Denver in the Gilded Age may have been an economic boomtown, but it was also a powder keg waiting to explode. When that inevitable eruption occurred—in the Anti-Chinese Riot of 1880—it was sparked by white resentment at the growing encroachment of Chinese immigrants who had crossed the Pacific Ocean and journeyed overland in response to an expanding labor market. Liping Zhu’s book provides the first detailed account of this momentous conflagration and carefully delineates the story of how anti-Chinese nativism in the nineteenth century grew from a regional political concern to a full-fledged national issue. Zhu tells a complex tale about race, class, and politics. He reconstructs the drama of the riot—with Denver’s Rocky Mountain News fanning the flames by labeling the Chinese “the pest of the Pacific”—and relates how white mobs ransacked Chinatown while other citizens took pains to protect their Asian neighbors. Occurring two days before the national election, it had a decisive impact on sectional political alignments that would undercut the nation’s promise of equal rights for all peoples made after the Civil War and would have repercussions lasting well into the next century. By examining the relationship between the anti-Chinese movement and the rise of the West, this work sheds new light on our understanding of racial politics and sectionalism in the post-Reconstruction era. As the West’s newfound political muscle threatened Republican hegemony in national politics, many Republican legislators compromised their commitment to equal rights and unfettered immigration by joining Democrats to pass the noxious 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act—which was not repealed until 1943 and only earned congressional apologies in 2011 and 2012. The Denver Anti-Chinese Riot strikes at the core of the national debate over race and region in the late nineteenth century as it demonstrates a correlation between the national retreat from the campaign for racial equality and the rise of the American West to national political prominence. Thanks to Zhu’s powerful narrative, this once overlooked event now has a place in the saga of American history—and serves as a potent reminder that in the real world of bare-knuckle politics, competing for votes often trumps fidelity to principle.

Beth Lew-Williams shows how American immigration policies incited violence against Chinese workers, and how that violence provoked new exclusionary policies. Locating the origins of the modern American "alien" in this violent era, she makes clear that the present resurgence of xenophobia builds mightily upon past fears of the "heathen Chinaman."

This in-depth examination of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 provides a chronological review of the events, ordinances, and pervasive attitudes that preceded, coincided with, and followed its enactment. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was a historic act of legislation that demonstrated how the federal government of the United States once openly condoned racial discrimination. Once the Exclusion Act passed, the door was opened to further limitation of Asians in America during the late 19th century, such as the Scott Act of 1888 and the Geary Act of 1892, and increased hatred towards and violence against Chinese people based on the misguided belief they were to blame for depressed wage levels and unemployment among Caucasians. This title traces the complete evolution of the Exclusion Act, including the history of Chinese immigration to the United States, the factors that served to increase their populations here, and the subsequent efforts to limit further immigration and encourage the departure of the Chinese already in America.

A look at how the Chinese Exclusion Act and later legislation affected Chinese American communities, who created fictitious "paper families" to subvert immigration policies.

Presents the history of the Chinese American experience, from the role of Chinese tea in the American Revolution and the rich commercial and cultural interactions between China and the U.S., to an exploration of the practices and principles developed under Chinese Exclusion and their application to other cultural groups. This concise, illustrated history considers the legacy and lessons of this period in America's history through photography, documents and historical objects. AUTHOR: John Kuo Wei Tchen is the co-founder of the Museum of Chinese in America. SELLING POINTS: * Accompanies a major exhibition at the New-York Historical Society from October 2014-May 2015 * Will be of interest to the growing population of Chinese Americans and those interested in the cultural and historical connections between the two countries 50 colour illustrations

"In the past fifty years, Asian Americans have helped change the face of America and are now the fastest growing group in the United States. But as ... historian Erika Lee reminds us, Asian Americans also have deep roots in the country. The Making of Asian America tells the little-known history of Asian Americans and their role in American life, from the arrival of the first Asians in the Americas to the present-day. An epic history of global journeys and new beginnings, this book shows how generations of Asian immigrants and their American-born descendants have made and remade Asian American life in the United States: sailors who came on the first trans-Pacific ships in the 1500s to the Japanese Americans incarcerated during World War II. Over the past fifty years, a new Asian America has emerged out of community activism and the arrival of new immigrants and refugees. No longer a "despised minority," Asian Americans are now held up as America's "model minorities" in ways that reveal the complicated role that race still plays in the United States. Published to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the passage of the United States' Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 that has remade our "nation of immigrants," this is a new and definitive history of Asian Americans. But more than that, it is a new way of understanding America itself, its complicated histories of race and immigration, and its place in the world today"--Jacket.

The Chinese Exclusion Act and Angel Island will introduce students to a broader and more inclusive vision of U.S. immigration history and, ultimately, a better understanding of the world we live in. What is uniquely important about this book are the personal stories and viewpoints of proponents and opponents of the Chinese exclusion laws; of Chinese immigrants who posed as “paper sons” and “paper daughters” to evade the exclusion laws; and of immigration officials who held strong convictions about how the immigration laws should be enforced. The introduction provides students with an over-arching historical, socio-economic, and political context by which to understand the compilation of primary documents that follow. For the same reason, each document has its own headnote with background information about the author and comments on its historical significance. Further pedagogical aids include a Chronology, new Questions for Consideration, and a revised Selected Bibliography.