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The Gold Rushes and Global Politics
by Mae Ngai
How Chinese migration to the world's goldfields upended global power and economics and forged modern conceptions of race.
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.
"Ngai adeptly narrates both seismic shifts in the world economy and the nuanced dynamics of small communities, paying particular attention to the choices made by individual immigrants as they navigated harsh and unfair foreign environments. Every aspect of Ngai's inquiry is sharply relevant today on many fronts." ―Booklist (starred review)
"An ambitious, diligent work. … A multilayered world history that adds materially to the sadly evergreen topic of immigration exploitation and exclusion." ―Kirkus Reviews
"This impressive volume adds a vital chapter in the history of globalization." ―Publishers Weekly
"Nowadays, anglophone nations ask anxious questions about Chinese ascendance. Based on prodigious research, Ngai's remarkable book reveals how these queries branch from an older Chinese Question." ―Susan Lee Johnson, author of Roaring Camp
"Mae Ngai shows how the racist coolie stereotype was effectively exploited decade after decade to advance global capitalism and imperialism. The sense of urgency shines through this poignant and provocative work. Powerful and empowering." ―Elizabeth Sinn, author of Pacific Crossing: California Gold, Chinese Migration, and the Making of Hong Kong
This information about The Chinese Question was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
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.
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