The Chinese Question: The Gold Rushes, Chinese Migration, and Global Politics

by Mae Ngai

Overview

Winner of the 2022 Bancroft Prize
Shortlisted for the 2022 Cundill History Prize
Finalist for the 2022 Los Angeles Times Book Prize

How Chinese migration to the world’s goldfields upended global power and economics and forged modern conceptions of race.

In roughly five decades, between 1848 and 1899, more gold was removed from the earth than had been mined in the 3,000 preceding years, bringing untold wealth to individuals and nations. But friction between Chinese and white settlers on the goldfields of California, Australia, and South Africa catalyzed a global battle over “the Chinese Question”: would the United States and the British Empire outlaw Chinese immigration?

This distinguished history of the Chinese diaspora and global capitalism chronicles how a feverish alchemy of race and money brought Chinese people to the West and reshaped the nineteenth-century world. Drawing on ten years of research across five continents, prize-winning historian Mae Ngai narrates the story of the thousands of Chinese who left their homeland in pursuit of gold, and how they formed communities and organizations to help navigate their perilous new world. Out of their encounters with whites, and the emigrants’ assertion of autonomy and humanity, arose the pernicious western myth of the “coolie” laborer, a racist stereotype used to drive anti-Chinese sentiment.

By the turn of the twentieth century, the United States and the British Empire had answered “the Chinese Question” with laws that excluded Chinese people from immigration and citizenship. Ngai explains how this happened and argues that Chinese exclusion was not extraneous to the emergent global economy but an integral part of it. The Chinese Question masterfully links important themes in world history and economics, from Europe’s subjugation of China to the rise of the international gold standard and the invention of racist, anti-Chinese stereotypes that persist to this day.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781324036104
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	11/22/2022
Pages:	480
Sales rank:	500,951
Product dimensions:	8.10(w) x 5.50(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Mae Ngai is Lung Family Professor of Asian American Studies and professor of history at Columbia University. She is the author of the award-winning book Impossible Subjects and The Lucky Ones. She lives in New York City and Accokeek, Maryland.

Table of Contents

List of Maps xi

Author's Note xvii

Note on Romanization and Currencies xix

Introduction Yellow and Gold 1

Part I Two Gold Mountains

Chapter 1 Two Gold Mountains 19

Chapter 2 On the Diggings 37

Chapter 3 Talking to White People 65

Chapter 4 Bigler's Gambit 79

Chapter 5 The Limits of Protection 109

Part II Making White Men's Countries

Chapter 6 The Roar of the Sandlot 137

Chapter 7 The Yellow Agony 163

Part III The Asiatic Danger in the Colonies

Chapter 8 The Richest Spot on Earth 187

Chapter 9 Coolies on the Rand 212

Chapter 10 The Price of Gold 232

Chapter 11 The Asiatic Danger in the Colonies 247

Part IV The Chinese Diaspora in the West

Chapter 12 Exclusion and the Open Door 273

Chapter 13 Becoming Chinese, Becoming China 289

Epilogue The Specter of the Yellow Peril, Redux 303

Acknowledgments 315

Glossary of Chinese Proper Names 319

Notes 321

Bibliography 379

Credits 419

Index 421

Illustrations follow page 136 and page 233.

Editorial Reviews

"This meticulously researched history spanning nearly two centuries reveals how the Chinese Question has been deeply embedded in Anglo-American global views of China. The Chinese Question shows how entire countries can fall prey to old racialized narratives that may lead to unintended and dangerous consequences. Ngai’s is a cautionary tale in today’s increasingly interdependent and fragile world."

Air Mail - Helen Zia

"This book will help the reader understand a troubled past and see contemporary conflicts between China and the West in a broader perspective."

New York Journal of Books - Walter Clemens

"Mae Ngai has produced an epic account of Chinese pioneers who traversed the Pacific, Indian and Atlantic oceans to three gold-bearing continents in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Beyond presenting an archivally accurate history of these encounters where race and money were the prime drivers of engagement, her research has unearthed an overtly human dimension where numbers are names, statistics incidences and hearsays realities. These encounters on the gold mines of America, Australia and South Africa led to widespread malicious economic expulsion and vindictive political exclusion which it could be argued laid the foundation for much of the burgeoning Sino-phobia evident across the globe over a century later."

Karen L. Harris

"Nowadays, anglophone nations ask anxious questions about Chinese ascendance. Based on prodigious research, Ngai’s remarkable book reveals how these queries branch from an older Chinese Question."

Susan Lee Johnson

"Mae Ngai slays the coolie myth and resurrects the history of Chinese in early globalization with all its promise of improvement and constant struggle against racist oppression. Never has the spectacular story of the establishment and persistence of Chinese communities across three continents been better told."

Odd Arne Westad

"Mae Ngai shows how the racist coolie stereotype was effectively exploited decade after decade to advance global capitalism and imperialism. The sense of urgency shines through this poignant and provocative work. Powerful and empowering."

Elizabeth Sinn

"Truly a tour de force of scholarship [The Chinese Question is] a detailed, vivid, close-up depiction of the historic encounters that followed the momentous Chinese migrations of the nineteenth century."

Marilyn Lake

"Ambitiously conceived, prodigiously researched, and engagingly presented, The Chinese Question weaves distant places, circumstances, and experiences into a compelling narrative that speaks to us today. The Chinese Question has deep historical significance but also pressing contemporary relevance."

Gordon H. Chang

"Mae Ngai’s beautifully crafted global narrative dismantles widely accepted, and deeply racist, tropes about Chinese migration. This is one of the few books that will make you genuinely rethink an important episode."

Sven Beckert

"Meticulously researched….A deep historical study, and a timely re-examination of the persistent Chinese Question in America and elsewhere."

Yunte Huang

"Ngai adeptly narrates both seismic shifts in the world economy and the nuanced dynamics of small communities, paying particular attention to the choices made by individual immigrants as they navigated harsh and unfair foreign environments. Every aspect of Ngai's inquiry is sharply relevant today on many fronts."

Booklist (starred review) - Brendan Driscoll

"A remarkable combination of historical research, analysis, and empathy stretching over four continents and three gold rushes. In Mae Ngai’s skilled hands, The Chinese Question is more than just a study of racism; it reveals the contours of capitalism and colonialism since the nineteenth century."

Richard White

"[An] important and eminently readable book."

The Spectator - Simon Winchester

"A work of towering ambition….Ngai is a lucid and elegant writer."

Wall Street Journal - Andrew R. Graybill

"Eureka! In telling this comparative and connected history, The Chinese Question mines a rich stream, bringing to life Chinese people who pushed back against settler racism in so-called 'white men’s countries,' such as California and Australia. This is a stunningly revealing and timely excavation of the racist stereotypes that continue to shape white responses to China and the Chinese."

Warwick Anderson

"This [is a] remarkable book…[It] cuts through modern world history in a most refreshing way and contributes to our understanding of power rivalry that remains with us today."

Wang Gungwu

"Ngai brilliantly reconstructs how race became woven into the fabric of international capitalism and wired into the politics of nations. A stunning, vivid, and indispensable history."

Gary Gerstle