elegant waterfront park, separated
from Tacoma by a bustling highway, it is impossible to get to know the Chi-
nese residents of 1885, to imagine how they lived, and to tell what Chinese
Americans have become in the 130 years since.
Like many Chinese gardens in the United States, the park seeks authen-
ticity that proves unobtainable.32 It offers an image of China reflected
through American eyes, rather than a memory of the Chinese in Amer ica.
Even within this laudable act of public remembrance, the Chinese remain
elusive, alien to their surroundings.
Perhaps it is only fitting. Tacoma, after all, helped to make them so.
Part 1
Restriction
1
The Chinese Question
WHEN CHINESE MI GRANTS arrived in the U.S. West in the 1850s, they were
met with vio lence. They dodged rocks thrown by children as they labored in
Sacramento, guarded against armed prospectors as they mined the rivers of
Placer County, and fled angry mobs in the streets of Los Angeles.1 And while
The Chinese Must Go Page 2
