Amanda M. LabradoU.S. History 1Clardy 11/20/09

How did the U.S. treat Chinese Immigrants?Like any other immigrant group, the Chinese came to America in hope of gaining wealth

and prosperity; However, former immigrants who came before the Chinese-the Europeans, now “nativists”- limited Chinese rights and confiscated many opportunities America had to offer to the Chinese-that America had offered to the Europeans when they had arrived-in the years following the arrival of the Chinese on the west coast.

During the late 19th century, China’s population grew to approximately 450 million, leaving China’s southern and central provinces filled to capacity with people, and not much farm land. This overpopulation left just one tenth of China’s land arable, giving farmers an average of three acres to cultivate, with the majority of farmers having just one acre. Furthermore, China’s political control began weakening due to the growth in population; the ratio of the district magistrates to the Chinese people was 1:250,000, leaving governmental control and responsibility more and more up to “local leaders whose allegiances were to their localities and families, rather than to the state.”1 China also suffered a series of foreign and internal conflicts plus natural disasters between the years of 1839 and 1900, including the Opium War(1839-42), The Henan Province Drought of 1847,The Guangxi Province Famine of 18492,Yangtze River Floods (1848,’49,’60,’70)3, The Taiping rebellion(1850-64)4, and The Sino-French war (1884-5)5. In contrast, America was 230 years young and had a population of roughly 23 million6; there were better wages and work for everyone, and a new discovery of gold in California created possibilities the Chinese would have never dreamed of in their homeland. Also, The Burlingame Treaty of 1868 Encouraged the Chinese to emigrate to the U.S. because they would be offered “the same privileges, immunities, and exemptions in respect to travel or residence, as may there be enjoyed by the citizens or subjects of the most favored nation.”7

Chinese began immigrating to America after news of a “Gold Mountain” reached Canton in 1848.8 Nearly all Chinese immigrants made their way to San Francisco, California to mine

1 http://afe.easia.columbia.edu/timelines/china_modern_timeline.htm2 http://books.google.com/books?id=uVTgFozv8ssC&pg=PR24&lpg=PR24&dq=china+henan+drought+1847&source=bl&ots=Slp42W9zBj&sig=513XOi3xP04HnR4a3MJmqEgzYZk&hl=en&ei=33EKS7vnNZOesgP_3qTBCQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CAgQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=%201847&f=false3 http://www.mwr.gov.cn/english1/20060110/20060110104550YJLPPE.pdf4 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiping_Rebellion5 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-French_War6 http://www2.census.gov/prod2/decennial/documents/1850a-02.pdf7 http://immigrants.harpweek.com/ChineseAmericans/2KeyIssues/BurlingameTreaty1868.htm8 http://www.calgoldrush.com/part3/03asians.html

gold, while the remaining immigrants went elsewhere, west of the Rocky Mountains, to try their fortunes.9Within the first couple years of the Gold Rush, a Foreign Miner’s tax was imposed on all non-American born miners for $20 a month, to discourage immigrants from mining. 10Even though the Chinese “were careful not to antagonize [the] whites by prospecting ahead of them,”11 Many Americans were not as lucky as the Chinese had been and blamed their luck on foreigners for drying up the mine, “These newcomers did not find it so easy as their predecessors had done to amass large fortunes in a few days. […]These gold-seekers were disappointed. In the bitterness of their disappointment they turned upon the men of other races who were working side by side with them and accused them of stealing their wealth.”12After the gold mines ran dry, the Chinese moved on to the railroad Industry; However, because of their frail figures they were seen as incapable of doing work the white men usually did, but after being put to the test, “[The contractors] resorted to hiring Chinamen to fill the places of those who left [for the gold fields of the Fraser River]; the result is that they now have some fifty Chinamen employed, and they find them very good working hands. They do not work as rapidly as the white men, but they keep constantly at it from sunrise until sunset. The experiment bids fair to demonstrate that Chinese laborers can be profitably employed in grading railroads in California....”13 The railroads were completed in the late 1870s and the Chinese attempted to find work elsewhere in industries such as farming, fishing or in the large cities “[manufacturing] cigars, shoes, and garments, while others opened up their own restaurants, laundries, and grocery stores.”14 Few Chinese immigrants returned home unless they were refused entry to the U.S. in the first place. Many Chinese planned on returning home, but because of a lack of money, only those who had made enough for themselves and had family back home returned; Some Chinese would return to their homeland because of the imbalanced sex ratio on the west coast; the ratio was 27 men to every one woman in 1890.15 And some were forced to stay in America because they no longer had Queues because white men would cut these off; the act was considered a crime back home “punishable by beheading”.16

Today, the Chinese Americans most populate California (near the west central coast, southern California near Los Angeles, and The Central valley), parts of north coast Oregon, northern Washington, and several states on the northern east coast.17 There are several prominent Chinatowns in the U.S. today including San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles,

9 http://nchs.ucla.edu/NH164-preview.pdf10 http://www.duke.edu/~agf2/history391/nativism.html11 http://www.sfmuseum.org/hist6/chinhate.html12 http://www.sfmuseum.org/hist6/chinhate.html13 http://cprr.org/Museum/Chinese_Syllabus.html14 http://nchs.ucla.edu/NH164-preview.pdf15 http://library.thinkquest.org/20619/Chinese.html16 http://teachingresources.atlas.uiuc.edu/chinese_exp/introduction04.html17 http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/e6/Pctchinese.png

Honolulu, and Seattle, just to name a few.18 In modern society, the Chinese are prosperous and are still known to be the most hard-working because of their “long term orientations”, a value acquired from China.19

18 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._cities_with_significant_Chinese_American_populations19 http://hep.oise.utoronto.ca/index.php/hep/article/viewFile/658/716 http://www.clearlycultural.com/geert-hofstede-cultural-dimensions/long-term-orientation/