Old West Group

The history of ethnic Chinese in the United States relates to waves of Chinese immigration to the country in the 19th century.

Shortly after the American Revolutionary War, the United States had already begun transpacific maritime trade with China, first with the commercial port of Canton (Guangzhou). There the Chinese became excited about opportunities and curious about America by their contact with American sailors and merchants. The main trade route between the United States and China then was between Canton and New England, where the first Chinese arrived via Cape Horn (as the Panama Canal did not exist then). Sino-U.S. maritime trade furthered the history of Chinese Americans. These Chinese were mainly merchants, sailors, seamen, and students who wanted to see and acquaint themselves with a strange foreign land they had only heard about. However, their presence was mostly temporary and only a few settled there permanently. Subsequent immigrants that came from the 1820s up to the late 1840s were mainly men. American missionaries in China also sent small numbers of Chinese boys to the United States for schooling.

And in the 1849-era during the California Gold Rush, many Chinese came to the States wanting to make their fortune. But, the Chinese did not only come for the gold rush in California, but many were also fleeing the Taiping Rebellion (1850 to 1864) that affected their region. The influx of Chinese also helped build the First Transcontinental Railroad, such as the Central Pacific Railroad... in the mining industry... worked the southern plantations after the Civil War... and participated in setting up California's agriculture and fisheries. And their willingness to work, took jobs from the mainstream employees, causing them to suffer racial discrimination at every level of society. While employers were eager to get this new and cheap labor, the ordinary white public was stirred to anger by the presence of this "yellow peril.”

From the outset, they were faced with the racism of settled American population, which included massacres and pressuring of Chinese migrants into what became known as Chinatowns. Also with regard to the legal situation, the Chinese were by far more badly posed in the United States than most other ethnic minorities. They had to pay special taxes (all foreign miners had to pay a tax of $20 a month); they were not allowed to marry white European partners, and they could not acquire U.S. citizenship.

Despite the provisions for equal treatment of Chinese immigrants in the 1868 Burlingame Treaty, political and labor organizations rallied against the immigration of what they regarded as a “degraded race” and "cheap Chinese labor.” Newspapers condemned the policies of employers, and even church leaders denounced the entrance of these “aliens” into what was regarded as a “land for whites only”. So hostile was the opposition that the United States Congress became a political battleground to halt the influx of Chinese versus the rights of free people beckoned to America.