U.S. Policy for Chinese Immigration
U.S. Policy for Chinese Immigration
The California gold rush of 1849 and new discoveries of gold in Colorado and Nevada in the late 1850s attracted a large number of Asians to the American West. In the 1860s others came to work on the cross-country railroad, and some were shipped east to break strikes in the 1870s. Denigrated as the “Yellow Peril,” Asians became the target of racist attacks. Anti-Chinese riots erupted in San Francisco in 1877, leading President Rutherford Hayes to write in his diary in 1879, “I would consider with favor any suitable measures to discourage the Chinese from coming to our shores” (History in Context, 2002). In 1882 Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, which suspended all immigration from China for ten years. The act was extended periodically until 1904, when Congress made it permanent.
COOLIE LABOR TRADE The 1842 Treaty of Nanking ending the Opium War between Britain and China granted all British citizens in China the privilege of “extraterritoriality”, under which they were subject to British law but immune from Chinese law. The privilege was extended to other European nations as well as to the United States through the most-favored-nation clause. With the increased suppression of the international slave trade, Latin American planters, particularly in the Caribbean, turned to China for an alternative source of labor. They used loopholes in the extraterritoriality clause, fraud, and coercion to induce Chinese workers to immigrate to Latin America. The "coolie trade," as it became known, expanded during the 1840s and 1850s. Some laborers signed contacts based on misleading promises, some were kidnapped, some were victims of clan violence whose captors sold them to coolie brokers, while others sold themselves to pay off gambling debts. From 1847 to 1862, most Chinese contract laborers ("coolies") bound for Cuba were shipped on American vessels, and numbered about 6,000 per year. Conditions on board these and
The California gold rush of 1849 and new discoveries of gold in Colorado and Nevada in the late 1850s attracted a large number of Asians to the American West. In the 1860s others came to work on the cross-country railroad, and some were shipped east to break strikes in the 1870s. Denigrated as the “Yellow Peril,” Asians became the target of racist attacks. Anti-Chinese riots erupted in San Francisco in 1877, leading President Rutherford Hayes to write in his diary in 1879, “I would consider with favor any suitable measures to discourage the Chinese from coming to our shores” (History in Context, 2002). In 1882 Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, which suspended all immigration from China for ten years. The act was extended periodically until 1904, when Congress made it permanent.
COOLIE LABOR TRADE The 1842 Treaty of Nanking ending the Opium War between Britain and China granted all British citizens in China the privilege of “extraterritoriality”, under which they were subject to British law but immune from Chinese law. The privilege was extended to other European nations as well as to the United States through the most-favored-nation clause. With the increased suppression of the international slave trade, Latin American planters, particularly in the Caribbean, turned to China for an alternative source of labor. They used loopholes in the extraterritoriality clause, fraud, and coercion to induce Chinese workers to immigrate to Latin America. The "coolie trade," as it became known, expanded during the 1840s and 1850s. Some laborers signed contacts based on misleading promises, some were kidnapped, some were victims of clan violence whose captors sold them to coolie brokers, while others sold themselves to pay off gambling debts. From 1847 to 1862, most Chinese contract laborers ("coolies") bound for Cuba were shipped on American vessels, and numbered about 6,000 per year. Conditions on board these and