During the 19th the United States received many new residents from China. Sometimes they came voluntarily; sometimes they were imported forcibly. The term “Shanghaied” originally described the forced stealing of Chinese men to come work in America. Many of them worked on the transcontinental railroad, built between 1863 and 1869. Ninety percent of the workers on the central Pacific track, for example, were Chinese.
After the railroad was completed, however, many Chinese went to work in industries in which they competed with white American workers, especially mining, and they became scapegoats for white unemployment. For some examples of anti-Asian propaganda, see our collection of “yellow peril” posters and cartoons.
Animosity towards the Chinese culminated in the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. The Act meant that Chinese in America, most of whom were adult men, had little hope of reuniting with their families if they stayed in the U.S.; it also allowed the U.S. to deny re-entry if a Chinese person already in the U.S. left the country; and it excluded the Chinese in America from getting U.S. citizenship.
The Chinese Exclusion Act is an ugly moment in U.S. history that was supported by many Americans. But this support wasn’t universal. The political cartoon below attacks the Act. “No admittance to Chinamen,” it reads. But “communist nihilist-socialist fenian & hoodlum [are] welcome.” The punchline reads, sarcastically, “We must draw the line somewhere, you know.”
(Image from Time.)
The Fenian, by the way, were Irish political groups, suggesting that the embrace of one minority group did not necessarily translate into the embrace of others. Or maybe the cartoon was meant to go the other way: “If we’re going to exclude the Chinese, let’s exclude others as well.”
UPDATE: Loki offered the following helpful correction to my description of the word “Shanghaid”:
Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.A bit of disagreement: The verb to Shanghai someone was more often used with respect to the practice of crimps or other people to use force, intimidation or outright kidnapping to man merchant ships during the 18th century.
I’m not about to claim that there weren’t cases of people from Shanghai being forcibly relocated to the US to work on the railroad – but the term refers to one of the abuses of common sailors that was considered usual practice in the age of sail.
Wikipedia article here, for some background of the maritime history of the term: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghaiing
Comments 18
Julia — September 3, 2010
I don't think it's suggesting that other minority groups should be excluded as well, because the Chinese immigrant's luggage is labeled "order, industry, peace, sobriety". Definitely in favor of admitting the Chinese.
Jihad Punk 77 — September 3, 2010
This proves anti-Asian racism exists-- often people dismiss anti-Asian racism because Asian Americans are the so-called "model minority" group.
Loki — September 3, 2010
A bit of disagreement: The verb to Shanghai someone was more often used with respect to the practice of crimps or other people to use force, intimidation or outright kidnapping to man merchant ships during the 18th century.
I'm not about to claim that there weren't cases of people from Shanghai being forcibly relocated to the US to work on the railroad - but the term refers to one of the abuses of common sailors that was considered usual practice in the age of sail.
Wikipedia article here, for some background of the maritime history of the term: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghaiing
mercurianferret — September 3, 2010
What I find annoying is that prominent Chinese Americans who have family histories going back to this period aren't standing up to demand that the same thing that happened to their ancestors don't happen to Latinos today. And the same could be said of the Irish, Greeks, Germans, Poles, Hungarians, and Russians as well as the Catholics and Jews. (SocImages has run anti-immigrant/nativist posts about non-English European immigration, which emphasize my point here.) Anti-immigration sentiments have been alive and well for the history of the United States (and also when they were colonies of Britain), due to class, religion, and/or nationality/ethnicity.
Props for not immediately jumping to the contemporary political point (and thus not focusing commentary on the immigration debate), but I'm going to do it, especially since it was the SCOTUS decision of nationalization of an American-born Chinese man (in United States v. Wong Kim Ark) that so greatly influenced the decision of birthright citizenship (ie, the decision of the "and it excluded the Chinese in America from getting U.S. citizenship" part of the law) of the 14th Amendment, and is the major part of the Constitution that nativist partisans want to strip from the Constitution (thus - ironically - "saving" it from itself) in this current round of anti-immigrant sentiment.
John Yum — September 5, 2010
A point to lisa: please do continue to do pieces like this that fall outside the normal black/white racial politics of the US. Although usually not as popular in comments as more "standard" racial politics posts and far less popular than gender politics (the comments stand at a mere 7 as I write this), I think that they are as important. Although I am often harsh in my critiques of your posts, I do feel that it is important to expand the discourse in this country with regard to racial politics to remind people of the problems of xenophobia and bigotry that eventually got swept under the rug (to some smaller or greater extent) by a lack of ability to really tackle the black/white divide that still malingers on in the US.
As an Asian American who grew up outside this country, I've been the recipient of different forms of racism and xenophobia wherever I've been - for being "ABC" or for being the wrong kind of Asian, for being the token American, or for just being foreign - including in US APIA groups - for having lived abroad and not being able to understand the problems that Asian Americans face here. I imagine that a large part of this feeling among Asian Americans is due to their grievances being next to invisible on a national stage -- the "invisible gorilla" of another post.
True, there is not "Yellow Peril" at the present time. However, with the anti-Chinese immigration acts of the late 19th century (which also affected American Chinese), the internment of Japanese Americans during WW2, and the near-to-the-surface cauldron of anti-Asian racial slurs, "Yellow Peril" sentiment is a part of US history and (sadly) culture. With an increasingly dominant China, an increasingly precarious (possibly nuclear-armed) North Korea, a slowly (relatively) diminishing Japan (with the recent slew of recalls from Big-Three rival Toyota), and the largest Muslim population in the world (living in Indonesia, Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan), I can see several pathways of re-stoking the flames of previous anti-Asian sentiment, as well as avenues for new forms of anti-Asian nativism. (And the rise of such sentiment isn't helped by a dominant US view of seeing Asians as the "model minority" -- i.e., politically emasculated.)
FarMcKon — September 12, 2010
I'm positive I've seen *almost* that exact comic with an stereotype of an irish, and with a stereotype of an Italian sitting on the boxes, and slightly different text. I can't find it now (and google has been no help) but I'm wondering if that is an echo or homage to the older similar political cartoon.
If anyone know the others, or has links, please post 'em.
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