The Chinese Must Go: Violence, Exclusion, and the Making of the Alien in America

A powerful and deeply humane account of the emergence of the racialized border the consequences of which have echoed down to the present. Ellis W. Hawley Prize citation The American West erupted in anti-Chinese violence in 1885. Following the massacre of Chinese miners in Wyoming Territory communities throughout California and the Pacific Northwest harassed assaulted and expelled thousands of Chinese immigrants. Beth Lew-Williams shows how American immigration policies incited this violence and how the violence in turn provoked new exclusionary policies. Ultimately Lew-Williams argues Chinese expulsion and exclusion produced the concept of the alien in modern America. The Chinese Must Go begins in the 1850s before federal border control established strict divisions between citizens and aliens. Across decades of felling trees and laying tracks in the American West Chinese workers faced escalating racial conflict and unrest. In response Congress passed the Chinese Restriction Act of 1882 and made its first attempt to bar immigrants based on race and class. When this unprecedented experiment in federal border control failed to slow Chinese migration vigilantes attempted to take the matter into their own hands. Fearing the spread of mob violence U.S. policymakers redoubled their efforts to keep the Chinese out overhauling U.S. immigration law and transforming diplomatic relations with China. By locating the origins of the modern American alien in this violent era Lew-Williams recasts the significance of Chinese exclusion in U.S. history. As The Chinese Must Go makes clear anti-Chinese law and violence continues to have consequences for todays immigrants. The present resurgence of xenophobia builds mightily upon past fears of the heathen Chinaman.