The Chinese Question: The Gold Rushes, Chinese Migration, and Global Politics - Couverture souple

Ngai, Mae

Couverture souple

ISBN 10 : 1324036109 ISBN 13 : 9781324036104

Editeur : WW Norton & Co, 2022

Synopsis

How Chinese migration to the world’s gold fields upended global power and economics and forged modern conceptions of race

In roughly five decades, between 1848 and 1899, more gold was removed from the earth than had been mined in the 3,000 preceding years, bringing untold wealth to individuals and nations. But friction between Chinese and white settlers on the goldfields of California, Australia, and South Africa catalysed a global battle over “the Chinese Question”: would the United States and the British Empire outlaw Chinese immigration?

This distinguished history of the Chinese diaspora and global capitalism chronicles how a feverish alchemy of race and money brought Chinese people to the West and reshaped the nineteenth-century world. Drawing on ten years of research across five continents, prize-winning historian Mae Ngai narrates the story of the thousands of Chinese who left their homeland in pursuit of gold, and how they formed communities and organisations to help navigate their perilous new world. Out of their encounters with whites and the emigrants’ assertion of autonomy and humanity, arose the pernicious western myth of the “coolie” labourer, a racist stereotype used to drive anti-Chinese sentiment.

By the turn of the twentieth century, the United States and the British Empire had answered “the Chinese Question” with laws that excluded Chinese people from immigration and citizenship. Ngai explains how this happened and argues that Chinese exclusion was not extraneous to the emergent global economy but an integral part of it. The Chinese Question masterfully links important themes in world history and economics, from Europe’s subjugation of China to the rise of the international gold standard and the invention of racist, anti-Chinese stereotypes that persist to this day.

A propos du livre

À propos de l'auteur

Mae Ngai is Lung Family Professor of Asian American Studies and professor of history at Columbia University. She is the author of the award-winning book Impossible Subjects and The Lucky Ones.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: WW Norton & Co
• Date d'édition: 2022
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 1324036109
• ISBN 13: 9781324036104
• Reliure: Broché
• Nombre de pages: 480
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: non disponible