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Driven Out: The Forgotten War Against Chinese Americans

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"Driven Out: The Forgotten War Against Chinese Americans" is the first book I have ever read to address this particular issue, the "brutal and systematic" treatment accorded the Chinese immigrants to America during the latter half of the nineteenth century and the early part of the twentieth. Oh, yes, I knew that some Chinese laborers came to the American West to work on the railroads during the heydays of their construction. But that is about all I knew. This, of course, is somewhat shameful for me to admit now because one of my majors during my undergraduate days was history (with a specialty in American history to boot!), and I taught American history to junior high school students for seven years early in my teaching career. Moreover, as a requirement for a teaching certificate I had to take a course specifically in Pacific Northwest history (the area where most of the anti-Chinese incidents took place) and at no time was this matter discussed in the textbooks or in class. Whether this unexplored chapter in American history was deliberately overlooked or ignored, I cannot say. But I can say that it was, in my opinion, a disgrace that it was not presented and discussed.

Jean Pfaelzer, who is a professor of English and American studies at the University of Delaware, has written a comprehensive and gripping account of the "ethic cleansing" of the Chinese residing in California and the Pacific Northwest. Since I was born and still live in the Pacific Northwest, this detailed narrative about the barbaric treatment of a group of fellow human beings who either came here voluntarily or were forced to come here to work on the railroads, in the mines, in the fields, and elsewhere, is especially disturbing. Indeed, the little town where I currently reside along the Oregon coast is mentioned in Pfaelzer's book, although no mention is made of any specific anti-Chinese incidents occurring here. That point aside, it is certainly about time for this story to be told in depth and Pfaelzer does just that extremely well.

The story begins in the 1840s and continues into the early twentieth century. Thousands of Chinese laborers and merchants, prostitutes and merchants' wives, were rounded up at gunpoint and marched out of towns and other locations all over the Pacific coastal areas of California, Oregon, and Washington, from Seattle to Los Angeles and even beyond. The Chinese were subjected to many cruelties: most were banished outright from their homes; young Chinese prostitutes were unjustly accused of spreading syphilis among the "fine" young White men of the community; the government tried to force the Chinese to wear photo-ID cards. Some were forced onto ships to be delivered elsewhere, including back to China; some were thrown into railroad cars to be transported anywhere; some did not go willingly and were killed or were burned to death in the fires, mostly set by local Whites, which destroyed the Chinatowns which had sprung up in many places.

But this is not just the story of the victimization of the Chinese population in the West. This is also the story of how the Chinese bravely fought back: "They filed the first lawsuits for reparations in the United States, sued for the restoration of their property, prosecuted white vigilantes, demanded the right to own land, and, years before Brown v. Board of Education, won access to public education for their children. Chinese Americans organized strikes and vegetable boycotts in order to starve out towns that tried to expel them. They ordered arms from China and, with Winchester rifles and Colt revolvers, defended themselves." It is a story which includes many heroes, as well as too many villains. It is a story of proud Chinese men who wouldn't back down, and the story of too many corrupt politicians and lawmen without any sense of morality. It is a story both sad and disconcerting, but also a supremely human story well worth reading.

While the injustices related in Pfaelzer's book may be (and should be) disturbing to readers, a few caveats are probably necessary to prevent what I call the "blame and guilt" crowd from using her book to advance a skewed view of historical responsibility. This entire period and the terrible incidents that occurred within it must be observed and analyzed with some realistic perspective. It is all too easy -- and all too common these days -- to use the material included in a book such as this one to initiate and conduct a campaign which promotes anti-Americanism (the "hate America" movements) or the "White-man's Guilt" syndrome.

First, when it comes to racial and religious discrimination, or pogroms against or purges of hated groups, or roundups, expulsions, or imprisonment of persons considered less than human, America never has been and is not today the major player on the stage of world history. Consider the atrocities committed in the past 100 years by the likes of Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, Adolf Hitler, Saddam Hussein, Hideki Tojo, Slobodan Milosevic, or Pol Pot; furthermore, consider the contemporary scene in Africa, particularly the genocide in Darfur or in Rwanda or elsewhere on that continent. America may have many shortcomings in its past regarding racial discrimination and violence -- and Pfaelzer's book provides just one example among others -- but it is necessary to keep things in perspective; although it is impossible to offer an excuse for or justification of such horrific behavior, we can try to understand it and the context in which it occurs in order to prevent it from happening in the future.

Second, it is important to note that European (or American) White males are not alone in committing terrible deeds in the past or present for which the term "guilt" is appropriate. Moreover, "guilt" as such falls only on individuals, not groups. If one truly subscribes to the "sins of the fathers" notion, then there is no one free of "historical guilt" all the way back to the first human beings. And that notion is nonsense, not to mention unproductive. Pfaelzer's book tells the story of a horrible chapter in American history which has been largely ignored. Rather than use the information she provides as the basis for a condemnation of America or the promotion of "White Guilt," we need to learn from it and use it to make certain that such things do not happen again. I realize this is probably overly optimistic, but without some genuine commitment to treating all human beings with dignity and respect, we won't even move toward that goal.

Jean Pfaelzer has made an enormous contribution to American history by drawing back the curtain which had veiled an important series of events, albeit shameful and abominable, which is part of our recent past. The book is well researched and the author documents her account with over thirty pages of useful notes. She also provides a detailed topical index, as well as a map of the "roundups" in California and many illustrations and photographs. To all readers, not just those interested in American history, I highly recommend this work.

Let me start out by praising this author. I normally start a review by listing mistakes. As you read my kudos, you will see why I made that exception for this book.

Kudos

Today, it is nearly unheard of to write a nonfiction book and stay on topic. Nearly all allegedly nonfiction authors contaminate their work with large doses of their personal political opinions. Most of those opinions reveal a myopic understanding of the topic on which the author is opinionating.

Pfaelzer's editorial integrity is especially noteworthy because this book is directly relevant to the hot button political (non)issue of immigration, but the author doesn't impose her political view.

I enjoyed reading a book that breaks the current trend of writing in Pidgin English. Whether such writing is done to obfuscate or done out of ignorance, I don't know. Either way, this common practice of saddling the text with confusing errors in grammar, composition, and word choices is annoying. Pfaelzer is a professor of English (and of East Asian History and of American Studies), so perhaps she felt obligated to break from the herd on this issue.

If this book had errors of fact, I didn't catch them. I'm not sure that this characteristic (free of errors of fact) is normal, either.

What it's about

Driven Out addresses the atrocities committed against Chinese people who were living and working on the American west coast (mostly California) at a particular time. That time was the half-century or so between the post-Civil War reconstruction era and the first part of the Twentieth Century.

The same psychodrama plays out today as then, except today "we" hate Mexicans instead of the Chinese. The hatred for (and fear of) the Chinese was predicated on a zero sum game mentality and an ignorance of economic realities. The time, energy, and money spent trying to eradicate the "threat" of peaceful and productive Chinese-Americans would have solved existing problems if applied to those problems rather than diverted to such irrational purposes.

Bigotry is a delusion-inducing poison, so in that sense we are reading a story that constantly repeats itself. The richness of detail in Driven Out allows us to see the particular ways in which bigotry played out in this particular time and place.

Pfaelzer took great pains to thoroughly research events, sort through the facts, and reconstruct what happened. Her method is one of first providing a macro view and then providing a detailed accounting of the subsequent events. For example, she talks about the Eureka method (named after the town of Eureka) in Chapter 4 and explains what it was about. Then, she goes into specific events that occurred as part of putting the Eureka method into practice. Pfaelzer shows the rationalizations that people used to justify their reprehensible behavior.

Eureka was just one of many towns that embarked on a vicious and insane program of forcing the Chinese to leave. In Chapter 5, Pfaelzer uses the same approach to reveal the Tuckee method and the atrocities committed there.

The violence to persons and property nearly always had a veneer of legitimacy. Today, we are all familiar with how IRS employees generally view taxpayers as subhuman scum who are "deserving of whatever they get." This attitude allows those employees to justify all sorts of abuses. This is the kind of "thinking" that occupied the minds of public officials of that era, as well. Rather than uphold the law, they used the power of their position to engage in psychopathic cruelties to other human beings.
It's worth noting that Pfaelzer provided anecdotes about the difficulty of locating records and talked about how some records were destroyed.

A well-written, thoroughly researched, eye-opening book. It's definitely a "must read."


Reviewer's Commentary: The Value of the History Provided by Driven Out

Unless we learn from history, we repeat it. To learn from history, we must first learn the history itself. An understanding of these particular events would be instructive for our times. Then, as today, the newspapers were instruments of disinformation and more concerned with making the news than reporting it. Back then, the "news" was that immigrants were the reason for job loss. Does this sound familiar?

Today, our mainstream media misdirect attention away from solving the core problems that are laying waste to our society. Back then, the misdirection had a similar effect (preventing attention to the right things), but for a different set of problems. In both eras, we see a few "boogeyman" non-issues (e.g., immigration). While Congress continues to spend inordinate amounts of time mishandling non-issues, they ignore real issues.

Any well-informed reader will not be surprised by the legal maneuvering, dishonesty, and hypocrisy of the people who held the reigns of power at that time, because this is what we get from our lawmakers and bureaucrats today.

What may shock some readers is the extent of the brazen violence rained down upon the Chinese, who were simply minding their own business. For example, the book talks about an incident where people's homes were set on fire and then those people were shot while trying to escape the flames. Those who perpetrated this evil were not prosecuted. One was even appointed later to a high position in law enforcement. History repeated itself in 1993 in Waco, TX, and those killers are free today.

Driven Out provides the reader with insight into a series of shameful events in US history. The inhuman actions were abetted by corrupt government employees, spineless judges, and apathetic elected officials. The behavior spanned across multiple generations for reasons that defy logic. And yet, history repeats itself. The horrific story that unfolds on these pages holds many parallels to events in our own times--also abetted by corrupt government employees, spineless judges, and apathetic elected officials.

...and thank goodness! The efforts to expel by violence and exclude by law the Chinese from joining the great migration of peoples from the "Old World to the "New" seem, from our vantage point in 2008, to have been as unsuccessful as they were vicious. May it ever be so!

I picked this book up because amazon's marvelous computer "recommended" it to me after I reviewed the book "Island", about the INS quarantine barracks on Angel Island in SF Bay. This is a more vivid account of the violent campaign waged after the building of the transcontinental railroad, to drive the Chinese out of rural America and into urban ghettoes, to deny them the rights and opportunities of ordinary citizens, and even to deprive them of life. It's based on, and includes, some powerful first-person narratives, and it reaches well beyond the Bay Area in the agricultural counties of California, Oregon, and Washington.
It also includes vivid accounts of Chinese resistance to ethnic cleansing, from evasion to self-defense to legal activism. These acts of resistance will be news to most readers, including American-born Chinese. They were exciting news to me.

One previous review, by Dr. Dolhenty, which praises the book's even-handedness and gives it five stars, also contains some amazing statements concerning the possibility that such information could fuel an imagined "Blame America" sentiment. The doctor proceeds to justify America, not absolutely but relatively, using the argument that "we" weren't nearly as bad as X, Y, & Z. So no apologies needed! We were only doing what "everyone" did in those days; we just weren't as good at it! What an incredibly infantile self-justification! Just come out and say, I chopped down the cherry tree, and stop equivocating! Or have we degenerated so far from the forthrightness that Parson Weems attributed to our Founding Father? If so, Americans should give up the study of history forevermore, since history is only useful to peoples who can acknowledge their past mistakes with dignity.

Well-written, painful to read! It should be homework for citizenship tests.

The Chinese have gotten the bad end of the stick in U.S history as a minority group. They have not been celebrated and largely they have been forgotten. Any idea that they make up an important contribution to the 'melting pot' of American life has been pushed aside. This book begins to correct that problem. It tells the incredibly true story of the attempted ethnic-cleansing of Chinese workers and merchants from the American west. In the period 1850-1910 many towns had proud 'anti-chinese leagues' and race riots took place. The Chinese had been brought to the U.S to build the railroads, just as Indians had been brought to Africa by the British. But the Chinese stayed on and they formed large immagrant communities. As one of the only non-white racial groups in many towns of the American west they were the 'other' and subject to harrasment.

This remarkable tale takes us back to the period through newspapers and interveiws and also examines the ways that the Chinese tried to obtain their rights before the law. This is a good book, well written and a major contribution to the history of the American west and race relations in the U.S

Seth J. Frantzman

Big thanks to Professor Pfaelzer for her original research about this little known topic. I am a member of the Chinese Reconciliation Project Foundation in Tacoma and her book begins with the 1885 expulsion of the Chinese from Tacoma, gleaned from first-hand accounts in the Library of Congress. More than that, she provides the context of the expulsions and worse anti-Chinese violence up and down the West coast. She also adds the perspective of Chinese women, a viewpoint that has gotten almost no attention from scholars. This book is not only an important contribution to American studies, and Chinese-American history, is is also very readable and full of all the contemporaneous photos she could find. In the middle of the book there is a very useful section listing events by year. Tacoma's Chinese Reconciliation Park will open in September and this book, which coincidentally is published this same year, is the best source to explain why these events must not be forgotten.

This is a pretty good history of an essentially unknown, and very shameful, episode in the history of the US. The mistreatment of Indians and Africans is well-known, but the horrific treatment of the Chinese is neglected in almost all US history books. This book brings to light little-known actions by local governments and "civilians."

Driven Out is a disturbing but detailed look at a sad chapter in American history. The pictures and quotes enliven the chapters and give an acurate account of the early chinese pioneers in our west. It shows the effects of the bizzare sounding laws and the exclusion acts of the 1880s. It gives a particularly intense picture of the plight of chinese women who were singled out for white agression as part of a national policy to keep the chinese as temporary workers. It is a history I never heard in school and one we should all be more familiar with today. It lends itself to discussions of immigration as well as racism and feminism. The rather academic style is lighted by stories of specific people and incidents. It is well worth reading.

It's about time to reveal the vast injustice that the American Society bestowed toward Chinese since the early days. Unfortunately, the prejudice reserved mostly for Chinese among other Asian country is once again renewed with a vengeance now that China had emerged as a rising star. What a shame!!!

The exclusion of the Chinese in the United States during the nineteenth century was one of the most pivotal events in American history. In her extensive narrative, DRIVEN OUT: THE FORGOTTEN WAR AGAINST CHINESE AMERICANS, Jean Pfaelzer revisits this part of history that many do not know had existed. The book examines pai hua, "driven out," how the Chinese were intentionally forced to leave the United States through cruel, violent, and unconstitutional tactics, which specifically occurred in California and Washington, from the years 1850-1906. Interestingly, Pfaelzer succinctly parallels these acts to other atrocities of ethnic cleansing and genocide that occurred in world history and years later within twentieth century and current conflicts, from the Holocaust of the Jews in World War II to Rwanda.

Deriving from California archives as well her personal insight as a young scholar, Pfaelzer shows the importance of revisiting this particular historical event. From her own personal experience in Humboldt County, California in 1974, she observed the absence of Asian American students, where she learned 90 years earlier that the Chinese were driven out of Eureka, California (xxvii). After years of intense inquiry, her curiosity led her to the Bancroft Library on the campus of UC Berkley and many other archival repositories that possessed an immense amount of information pertaining to the topic. Within the chapter entitled "A Litany of Hate," the pages are literally the dark pages of the book, and may be an eye-opening experience for those not familiar with this part of history; it is a visual and chronological synopsis that synthesizes Pfaelzer's narrative, and shows the arrant racism that existed toward the Chinese during the nineteenth and early twentieth century, and as a fact, they were the only ethnic group excluded and limited to entry and stay in the United States because of their ethnicity.

The most important point that Pfaelzer asserts is that whenever this part of history is told it is far too often that the violence of the event is magnified rather than the resolution of the conflict. Pfaelzer shows with the mention of several court cases how the Chinese attempted to defend and protect their rights by using, interpreting, and challenging state laws and the US Constitution to undo unjust and unconstitutional laws and acts, the Geary Act and Expulsion Act of 1882, that hindered their way of life in spite of the odds that were against them. Their stories may shock readers, but they will reveal the extreme intolerance they endured.

DRIVEN OUT is an important part of American history. The interesting part about studying history is that inspiration usually inculcated by present events and past memories. Indeed, I did not learn this history in high school, but I wrote a paper about this topic in college several years ago, which helped me to understand the never-ending complexities in American history. Hence this book has furthered enriched my learning experience, and is highly recommended for supplementary reading when studying ethnic and immigration history.

An exhaustive historical treatise about ethnic cleansing during the Gold Rush era. The best 1-page introduction to Professor Pfaelzer's work can be summarized on the California map p.ix where over 200 sites of Chinese expulsionary roundups occurred. The markers show that most are concentrated in the Sacramento and San Jacquin river basins, Sierra mountain range, SF Bay area, and the northern CA coast. This unique illustration shows that the Chinese ethnic cleaning was a widespread and systematic pogrom perpetuated by mining settlements, townships, and city groups. The documentation includes names of city father's and vigilante group leadership who sanctioned and perpetuated lynchings and burning Chinatowns to the ground.

Pfaelzer, writing from a political and legal historian POV, newspaper cites (without page#) from city, state and national historical society archives, legal cites from local courts and government documents to the Library of Congress, and from Western and Chinese scholars conversations and books written in English. She includes a few personal interviews with 3nd and 4th generation Chinese immigrants who survived the persecution and exclusion.

From the groundswell of anti-Chinese support, Pfaelzer shows how political inflammation in local, state and national newspapers lead to the US's Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, passed by Congress and Presidents Arthur (1881-5 (Rep)) and Cleveland (1885-9, 93-97 (Dem)), and its enforcement for 60+ years, only recinded during WWII. This Exclusion exempted CN foreign students and members of the "merchant" class, however, this exemption was not uniformly practiced, cite 142, p386. This history doesn't examine the "Paper Son" controversy after the SF Earthquake and Fire of 1906 which destroyed most CN immigration and birth records. It is also weak in the area of the CN Family associations (China 6) and Tong protection gangs.

Pfaelzer's book is nicely illustrated with 80 B&W drawings and pixs including 15 anti-Chinese newspaper cartoons and posters, a 12-pg index, a 30-pg notes and reference, and a 4-pg Acknowledgments sections. She also refers to a PBS / KEET-13 (Eureka Public TV) underwrote, in part, a HSU TV symposium, "The Chinese in Humboldt County (2003)," p348 and there is a NPR program sponsored by the Commonwealth Club of CA on 15 Jan 08 discussing her book (fora.tv15Jan08). Furthermore, Bill Moyers developed a three part series titled "Becoming American: The Chinese Experience" aired in March 2003, covering similar material that Pfaelzer presents.

Curiously, Pfaelzer does not cite Iris Chang's previous seminale book on "Chinese in America: a narrative history (2003)". Chang's book was this reviewer's first detailed study of 500+pgs on Chinese immigration history. Perhaps Chang's being a J-school UG and later suicide, as opposed to a certified history academician, caused this lack of regard? YouTube 1hr(9h8LVorTecE) at UC Santa Barbara.

In Chap1, "Gold!" Pfaelzer shows that the ethnic cleansing is multi-racial, not limited to Chinese, but included Mexican mestizos, Native Americans, and later Japanese migrants. Then in Chap7 "Litany of Hate," in a 34-pg "Black Page" section, she summarizes white cleansing, as well as Chinese resistance, activities for the 1880 decade. Throughout she shows that the ostensible, but untrue, rationale by the white majority that cheap Chinese coolie labor was denying them higher paying jobs, especially during the 1873-96 Long Depression era worldwide and just after the Mexican-US War (1846-48) pxxx.

Pfaelzer's work was sparked by noticing that there was no Chinese-American students at CA State Univ, Humboldt during her new professorship days; 30 years later Prof Pfaelzer, now age 63, completes this work p.xxv by uncovering a surprisingly broad and detailed paper trail. Her nation-wide due-diligence was an exhaustive "connecting-the-dots." Her "raison d'etre" to conduct such an exhaustive study on the Chinese sojourner era is backdropped by her own family's immigration p.xxviii from Europe as Jews being persecuted by Nazi Germany only two to three generations later.