Driven Out: The Forgotten War Against Chinese Americans
by Jean Pfaelzer
Random House, HK$224
'Americans are very rich people. They want the Chinaman to come and will make him welcome. There will be big pay, large houses, and food and clothing of the finest description. You can write your friends or send them money any time, and we will be responsible for the safe delivery ...' So ran an advertising flyer circulated in villages across southern China in the 1840s, selling the dream on the other side of the Pacific.
Although such lures were probably not intended to be deceptive, the fates of those who found passage from China to the so-called Gold Coast would embitter the most pragmatic of pioneers. Jean Pfaelzer's exhaustive volume Driven Out chronicles 50 years of persecution of the first Chinese-Americans in California. It was a slice of American pie that didn't taste so sweet.
In 1848, the California gold rush drew growing numbers of Chinese to the New World. The face of the wild west was changing - mining towns and cities were cropping up around major dig sites. Initially successful gold runs brought prosperity, and white pioneer women came to settle their families where their husbands worked. The gold provided capital for development, and politicians promoted California as a state of industry and commerce.
In San Francisco, elite Chinese families formed into ruling houses, based on village and clan affiliations, known as the Chinese Six Companies. 'By 1855, nearly 40,000 Chinese immigrants had registered with the Chinese Six Companies, who brokered their passage, found them jobs, provided medicine, organised transportation to the mountains, adjudicated disputes, and demanded discipline.'