The Chinese Question: The Gold Rushes, Chinese Migration, and Global Politics by

The Nile on eBay   The Chinese Question by Mae Ngai

How Chinese migration to the world's goldfields upended global power and economics and forged modern conceptions of race

FORMATPaperback CONDITIONBrand New Publisher Description

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 catalyzed 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 organizations 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" laborer, 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.

Author Biography

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. She lives in New York City and Accokeek, Maryland.

Review

"Ngai brilliantly reconstructs how race became woven into the fabric of international capitalism and wired into the politics of nations. A stunning, vivid, and indispensable history." -- Gary Gerstle, University of Cambridge"Meticulously researched... A deep historical study, and a timely re-examination of the persistent Chinese Question in America and elsewhere." -- The New York Times Book Review"[An] important and eminently readable book... The Chinese, who have excelled at so many things since ancient times, seem to be reminding us barbarians on the outside of the nature of their historic superiority. In recent centuries this related simply to the extraction of gold. Now, as Ngai presciently notes in a book that valuably places today's argument in context, it has implications for the entire world." -- Simon Winchester - The Spectator"Mae Ngai's The Chinese Question takes the well-known story of Chinese gold miners in 19th-century California and expands it to incorporate global movements of people and capital from California to Cape Town. Ngai's inclusion of the voices of Chinese gold miners is groundbreaking." -- History Today

Review Quote

"Truly a tour de force of scholarship [The Chinese Question is] a detailed, vivid, close-up depiction of the historic encounters that followed the momentous Chinese migrations of the nineteenth century."

Details ISBN1324036109 Author Mae Ngai Year 2023 ISBN-10 1324036109 ISBN-13 9781324036104 Publication Date 2023-01-06 UK Release Date 2023-01-06 Format Paperback Imprint WW Norton & Co Place of Publication New York Country of Publication United States Illustrations 17 photographs; 4 illustrations; 9 maps NZ Release Date 2023-01-06 US Release Date 2023-01-06 Pages 480 Subtitle The Gold Rushes, Chinese Migration, and Global Politics Publisher WW Norton & Co Alternative 9780393634167 DEWEY 331.6251009034 Audience General AU Release Date 2023-01-10 We've got this

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