INTRO:
·
Many
authors argued that the Chinese were mere sojourners and not immigrants at all.
·
These
arguments now have little attractiveness
·
First
two Asian groups to immigrate: Chinese & Japanese
·
Major
discrete group from Canada: French Canadian
·
CHINESE:
Pg. 239
·
First
immigrants from Asia
·
Meaningful
immigration to the US starts with the California gold rush of 1849
o “This identification of California- and
America- with gold was so prevalent in the Chinese mind”
o Within the next decade, another gold rush
took some Chinese to Australia
·
These
Chinese came with the intention of sojourning & returning with a nest egg.
·
By definition/qualification:
“change of residence involving the crossing of an international boundary” –
settles dispute that the Chinese were also immigrants.
·
“Between the beginnings of Chinese migration
in 1848 and the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882, perhaps 300,00
Chinese entered the US”
o Population hits intercensal peak of
125,000 in early 1880s
Pg. 240
·
Migratory
tradition (involving migration to SE Asia)
·
19th
century: Western entrepreneurs imported unfree Chinese labor to parts of the
plantation world, largely as surrogates for African slaves. “COOLIE TRADE”
o First brought Chinese to Trinidad in the
Caribbean (1808)
o “some
employers literally worked their coolies to death before their indentures ran
out.”
Pg. 241
(Financing of emigration)
·
Borrowed
from Chinese moneylenders
o Would borrow $75, but would owe $200
·
Draw
on family resources
·
Utilize
rotating credit mechanisms
·
Large
amount of Cantonese (for almost a century)
·
Sex
ration, “Chinese males outnumbered
females by more than 20 to 1”
Pg. 242
o Chinese concentrated in the West, Cali in
particular (pg.241)
o Made SF the port of entry, dai fou (big city)
o More than a 5th of Chinese
Americans living there by 1880/90 census
o Were increasingly urbanites
o Ethnic enclaves, Chinatowns
o SF Chinatown was the first & most
important
o “Places
where Chinese Americans lived, worked, shopped and socialized”
o Provided for themselves, shops, services,
communal organizations and entertainment
Pg. 243 Economic
o First largely occupied in mining
o California alone: 5th in
mining, 5th laborers, 7th in agriculture, 7th
in manufacturing (shoes & clothing), 7th domestic servants, 10th
laundry workers
o 30,000 outside of Cali (1880)
concentrated in mining, common labor and service trades
o Hundreds of Chinese owned/operated farms,
played vital entrepreneurial role in Cali agriculture (introduced new crops and
pioneered distribution systems)
o Merchants = Top of Chinese American
economic pyramid
Pg. 244-245
Organizations
o Churches weren’t major organizations
o Focus was on family, associations united
those with a common last name
o Chinese Consolidated Benevolent
Association, “Chinese Six Companies”
o Run by the elite
o Became spokesmen for the Chinese American
community
o Helped new arrivals find jobs and
housing, fed the hungry, nursed sick, buried the dead (arranged for bones to be
sent back to China)
o Exercised “social control” – encouraged
members to conform to certain community norms, with implied benefits or
protection for those who deviated from them.
o Settled disputes
o Tongs – notorious criminal organization
linking to crime such as prostitution, gambling and drugs
o “Hatchet men” –thugs who soon used guns
Pg. 245-246
o The Naturalization Act of 1870
o Aliens ineligible for citizenship
o Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882
o Made them the only ethnic group in the
world that could not freely immigrate to the US.
o Froze the Chinese community in its 1882
configuration
o Made it essentially a bachelor society
o “Paper sons” – buy the right, on paper,
to be someone else’s son
o Protected those who were born in the US,
who were therefore born citizens
o Great San Francisco earthquake & fire
of 1906 destroyed birth records à enabled many to make fraudulent claims of American
citizenship.
JAPANESE:
Pg. 250
o Japan had no long emigrant tradition,
unlike the Chinese
o First group came in 1869, hey were
political refugees
o 1869- About 150 were brought to Hawaii to
work in sugar plantations
o Renewed in 1884, 30,000 were brought
under contract to plantation workers
o Beginning in the 1890s – small but
significant numbers arrived in North American Pacific Ports (San Francisco,
Seattle, and Vancouver)
Pg. 251-252
o According to charts, the Japanese
community had a more “normal” look
o Males still predominated, but they were
‘only” 65.5 percent of the population
o Females, just over a third of the
population
o “The
Japanese would become younger and more native born; the Chinese would change
much more slowly. As of 1940 more than two-thirds of the 125,000 Japanese
Americans were native born citizens...”
Pg. 253-254
Working in Agriculture
o By 1900, economic focus was in
agriculture
o Would replace aging Chinese who were
becoming more urban
o Large numbers were from farm families
o By 1904, they farmed more than 150,000
acres of land; 1919, more than 450,000 (in California alone)
o Soon, LA became the quintessential city
of Japanese America
o Dominated in the production of fresh
green veggies and some fruit crops
Pg. 254-255
o Japanese immigrants & their children
were highly successful
o Made a significant contribution in the
West
o Seen as a threat à something like the Chinese Exclusion Act
would have been put into lace, except the government feared the Japanese
military
o The
Gentlemen’s Agreement of 1907/8
o Ended the immigration of Japanese
laborers, by having the Japanese govt. refuse to issue passports to such
persons
o Allowed for family unification
o Forced Japanese immigration into an
essentially female mode
o “Picture bride marriage”
o Developed differentiated generational
lines
o Immigrant generation: Issei, their
children: Nisei
Pg. 256-257
Organizations
o Cultural organizations
o Japanese Association of America, headquarters in San Francisco
o Delegated by Tokyo
o Most important of the documents that they
handled were those needed to get a passport for an existing wide or bride
o The Japanese government encouraged
Japanese to acculturate
o Acculturation was quite rapid
o Religious organizations among the
Japanese Americans were diverse.
o Many continued practicing Buddhism
o Large minority were/became Christian
o “It doesn’t matter what religion, just as
long as you go to church” attitude
FRENCH CANADIANS:
Pg 259
o Just how many French Canadians came is
all but impossible to determinate
o Quebec- the combination of hardscrabble
soil & a short growing season made agriculture difficult
o Hundreds of thousands came between the
end of the Civil War and the turn of the century
Pg. 259-261
Story of Jeanne
Jeanne la Fileuse by Honore Beaugrand
Implied
lifestyle through story:
o Took trains to get to their destinations
o Allowed to work at a young age
o Worked as mill workers (making about
$1.22 a day), pay for children
would
depend on age and ability
o Conditions were somewhat like slavery
o Immigrants lived, worked and socialized
almost exclusively among their own kind
o Attended Catholic church
o Slower acculturation
Pg. 262
o French Canadian Catholics worshipped in
three different kinds of parishes
o National Parish- They were the dominant
group & had a Quebecois priest, with main services in French
o Mixed Parish- Large number of French
Canadians, bilingual services, no Quebecois priest
o Parishes in which all services were in
English, substantial French Canadian membership
Pg. 263-264
o Relatively slow acculturation may also be
seen in the political arena
o Had one of the lowest naturalization
rates
o The rate of intermarriage by French
Canadians was very low
2. What were the push/pull factors of the Japanese?
3. What were the push/pull factors of the French Canadian?
4. Knowing that the Chinese and the Japanese were the first Asian groups to immigrate to the United States, what did they have in common? What were their difference?
No comments:
Post a Comment