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The Chinese Must Go

Page 38

by Beth Lew-Williams

Visions of Citizenship in American History (New Haven, CT: Yale University

  Press, 1997); William J. Novak, “The Legal Transformation of Citizenship

  in Nineteenth- Century Amer ica,” in The Demo cratic Experiment: New

  Directions in American Po liti cal History, ed. Meg Jacobs, William J. Novak,

  and Julian E. Zelizer (Prince ton, NJ: Prince ton University Press, 2003),

  85–119; Barbara Young Welke, Law and the Borders of Belonging in the Long

  Nineteenth Century United States (New York: Cambridge University Press,

  2010); Margot Canaday, The Straight State: Sexuality and Citizenship in

  Twentieth- Century Amer i ca (Prince ton, NJ: Prince ton University Press,

  2009). On the alien and noncitizen, see Linda Bosniak, The Citizen and the

  Alien: Dilemmas of Con temporary Membership (Prince ton, NJ: Prince ton

  University Press, 2006); Sarah H. Cleveland, “Powers Inherent in

  Sovereignty: Indians, Aliens, Territories and the Nineteenth Century

  Origins of Plenary Power over Foreign Affairs,” Texas Law Review 81, no. 1

  (2002): 1–284; Parker, Making Foreigners; Mae Ngai, Impossible Subjects:

  Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern Amer i ca (Prince ton, NJ: Prince ton

  University Press, 2005), xix– xx.

  16. For cultural studies scholarship on Chinese foreignness and alienage, see

  Lisa Lowe, Immigrant Acts: On Asian American Cultural Politics (Durham,

  NC: Duke University Press, 1996 ); Robert G. Lee, Orientals: Asian

  Americans in Popu lar Culture (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1999);

  Edlie L. Wong, Racial Reconstruction: Black Inclusion, Chinese Exclusion and

  the Fictions of Citizenship (New York: New York University Press, 2015).

  17. This represents a conservative estimate of the number displaced, based on

  the number of out- migrants from San Francisco, the population drop in

  King and Pierce Counties, and the estimated number of displaced Chinese

  who arrived in San Francisco. Coo lidge, Chinese Immigration, 500;

  USC / WT 1885, 1887; DAC, February 13, 1886. Estimated Chinese living in

  counties based on the 1880 federal census. 1880 U.S. Census, Steven

  Ruggles, Katie Genadek, Ronald Goeken, Josiah Grover, and Matthew

  Sobek, Integrated Public Use Microdata Series: Version 6.0 [machine-

  readable database] (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 2015).

  264

  NOTES TO PAGE 9

  18. Today, we remember the 1882 law as the “Chinese Exclusion Act,” but this

  is an anachronism. Contemporaries referred to the legislation as the

  “Chinese Restriction Act,” reserving the stronger term “exclusion” for its

  successors in 1888, 1892, 1902, and 1904. For the nineteenth- century use of

  “restriction,” see C. S. Fairchild to Acting Collector of Customs,

  January 30, 1889, file 3, box 14, Letters Received from the Department of

  Trea sury Customs Ser vice, Puget Sound Collection District Letters, U.S.

  Customs Ser vice, RG 36, NA; Cong. Rec., 50th Cong., 2d Sess. 56 (1888) at

  412. For the current use of “exclusion,” see major Asian American

  textbooks: Ronald T. Takaki, Strangers from a Dif er ent Shore: A History of

  Asian Americans (Boston: Little, Brown, 1998), 111; Chan, Asian Americans,

  54; Erika Lee, The Making of Asian Amer i ca: A History (New York: Simon

  and Schuster, 2015), 94. The actual name of the legislation was “An Act to

  execute certain treaty stipulations relating to the Chinese,” ch. 126, 22 Stat.

  58 (May 6, 1882). Several historians have recognized that contemporaries

  drew a rhetorical distinction between “restriction” and “exclusion.” Paul A.

  Kramer, “Imperial Openings: Civilization, Exemption, and the Geopolitics

  of Mobility in the History of Chinese Exclusion, 1868–1910,” Journal of the

  Gilded Age and Progressive Era 14, no. 3 (July 2015): 322; Elmer Clarence

  Sandmeyer, The Anti- Chinese Movement in California (Urbana: University

  of Illinois Press, 1939) , 96–108. In his study of the legal enforcement of

  Chinese Exclusion, Charles McClain follows a similar periodization. He

  divides federal Exclusion Act litigation into two phases: 1882–1885 and

  1888–1894. Charles J. McClain, In Search of Equality: The Chinese Strug gle

  against Discrimination in Nineteenth- Century Amer i ca (Berkeley: University

  of California Press, 1994), 147–172, 191–219. For further discussion, see

  Beth Lew- Williams, “Before Restriction Became Exclusion: Amer ica’s

  Experiment in Diplomatic Immigration Control,” Pacific Historical Review

  83, no. 1 (February 2014): 24–56.

  19. Bill Ong Hing, Making and Remaking Asian Amer i ca through

  Immigration Policy, 1850–1990 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press,

  1993), 17–42.

  20. Pew Research Center: Social and Demographic Trends, Pew Research

  Center, accessed December 2012, http:// www.pewsocialtrends .org / 2012 / 06

  / 19 / the - rise - of - asian - americans /.

  21. For example, Erika Lee, At Amer i ca’s Gates: Chinese Immigration during the

  Exclusion Era, 1882–1943 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press,

  2003), 9–12; Adam M. McKeown, Melancholy Order: Asian Migration and

  NOTES TO PAGE 10

  265

  the Globalization of Borders (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008).

  Some of these arrivals represent multiple trips by the same individuals.

  22. On the post– Civil War transformation of U.S. citizenship, see Eric Foner,

  The Story of American Freedom (New York: W. W. Norton, 1998), 107; Eric

  Foner, Reconstruction: Amer i ca’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877 (New

  York: Harper and Row, 1988), 237, 582; Novak, “The Legal Transformation

  of Citizenship,” 93, 106; Cathleen D. Cahill, Federal Fathers and Mothers: A

  Social History of the United States Indian Ser vice, 1869–1933 (Chapel Hill:

  University of North Carolina Press, 2011), 18–20, 26–29; Downs and

  Masur, The World the Civil War Made, 8. Mexican Americans had

  already been granted citizenship based on the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe

  Hidalgo.

  23. For local histories of expulsion, see Scott Zesch, The Chinatown War:

  Chinese Los Angeles and the Massacre of 1871 (Oxford: Oxford University

  Press, 2012); Craig Storti, Incident at Bitter Creek: The Story of the Rock

  Springs Chinese Massacre (Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1991); Jeffrey

  Alan Dettmann, “Anti- Chinese Vio lence in the American Northwest:

  From Community Politics to International Diplomacy” (Ph.D. diss.,

  University of Texas, 2002); Jules Alexander Karlin, “The Anti- Chinese

  Outbreaks in Seattle, 1885–1886,” Pacific Northwest Quarterly 39, no. 2

  (1948): 103–130; Jules Alexander Karlin, “The Anti- Chinese Outbreak in

  Tacoma, 1885,” Pacific Historical Review 23, no. 3 (1954): 271–283; Lynwood

  Carranco, “Chinese Expulsion from Humboldt County,” Pacific Historical

  Review 30, no. 4 (1961): 329–340; Larry D. Quinn, “ ‘Chink Chink

  Chinaman’: The Beginning of Nativism in Montana,” Pacific Northwest

  Quarterly 58, no. 2 (1967): 82–89. For national histories of exclusion, see

  Lee, At Amer i ca’s Gates; Hing, Making and Remaking Asian Amer i ca;

  Lucy E. Salyer, Laws as Harsh as Tigers: Chinese Immigrants and the

 
Shaping of Modern Immigration Law (Chapel Hill: University of North

  Carolina Press, 1995). For international histories of imperialism, see

  Michael H. Hunt, The Making of a Special Relationship: The United States

  and China to 1914 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983); William

  Appleman Williams, The Tragedy of American Diplomacy, 2nd rev. and

  enl. ed. (New York: W. W. Norton, 1972); Walter LaFeber, The New

  Empire: An Interpretation of American Expansion, 1860–1898,

  35th anniversary ed. (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998). Some

  histories have broken this pattern; see Kornel Chang, Pacific Connections:

  The Making of the U.S.- Canadian Borderlands (Berkeley: University of

  266

  NOTES TO PAGES 10–12

  California Press, 2012); Kramer, “Imperial Openings”; Delber L. McKee,

  Chinese Exclusion versus the Open Door Policy 1900–1906: Clashes over

  China Policy in the Roo se velt Era (Detroit: Wayne State University Press,

  1977).

  24. This method has much in common with the larger field of global history;

  see Sebastian Conrad, What Is Global History? (Prince ton, NJ: Prince ton

  University Press, 2016).

  25. On scale in historical scholarship, see Richard White, “The Naturalization

  of Nature,” Journal of American History 86, no. 3 (1999): 973–986; Sebouth

  David Aslanian, Joyce E. Chaplin, Ann McGrath, and Kristin Mann,

  “AHR Conversation; How Size Matters: The Question of Scale in History,”

  American Historical Review 118, no. 5 (December 2013), 1431–1472; Bernhard

  Struck, Kate Ferris, and Jacques Revel, “Introduction: Space and Scale in

  Transnational History,” International History Review 33, no. 4

  (December 2011), 573–584; Patrick Manning, Navigating World History:

  Historians Create a Global Past (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003),

  265–273; David Christian, “Scales,” in Palgrave Advances in World

  Histories, ed. M. Hughes- Warrington (Houndmills, UK: Palgrave

  Macmillan, 2005), 64–89. See also Hayden White, “The Question of

  Narrative in Con temporary Historical Theory,” History and Theory 23, no. 1

  (1984): 1–33.

  26. Didier Fassin, “Scenes from Urban Life: A Modest Proposal for a Critical

  Perspectivist Approach,” Social Anthropology 21, no. 3 (2013): 371–377;

  Walter Johnson, Soul by Soul: Life Inside the Antebellum Slave Market

  (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), 15–16; Jacoby, Shadows

  at Dawn, 4–7; Rashomon, directed by Akira Kurosawa (1950; Criterion

  Collection, 2012), DVD.

  27. Philip A. Kuhn, Chinese among Others: Emigration in Modern Times

  (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2008), 28–52.

  28. LAT, November 8, 14, 1885. See also The Daily Gazette (Kalamazoo, MI)

  September 6, 1885; Congressional Rec ord, 49 Cong. 1 Sess. February 26,

  1886, 1814; SDC, November 23, 1885; Riverside Press and Horticulturist,

  December 15, 1885.

  29. Though there were more expulsions in California, documentation about

  the expulsions from Washington Territory have been better preserved in

  the historical archive. This is due to a federal investigation of the

  vio lence in Tacoma conducted in 1886 and the so cio log i cal Survey of

  Race Relations (SRR) conducted in 1924, both of which collected Chinese

  NOTES TO PAGES 13–20

  267

  testimony on the vio lence in Washington Territory. Watson Squire to

  Thomas Bayard (and enclosed documents), July 17, 1886, USDS / ML;

  SRR.

  30. “Chinese Reconciliation Proj ect Foundation, ” http:// www

  .tacomachinesepark .org /.

  31. Cecil Cavanaugh, “The Hatch Mill, Pacific Ave nue, as It Used to Be,”

  [Photo graph and Caption] (1876), 1979.1.101, Washington State Historical

  Society, Tacoma.

  32. Carol Brash, “Classical Chinese Gardens in Twenty- first Century Amer ica:

  Cultivating the Past,” ASIA Network Exchange: A Journal for Asian Studies

  in the Liberal Arts 19, no. 1 (Fall 2011): 17–29.

  .

  1 THE CHINESE QUESTION

  1. Frank A. Leach, Recollections of a Newspaperman; A Rec ord of Life and

  Events in California (San Francisco: Samuel Levinson, 1917), 35, doi:

  http:// hdl.loc .gov / loc .gdc / calbk .128; Sim Moak, The Last of the Mill Creeks, and Early Life in Northern California (Chico, CA, 1923), 29, doi: http:// hdl.

  loc .gov / loc .gdc / calbk .173; Scott Zesch, The Chinatown War: Chinese Los Angeles and the Massacre of 1871 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012).

  2.

  SPI, December 18, 19, 25, 1877.

  3. Ibid., December 18, 19, 1877.

  4. Ibid., December 25, 1877.

  5. Huie Kin, Reminiscences (Peiping, China: San Yu Press, 1932), 28; Andrew

  Kan, interview by C. H. Burnett, August 22, 1924, box 27, no. 178, SRR;

  Law Yow, interview by C. H. Burnett, August 12, 1924, box 27, no. 191,

  SRR; Chin Chueng, interview by C. H. Burnett, August 21, 1924, box 27,

  no. 187, SRR; J. S. Look, interview by C. H. Burnett, August 13, 1924, box

  27, no. 182, SRR. See also Long Dong, interview by C. H. Burnett, July 28,

  1924, box 27, no. 171, SRR; Woo Gen, interview by C. H. Burnett,

  July 29, 1924, box 27, no. 183, SRR.

  6. On “the Chinese Question,” see Alexander Saxton, The Indispensable

  Enemy: Labor and the Anti- Chinese Movement in California, 2nd ed.

  (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995); Andrew Gyory, Closing the

  Gate: Race, Politics, and the Chinese Exclusion Act (Chapel Hill: University

  of North Carolina Press, 1998); Stamford M. Lyman, “The ‘Chinese

  Question’ and American Labor History,” New Politics 7, no. 4 (winter

  2000): 113–148; Mary Roberts Coo lidge, Chinese Immigration (New York:

  268

  NOTES TO PAGES 20–22

  Henry Holt, 1909), 127–144; Robert Ernest Cowan and Boutwell

  Dunlap, Bibliography of the Chinese Question in the United States (San

  Francisco: A. M. Robertson, 1909).

  7. American imperialism was one of a multiplicity of colonial formations

  in China, advanced by vari ous Western powers and Japan in the nineteenth

  century. Bryna Goodman and David S. G. Goodman, eds. Twentieth-

  Century Colonialism and China: Localities, the Everyday, and the World

  (London: Routledge, 2012); Kornel Chang, Pacific Connections: The Making

  of the U.S.- Canadian Borderlands (Berkeley: University of California Press,

  2012), 6–11; Michael H. Hunt, The Making of a Special Relationship: The

  United States and China to 1914 (New York: Columbia University Press,

  1983); Pär Kristoffer Cassel, Grounds of Judgment: Extraterritoriality and

  Imperial Power in Nineteenth- Century China and Japan (New York:

  Oxford University Press, 2012); Teemu Ruskola, Legal Orientalism: China,

  the United States, and Modern Law (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University

  Press, 2013), 127–128, 136, 144.

  8. Coo lidge, Chinese Immigration, 498.

  9. Kin, Reminiscences, 3–22. See also Judy Yung, Gordon H. Chang, and Him

  Mark Lai, Chinese American Voices: From the Gold Rush to the Pres ent

  (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), 57–67.

  10. For further discussion of the term “sojourner,” see Franklin Ng, ed., The

  History
and Immigration of Asian Americans (New York: Garland, 1998),

  87–126. For Eu ro pean sojourners, see John Bodnar, The Transplanted:

  A History of Immigrants in Urban Amer i ca (Bloomington: Indiana University

  Press, 1987). For comparative patterns of Chinese migration to Southeast

  Asia, Australia, and the Amer icas, see Philip A. Kuhn, Chinese Among

  Others: Emigration in Modern Times (Lanham, MD: Rowman and

  Littlefield, 2008), 7–54.

  11. Mae M. Ngai, “Chinese Gold Miners and the ‘Chinese Question’ in

  Nineteenth- Century California and Victoria,” Journal of American History

  101, no. 4 (March 2015): 1082–1105; Yong Chen, Chinese in San Francisco,

  1850–1943: A Transpacific Community (Stanford, CA: Stanford University

  Press, 2000), 2–44; Kil Young Zo, Chinese Emigration into the United

  States, 1850–1880 (New York: Arno Press, 1978), 198–200; Shih- Shah Henry

  Tsai, The Chinese Experience in Amer i ca (Indianapolis: Indiana University

  Press, 1986), 34–35; Gunther Paul Barth, Bitter Strength: A History of the

  Chinese in the United States, 1850–1870 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard

  University Press, 1964), 66–69.

  NOTES TO PAGES 22–26

  269

  12. Kin, Reminiscences, 21–23; Mae M. Ngai, The Lucky Ones: One Family and

  the Extraordinary Invention of Chinese Amer i ca, adv. ed. (Boston: Houghton

  Mifflin Harcourt, 2010), 5–6.

  13. Kin, Reminiscences, 24.

  14. Ibid., 24. For a population estimate, see Coo lidge, Chinese Immigration,

  498.

  15. Kin, Reminiscences, 25.

  16. June Mei, “Socioeconomic Origins of Emigration: Guangdong to

  California, 1850–1882,” Modern China 5, no. 4 (October 1979): 487–489;

  Henry Yu, “Mountains of Gold: Canada, North Amer ica, and the

  Cantonese Pacific,” in Routledge Handbook of the Chinese Diaspora, ed.

  Chee- Beng Tan (London: Routledge, 2012).

  17. On the Pacific world, see Matt K. Matsuda, “AHR Forum: Oceans of

  History: The Pacific,” American Historical Review 111, no. 3 (2006):

  758–780; Arif Dirlik, “The Asia- Pacific Idea: Real ity and Repre sen ta tion in

  the Invention of a Regional Structure” in Arif Dirlik, ed., What Is in a

  Rim? Critical Perspectives on the Pacific Region Idea, 2nd ed. (Lanham, MD:

  Rowman and Littlefield, 1998), 15–36; Chang, Pacific Connections, 1–16,

 

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