Beth Lew-Williams. The Chinese Must Go

In The Chinese Must Go: Violence, Exclusion, and the Making of the Alien in America, Beth Lew-Williams provides an excellent analysis of how nineteenth-century Chinese restriction and exclusion led to the development of the concept of the alien in the twenty-first century United States. The author clearly explains the development of the drive to rid the United States of the Chinese. In particular, she looks at the growth of violence against the Chinese in Washington Territory and California. She traces the West Coast’s fear of the Chinese to an American fear of losing power to China in terms of trade and efforts to convert the Chinese to Christianity. Developed in three major sections—on restriction, violence, and exclusion—the book emphasizes Washington Territory because it has not been studied by scholars as much as other regions, and because it provides a good look into the relationship between the whites in the area and the Chinese. While the author notes the traditional arguments proposed by the whites who lived in the Northwest—which maintained that the Chinese were unwilling to assimilate—the author documents well how the Chinese Restriction Act of 1882 led only minimally to reducing the number of Chinese in the United States. She also provides a vivid portrayal of the violence against the Chinese in, for example, Tacoma, Washington, after the Rock Springs, Wyoming, massacre. The violent episodes are detailed and give an excellent explanation of why the whites in the area wanted to eliminate the Chinese from their region.

Alien · Archaeology · China · Chinese americans · Criminology · Immigration · Political science · Politics · Power (physics) · Sociology · Chinese history and philosophy · Gender Studies · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Law · Vietnamese History and Culture Studies