The Chinese Question

The Gold Rushes and Global Politics

Dados Bibliográficos

ID4155446
AutoresCarol Nackenoff (0000-0002-7898-7189, Swarthmore College Emerita, , Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, autor correspondente)
Ano2022
Volume109
Fascículo3
Páginas665-666
Data de publicação2022-12-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoJournal of American History (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0021-8723 • E-ISSN: 1945-2314
EditoraOxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1093/jahist/jaac384
OpenAlexW4311807159
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas18

In The Chinese Question, Mae Ngai offers a beautifully written and deeply engaging study of the legacies of the gold rushes that began in the middle of the nineteenth century. Their impact extended to migrations; globalization of trade; racial constructions; and political relations between importers and exporters of gold, goods, and labor. She focuses on the United States, China under the Qing dynasty, and England and its Australian and South African colonies. In these places, Chinese labor (regardless of status or condition) was deemed unfree, linked to slavery, and opposed; this is the “coolie myth” that consolidated during the period under investigation. The myth led to policies of exclusion or expulsion and views that the Chinese could not belong in the West. Prior to completing this superb book, Ngai was probably best known for Impossible Subjects (2014), an examination of the quota era (1920s–1965) in U.S. immigration politics of racialized exclusion and the construction of the “alien citizen”—citizens on paper who are treated as not belonging. The Chinese Question ranges widely and is rich with meticulous transnational archival research, including extensive use of Chinese-language sources. We are treated to transcripts of trials, notes written by miners, poetry, speeches by Chinese advocates and opponents, pamphlets, diplomatic communications, and negotiations

Alien · China · Citizenship · Economic history · Globalization · Immigration · Mythology · Negotiation · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Australian History and Society · Classics · Gender Studies · History · Law