What country posed the greatest threat to american power in the pacific around 1900?

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journal article

American Imperialism: The Worst Chapter in Almost Any Book

The American Historical Review

Vol. 83, No. 3 (Jun., 1978)

, pp. 644-668 (25 pages)

Published By: Oxford University Press

https://doi.org/10.2307/1861842

https://www.jstor.org/stable/1861842

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Journal Information

The American Historical Review (AHR) is the official publication of the American Historical Association (AHA). The AHA was founded in 1884 and chartered by Congress in 1889 to serve the interests of the entire discipline of history. Aligning with the AHA’s mission, the AHR has been the journal of record for the historical profession in the United States since 1895—the only journal that brings together scholarship from every major field of historical study. The AHR is unparalleled in its efforts to choose articles that are new in content and interpretation and that make a contribution to historical knowledge. The journal also publishes approximately one thousand book reviews per year, surveying and reporting the most important contemporary historical scholarship in the discipline.

Publisher Information

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. OUP is the world's largest university press with the widest global presence. It currently publishes more than 6,000 new publications a year, has offices in around fifty countries, and employs more than 5,500 people worldwide. It has become familiar to millions through a diverse publishing program that includes scholarly works in all academic disciplines, bibles, music, school and college textbooks, business books, dictionaries and reference books, and academic journals.

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The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was the first significant law restricting immigration into the United States. Many Americans on the West Coast attributed declining wages and economic ills to Chinese workers. Although the Chinese composed only 0.002 percent of the nation's population, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act to placate worker demands and assuage concerns about maintaining white "racial purity."

Chinese Immigration in America

The Opium Wars (1839-42, 1856-60) of the mid-nineteenth century between Great Britain and China left China heavily in debt. Additionally, floods and drought contributed to an exodus of peasants from their farms, and many left the country to find work. When gold was discovered in the Sacramento Valley of California in 1848, a large uptick in Chinese immigrants entered the United States to join the California Gold Rush.

Following an 1852 crop failure in China, over 20,000 Chinese immigrants came through the custom house in San Francisco (up from 2,716 the previous year) looking for work. Violence soon broke out between white miners and the new arrivals, much of it racially charged. In May 1852, California imposed a Foreign Miners License Tax of $3 month meant to target Chinese miners, and crime and violence escalated.

An 1854 Supreme Court case, People v. Hall, ruled that the Chinese, like Black Americans and Native Americans, were not allowed to testify in court, making it effectively impossible for Chinese immigrants to seek justice against the mounting violence. By 1870, Chinese miners had paid $5 million to the state of California via the Foreign Miners License Tax, yet they faced continuing discrimination at work and in their camps.

Purpose of the Chinese Exclusion Act

Meant to curb the influx of Chinese immigrants to the United States—particularly California—the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 suspended Chinese immigration for ten years and declared Chinese immigrants ineligible for naturalization.

President Chester A. Arthur signed it into law on May 6, 1882. Chinese-Americans already in the country challenged the constitutionality of the discriminatory acts, but their efforts failed.

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Geary Act of 1892

Proposed by California congressman Thomas J. Geary, the Geary Act went into effect on May 5, 1892. It reinforced and extended the Chinese Exclusion Act’s ban on Chinese immigration for an additional ten years. It also required Chinese residents in the United States to carry special documentation—certificates of residence—from the Internal Revenue Service.

Immigrants who were caught not carrying the certificates were sentenced to hard labor and deportation, and bail was only an option if the accused were vouched for by a “credible white witness.”

China’s government protested these discriminatory laws, but with anti-immigrant sentiment at fever pitch in the United States, there was little they could do. Chinese Americans were finally allowed to testify in court after the 1882 trial of laborer Yee Shun, though it would take decades for the immigration ban to be lifted.

Impact of Chinese Exclusion Act

The Supreme Court upheld the Geary Act in Fong Yue Ting v. United States in 1893, and in 1902 Chinese immigration was made permanently illegal. The legislation proved very effective, and the Chinese population in the United States sharply declined.

American experience with Chinese exclusion spurred later movements for immigration restriction against other "undesirable" groups such as Middle Easterners, Hindu and East Indians and the Japanese with the passage of the Immigration Act of 1924.

Chinese immigrants and their American-born families remained ineligible for citizenship until 1943 with the passage of the Magnuson Act. By then, the U.S. was embroiled in World War II and sought to improve relations with an important Asian ally.

READ MORE: Before the Chinese Exclusion Act, This Anti-Immigrant Law Targeted Asian Women

Sources

Chinese Immigrants and the Gold Rush. PBS.
Chinese Immigration and the Chinese Exclusion Acts. The State Department.

Why did the Western Front of World War 1 barely move between 1914 and 1918?

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In which 1901 agreement did Great Britain surrender its canal building rights in Central America?

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