Review by Booklist Review
Esteemed historian Mae Ngai presents a global view of Chinese miners in the nineteenth-century gold rush, considers the intersection of macroeconomics and racial politics, and underscores the ingenuity, resilience, and agency of immigrant laborers. The discovery of gold in California in 1848 and in the Victorian midlands of Australia and the Transvaal of South Africa soon thereafter brought waves of Chinese immigrants to all three places. Chinese labor was essential to the frenzied effort to extract gold as quickly and cheaply as possible, but Chinese laborers were marginalized. Although the rough-and-tumble goldfields were sometimes egalitarian, racism and the perception of competition led to violence, exclusion laws, discriminatory taxes, and other egregious departures from notions of equality. And if the "Chinese question" was handled differently across the Anglo-American world, the racist stereotype of the coolie and the supposed dangers of Chinese immigration transcended national borders and remain pernicious even today. 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.
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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Ngai (Impossible Subjects), a professor of Asian American studies at Columbia University, delivers a painstaking study of Chinese immigration to the U.S., Australia, and South Africa as gold rush fever swept the globe in the last half of the 19th century. Detailing increasingly labor-intensive mining practices, policies of exclusion and racial segregation, and the entrenchment of the "racist coolie stereotype," Ngai contends that "Chinese emigrants suffered marginalization, violence and discrimination but they also adapted and persevered." Extensive archival work reveals the earnings, possessions, and sometimes tragic fates of the hundreds of thousands of Chinese men who left home to pursue their fortunes. The wave of migration forced imperial China to engage with the world to a degree it had not done in the modern era, combating exclusionary laws that lasted until WWII in the U.S., and well into the 1970s in Australia and South Africa. Descriptions of the Zongli Yamen, the Qing government's foreign office, offer an intriguing, rarely seen perspective on the diaspora and China's response to humiliating global bigotry, which fueled a sense of grievance still evident in the country's nationalistic rhetoric. Though dense and scholarly, this impressive volume adds a vital chapter in the history of globalization. (Aug.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
In the 19th century, gold rushes in California, Australia, and South Africa enticed thousands from around the world to leave their homes in search of riches, including many Chinese nationals. Ngai (history, Asian American studies, Columbia Univ.; The Lucky Ones) writes a detailed comparison of these three gold rushes; it touches on the impact on Indigenous peoples, but it focuses on the interaction between Chinese migrants and dominant white settler populations. Ngai identifies many similarities between the three gold rushes; for instance, the American, Australian, and South African governments all eventually put strict limits on Chinese immigration. Readers will also learn how Chinese miners brought their own knowledge and techniques to the gold rushes, and how they navigated survival in the foreign cultures they found themselves in. The book relies on primary sources and includes maps and archival photographs that provide fuller historical context. VERDICT Ngai's thoroughly researched work is essential for anyone studying the Chinese diaspora in the Anglo American world, or gold rushes generally. Readers interested in Chinese immigrants in the 19th-century United States should also consider Gordon H. Chang's Ghosts of Gold Mountain.--Joshua Wallace, Tarleton State Univ. Lib. Stephenville, TX
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A Columbia University professor of Asian American studies tracks Chinese immigration to California, Australia, and South Africa from 1848 to 1899 and the subsequent racist backlash. In an ambitious, diligent work of archival research that spans three continents (Northern California and the Yukon, the Victoria midlands, and South Africa) Ngai tracks the influx of Chinese immigrants in response to the discovery of gold--and the ugly dynamics surrounding what became known as the "Chinese Question": "Were Chinese a racial threat to white, Anglo-American countries, and should Chinese be barred from them?" The rushes to the gold fields attracted not just Chinese, but many other immigrant groups. However, it "occasioned the first mass contact between Chinese and Euro-Americans" and provoked new challenges in an already racially divided society. The Chinese immigrated in order to chase fresh opportunities, many as indentured servants or volunteer free labor. As the numbers increased and they vied for work with poor White laborers, the Whites viewed them as threats, incapable of being assimilated. "Americans and British alike opposed the 'slavery' of the Chinese--but did not support their freedom," writes Ngai. In Australia, the large numbers of Chinese immigrants led to racist hysteria, perpetuated by White colonial settlers, of being overrun by "devouring locusts." In South Africa, the experiment to lure Chinese through contract labor to work the mines when not enough African laborers would do it proved costly and politically disastrous. Ultimately, exclusion laws were erected, prompting debate over free trade and hurting the once-thriving import-export businesses between China and the rest of the world. The author also examines the makeup of the Chinese communities that immigrated--with illuminating archival photos--the businesses they created, and the sustained racist backlash against them. This is intricate history that may lose some general readers, but students of the subject will be well rewarded. A multilayered world history that adds materially to the sadly evergreen topic of immigration exploitation and exclusion. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
