The Chinese Question: The Gold Rushes and Global Politics

Product Description

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. 17 photographs, 4 illustrations and 9 maps

Review

“Meticulously researched….A deep historical study, and a timely re-examination of the persistent Chinese Question in America and elsewhere.”
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Yunte Huang, New York Times Book Review

“A work of towering ambition….Ngai is a lucid and elegant writer.”
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Andrew R. Graybill, Wall Street Journal

“[An] important and eminently readable book.”
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Simon Winchester, The Spectator

“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.”
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Helen Zia, Air Mail

“This book will help the reader understand a troubled past and see contemporary conflicts between China and the West in a broader perspective.”
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Walter Clemens, New York Journal of Books

“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.”
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Gary Gerstle, University of Cambridge

“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.”
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Susan Lee Johnson, author of Roaring Camp

“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.”
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Elizabeth Sinn, author of Pacific Crossing: California Gold, Chinese Migration, and the Making of Hong Kong

“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 be