The Chinese Question
The Gold Rushes and Global Politics
24 September 2021
Description
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. But friction between Chinese and white settlers on the goldfields of California, Australia and South Africa catalysed 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 to the West and reshaped the nineteenth-century world—from Europe’s subjugation of China to the rise of the international gold standard and the invention of racist, anti-Chinese stereotypes that linger to this day. Drawing on ten years of research across five continents, prize-winning historian Mae Ngai argues that Chinese exclusion was not extraneous to the emergent global economy but an integral part of it.
Reviews
"Ngai brilliantly reconstructs how race became woven into the fabric of international capitalism and wired into the politics of nations. A stunning, vivid, and indispensable history." — Gary Gerstle, University of Cambridge
"This is a work of towering ambition... Ms. Ngai’s study is a book for our time, reminding us of the increasingly interconnected global economy that—since at least the 16th century—has enriched select peoples, empires and nations at the expense of many others." — Andrew R. Graybill, The Wall Street Journal
"Meticulously researched... A deep historical study, and a timely re-examination of the persistent Chinese Question in America and elsewhere." — The New York Times Book Review
"[An] important and eminently readable book... The Chinese, who have excelled at so many things since ancient times, seem to be reminding us barbarians on the outside of the nature of their historic superiority. In recent centuries this related simply to the extraction of gold. Now, as Ngai presciently notes in a book that valuably places today’s argument in context, it has implications for the entire world." — Simon Winchester, The Spectator
"Mae Ngai’s The Chinese Question takes the well-known story of Chinese gold miners in 19th-century California and expands it to incorporate global movements of people and capital from California to Cape Town. Ngai’s inclusion of the voices of Chinese gold miners is groundbreaking." — History Today
Awards
Shortlisted — Los Angeles Times Book Prize, 2021
Winner — Bancroft Prize, 2022
Shortlisted — Cundill History Prize, 2022
