The Chinese Must Go Read online

  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