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Majority Images-Minority Realities: A Perspective on Anti-Orientalism in the United States

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 July 2009

Roger Daniels
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Extract

The final American withdrawal from Vietnam and the collapse of our client regime in Saigon marked a nodal point in American relations with East Asia. For years prior to our terminal disengagement, hawkish politicians and publicists had waxed eloquent about the bloodbath that was sure to occur when the northerners and their allies of the People's Revolutionary Government had achieved their victory. Although that sanguinary catastrophe did not occur, the presumption that it could have caused the American government to implement and execute a refugee program that brought over 125,000 Vietnamese to the United States. While it is far too early to draw up any detailed balance sheet on that refugee program, the reactions that it triggered in the United States provide a useful and convenient point of departure for a retrospective analysis of changing American attitudes toward all immigrants from Asia.

Type
Research Article
Information
Prospects , Volume 2 , October 1977 , pp. 209 - 262
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1977

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References

NOTES

1. For summaries of the press treatment, see the May 12, 1975, issues of Time and Newsweek. Riesman quoted from his letter, Time, June 2, 1975.

2. The Journal and Miscellaneous Notebooks of Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed. William H. Gillman, et al. (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1961), II, 224, as cited by Stuart C. Miller, The Unwelcome Immigrant: The American Image of the Chinese, 1785–1882 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: Univ. of California Press, 1969), p. 16. The quotations in notes 3, 4, and 5, were also gleaned from Miller's important book.

3. Samuel G. Goodrich, A System of Universal Geography, 2nd ed. (Boston, 1833), pp. 905–906.

4. “Adams' Lecture on the War with China,” Chinese Repository, 11 (1842), 274–89.

5. New York Herald, November 24, 1840.

6. John K. Fairbank, ed., The Missionary Enterprise in China and America (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1974), is a far-ranging collection of essays by several hands. Although none focuses directly on the relationship between immigrants and missionaries, see particularly Miller's essay, “Ends and Means: Missionary Justification of Force in Nineteenth Century China.”

7. Hugh Tinker, A New System of Slavery (London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1974).

8. Frank Soule, et al., The Annals of San Francisco (San Francisco, 1855), p. 253 and passim for economic data.

9. Gunther Barth, Bitter Strength: A History of the Chinese in the United States, 1850–1870 (Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press, 1964), p. 67.

10. Harry Parkes, as cited in Barth, Bitter Strength, p. 68.

11. Ivan H. Light, Ethnic Enterprise in America: Business and Welfare among Chinese, Japanese and Blacks (Berkeley and Los Angeles: Univ. of California Press, 1972), pp. 23–27.

12. For the persistence of this kind of emigration financing, see Victor G. and Brett de Bary Nee, Longtime Californ': A Documentary Study of an American Chinatown (New York: Pantheon Books, 1973), pp. 62–63 and passim.

13. In the censuses of 1860, 1870, and 1880, Chinese comprised 9.2, 8.8 and 8.7 percent of California's population; 94.9, 92.8, and 95.5 percent of California Chinese were male. Males were 71.9, 65.1, and 59.9 percent of the total population in the same censuses.

14. Nee and Nee, Longtime Californ', pp. xxi–xxvii, for San Francisco Chinatown today. For Seattle, see Doug and Art Chin, Uphill: The Settlement and Diffusion of the Chinese in Seattle, Washington (Seattle, Wash.: Shorey Book Store, 1973).

15. Charles Nordhoff, California: for Health, Pleasure and Residence (New York, 1873), p. 82.

16. These and the labor force data that follow are from Ping Chiu, Chinese Labor in California, 1850–1880: An Economic Study (Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1963).

17. Alexander Saxton, “The Army of Canton in the High Sierra,” Pacific Historical Review, 35 (May 1966), 151.

18. Robert W. Fogel and Stanley L. Engerman, Time on the Cross (Boston: Little, Brown, 1974).

19. Ivan Light, “From Vice-District to Tourist Attraction: The Moral Career of American Chinatowns,” Pacific Historical Review 43 (August 1974), 372–73.

20. Nee and Nee, Longtime Californ', pp. 272–77, have detailed charts of communal organizations in San Francisco.

21. Y. C. Wang, Chinese Intellectuals and the West, 1872–1949 (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 1966), is a detailed examination of Chinese educated in the U.S., Europe, and Japan.

22. Ray A. Billington, The Protestant Crusade, 1800–1860 (New York: Rinehart, 1938), remains the best study of pre-Civil War nativism. For the later period see John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism, 1860–1925 (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers Univ. Press, 1955).

23. Rudolph M. Lapp, “Negro Rights Activities in Gold Rush California,” California Historical Society Quarterly, 45 (March 1966), 3–20.

24. Sherburne F. Cook, “The Destruction of the California Indian,” California Monthly, 79 (December 1968), 15–19.

25. Alexander McLeod, Pigtails and Golddust (Caldwell, Idaho: Caxton Press, 1947), p. 326.

26. People v. Hall, 4 Cal 399 (1854).

27. John Bigler, Governor's Special Message (April 23, 1852), 4.

28. As cited in McLeod, Pigtails and Golddust, p. 64.

29. Cal. Statutes, 1855, pp. 194–95.

30. For details, see Carl B. Swisher, Stephen J. Field (Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 1930), p. 207, and Lucille Eaves, History of California Labor Legislation (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1910), p. 121.

31. For a detailed account of the movement, see Elmer C. Sandmeyer, The Anti-Chinese Movement in California (Urbana: Univ. of Illinois Press, 1939).

32. Winfield J. Davis, History of Political Conventions in California, 1849–1892 (Sacramento, 1893), p. 265.

33. Davis, Political Conventions, pp. 260, 307–308.

34. William M. Malloy, comp., Treaties, Conventions… 1776–1909 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1910), I, 234–36.

35. Ira B. Cross, A History of the Labor Movement in California (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1935), pp. 83–84.

36. For the best contemporary account of these struggles, see Willard B. Farwell, The Chinese at Home and Abroad (San Francisco, 1885), part II, p. 85.

37. New York Tribune, 05 1, 1869.Google Scholar

38. As cited in Commons, John R. et al. , A Documentary History of American Industrial Society (Cleveland: A. H. Clark, 1910), IX, 81.Google Scholar

39. Massachusetts Bureau of Statistics of Labor, Report, 1871, pp. 98–117.Google Scholar

40. “Editor's Easy Chair,” Harper's 42 (12 1870), 137–39Google Scholar; Norton, Frank H., “Our Labor System and the Chinese,” Scribner's Monthly 2 (05 1871), 61–70Google Scholar; U.S. Congress, House, Miscellaneous Document #81, 42d Cong., 3rd Sess.

41. Commons, , Documentary History, IX, 241.Google Scholar

42. Richardson, James D., Messages and Papers of the Presidents (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1907), VII, 288.Google Scholar

43. Richardson, , Messages, VII, 355.Google Scholar

44. U.S. Congress, Report of the Joint Special Committee to Investigate Chinese Immigration, 44th Cong., 2nd Sess., Report #689 (Washington, 1877), hereafter cited as Report #689.

45. Report #689, p. 56.

46. Nordhoff, , California, pp. 84–85.Google Scholar

47. Report #689, pp. 666–68.

48. Report #689, pp. 766–67, 787. See also Taylor, Paul S., “Foundations of California's Rural Society,” California Historical Society Quarterly, 24 (09 1945), 193–228.Google Scholar

49. Report #689, pp. 458, 467.

50. McGloin, John B., Eloquent Indian (Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 1949), pp. 179–80.Google Scholar

51. Gibson, Otis, The Chinese in America (Cincinnati, 1877), pp. 248, 263, 275, 279–80.Google Scholar

52. See the editorials reprinted in Report #689, pp. 1184–89.

53. Report #689, p. 1062.

54. Marin Journal, 03 30, 1876Google Scholar, as cited by Sandmeyer, , Anti-Chinese Movement, p. 25.Google Scholar

55. U.S. Congress, Senate, Misc. Doc. #20, 45th Cong., 2nd Sess., (Washington, 1877), p. 4.Google Scholar

56. Richardson, , Messages, VIII, 118.Google Scholar

57. Alta California, 03 3, 1882Google Scholar, as cited by Sandmeyer, , Anti-Chinese Movement, p. 93.Google Scholar

58. For a fuller account of Japanese governmental concern, see Daniels, Roger, “Japanese Immigrants on a Western Frontier: The Issei in California, 1890–1940,” pp. 76–91Google Scholar, in Conroy, H. and Miyakawa, T. S., eds., East A cross the Pacific: Historical and Sociological Studies of Japanese Immigration and Assimilation (Santa Barbara, Calif.: Clio Press, 1972).Google Scholar

59. Letter, Roosevelt, Theodore to Kennan, George, 05 6, 1905Google Scholar, Morison, E. E., ed., The Letters of Theodore Roosevelt, IV, 1168–69Google Scholar and Richardson, , Messages, X, 743–46.Google Scholar

60. Hichborn, Franklin, The Story of the California Legislature of 1909 (San Francisco: James H. Barry, 1909), p. 207.Google Scholar

61. Journal of the Senate of the State of California, 1905, pp. 1164–65.Google Scholar

62. This paragraph synthesized from public statements and letters by Rowell between 1900 and 1921. For the precise sources, see Daniels, Roger, The Politics of Prejudice: The Anti-Japanese Movement in California and the Struggle for Japanese Exclusion (Berkeley and Los Angeles: Univ. of California Press, 1962), n. 15, pp. 131–32Google Scholar. A detailed account of anti-Japanese activities may be found there and in Daniels, Roger, Concentration Camps, USA: Japanese Americans and World War II (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1972).Google Scholar

63. Dooner, P. W., The Last Days of the Republic (San Francisco, 1880)Google Scholar. Other anti-Chinese yellow peril fictions of the period include Woltor, Robert, A Short and Truthful History of the Taking of California and Oregon by the Chinese in the Year A.D. 1899 (San Francisco, 1882)Google Scholar, and Lorelle, , “The Battle of the Wabash,” Californian, 2 (10 1880), 364–66.Google Scholar

64. San Francisco Examiner, 12 20, 1906Google Scholar, January 1, 10, 1907. See also February 4, 7, and September I, 1907, for variants of this theme.

65. San Francisco Examiner, 11 3, 10, 1907Google Scholar. The Hobson articles were widely syndicated.

66. Lea, Homer, The Valor of Ignorance (New York: Harper, 1909), pp. 307–308Google Scholar. Boothe, 's “Ever Hear of Homer Lea?” Saturday Evening Post, 03 7, 14, 1942Google Scholar, was reprinted as an introduction to the reissue of Lea's book (New York, 1942).

67. Wells, H. G., The War in the Air (London, 1908), p. 229Google Scholar; Fitzgerald, F. Scott, This Side of Paradise (New York: Charles Scribner's, 1920), p. 19.Google Scholar

68. Knox press conference transcript, December 15, 1941, Knox Collection, Office of Naval History, Washington Navy Yard.

69. King, Cameron H. Jr., “Asiatic Exclusion,” International Socialist Review, 8 (05 1908), 669Google Scholar; Berger cited from Kipnis, Ira, The American Socialist Movement, 1897–1912 (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1952), pp. 276–86.Google Scholar

70. Conversely, the June, 1976, California Republican primary saw the State's most visible Japanese American, S. I. Hayakawa, win the G.O.P. nomination for United States senator, representing a victory for the more conservative forces within the party.

71. U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of the Census, Japanese, Chinese and Filipinos in the United States (Washington, 1973)Google Scholar