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Atlas of Asian-American History (Facts on File Library of American History)
Atlas of Asian-American History (Facts on File Library of American History) Summary:By Monique Avakian
Using a wide arrangement of visual tools, this atlas offers a detailed overview of the experiences and important events surrounding Americans of Asian descent. Long neglected in general studies, Asian-American history resources have been scarce. Featuring detailed maps and authoritative text, this book tells the story of not one group of people but many. Photographs, line graphs, charts, chronologies, box features, and maps help explore the cultural, historical, political, and social history of Asian Americans. Coverage also profiles key events and issues in their homelands, especially those factors that influenced their movement to the United States. CONTENTS Note on Photos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vi Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix Chapter 1 The Asian Heritage: A Short History of a Continent . . . . . . . . .1 Chapter 2 Gam Saan: The Chinese in 19th-Century America . . . . . . . . . 27 Chapter 3 Closing the Door: Asian Immigration from Chinese Exclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 Chapter 4 A Question of Citizenship: Asian-American History from 1910 to 1946 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .107 Chapter 5 From Red Scare to Yellow Power: Asian-American History from 1946 to 1972 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .145 Chapter 6 A New Wave of Americans . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .168 Chapter 7 Asian America Today . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .192 Selected Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206 Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209 “Detained in this wooden house for several tens of days, it is all because of the exclusion law which implicates me. It’s a pity heroes have no way of exercising their prowess. . . .” These bitter words were written by an anonymous Chinese immigrant, detained on the Angel Island Immigration Center in San Francisco Bay in about 1910. The frustration and anger so clear in this lone immigrant’s words had ample cause, for as a Chinese, this man was a member of the first group of people explicitly excluded from immigrating to the United States strictly because of his race. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, which denied immigration rights to “lunatics,” “idiots,” and Chinese laborers, crystallized a longstanding national debate in a single government action. At that time, when a significant proportion of the U.S. population was either foreign born or just a generation or two removed from the land of their ancestry, the question of who should qualify for citizenship and who should not was one of the central issues in American life. As this book illustrates, immigration policy is a function of numerous forces. Of those forces, the ebbing and flowing of American industry’s demand for cheap— and ideally nonunion—labor played a key role in drawing migrant workers first from China, and then from Japan, India, Korea, and the Philippines to America’s shores. It is no accident that this first wave of Asian immigration coincided with the end of the U.S. slavery system and, soon thereafter, with the birth and growth of the American labor movement. Active recruitment of each successive new group of laborers from Asia was a direct result of racially based animosity toward prior groups. For example, after the United States formally annexed the Hawaiian Islands in the 1890s, Korean and Filipino laborers were brought to the islands specifically to break up the growing organizational power of Japanese laborers who had preceded them. When the backlash against immigration closed the door to most Asian immigrants (and to most immigrants other than northern Europeans) in the 1920s, Asian- American history became not so much the story of the reception that each new group of immigrants received, or even the ways in which each group tried to adapt to their new home, but instead an examination of what qualities make one an American in the first place. If a person is born and raised in the United States, is that person not as much an American as any other— regardless of racial identity or nation of ancestry? If one’s parents were born in Japan instead of Britain, France, or Germany, should one be forbidden from owning property in one’s adopted home? Much of Asian-American history in the 20th century dealt directly with questions such as these. World events (such as World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the cold war, and even economic recessions) have shaped the way in which U.S. society has viewed Japanese Americans, Chinese Americans, Korean Americans, Vietnamese Americans, and all other Asian Americans, whether U.S. or foreign born. While racially oriented immigration bans are now a thing of the past, Asian Americans continue to confront the burden of constant stereotyping, as the diverse communities that make up Asian America are still viewed by some as a monolithic group. When the media discuss achievements of some Asian Americans and then declare all Asians part of a “model minority,” the individual identities of all Americans of Asian descent are called into question, and the very real problems of those individuals who may not fit the simplistic profile go unaddressed. This book attempts to correct the record by pointing out the ways in which such stereotypes have shaped how mainstream America has viewed Asian Americans and, even more important, the ways that individual Americans of Asian descent have challenged those stereotypes. Because Asian-American history is in truth the overlapping histories of diverse groups of people, the nationalities discussed in this book were included based on volume of immigration to the United States. While people from every nation on earth have migrated to the United States over time, the vast majority of Asian Americans INTRODUCTION have come from relatively few nations. For that reason, the focus of the Atlas of Asian- American History is on Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Asian-Indian, Filipino, and Southeast Asian immigration. In terms of geographic scope the book concentrates on South, Southeast, and East Asia—essentially from India eastward and then northward to the Korean peninsula and Japan. Consequently some smaller nations, such as Nepal, Bhutan, and Mongolia, are not emphasized, based on the relatively small number of immigrants in the United States from those countries. Likewise, Russia and the other nations of the former Soviet Union, which together encompass a vast portion of the Eurasian continent and are home to significant populations that can clearly be considered Asian, are also not included because migration from the central Asian republics, Siberia, and elsewhere in these regions has also been relatively small. Additionally, most immigrants from the former Soviet Union have come from the European territory west of the Urals, and hence fall outside the scope of this work. Similarly, Pacific Islanders, though sometimes included in discussion of Asian and Asian-American history, are not Asian, properly speaking. While the book includes a brief review of precolonial Hawaiian history, that discussion is included to give context to the larger discussion of Hawaii’s transformation into a plantation economy operated by white Americans and worked by Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, Korean, and other Asian laborers. Also, a note on language. In recent years, standard practice for the translation of Chinese words has shifted away from the use of Wade-Giles style to favor pinyin. In general, this book follows that trend, exept in rare cases, where an individual is so commonly known in a nonpinyin form that a translation to pinyin would hinder clarity. As an illustrated history of the immigration, migration, and acculturation of diverse groups to American society, this book addresses the theme of movement in several ways. In one sense, the struggle of Asian Americans to achieve acceptance and full civil rights is referred to as a movement. On a more basic level, the migration of people from place to place is another form of movement. Beginning with the early Chinese miners who arrived in California’s Gold Mountains in search of riches and stretching all the way to modern-day professionals from the Philippines or India arriving to work in U.S. hospitals or hightech laboratories, movement has defined the Asian-American experience. For that reason, the form of this book—an atlas—is especially appropriate. It is our hope that the maps included in these pages will help give concrete life to the story of how geographic as well as cultural and political borders have been crossed over the century and a half of Asian-American history. Likewise, we hope readers come away with an understanding of the consequences of those crossings and of the barriers that remain in the in the road toward full equality for all. NEWER EBOOKS
Sponsored LinksAtlas of Asian-American History (Facts on File Library of American History) Keywordsasian american states united chapter movement korean u s included laborers america immigrants japanese ways maps based filipino individual india japan diverse united states chinese exclusion asian immigration immigration policy illustrates immigration numerous forces nonunion—labor played central issues ideally nonunion—labor significant proportionBookmark Atlas of Asian-American History (Facts on File Library of American History)Hyperlink code:
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