"Coolies" and the history of Immigrant Labor in America

I’ve been coming back to J. Sakai’s book Settlers over and over again this year. Students in my Academy 9 class have been sharing their questions about the Trump administration’s new policies in almost hushed tones as if to say “wait - can you do that?” The answer as always is yes and it’s not even the first time it’s happened.

J Sakai doesn’t mince words: “What is the ideology of white labor?”, he asks, “Petit bourgeoisie annexationism.” Let me explain what he means (and please excuse the quote this isn’t a call out this is just a historical analysis). Let’s go back to 1804. Slavery was still alive and well, the sun never set on the British empire and importantly Chinese people were still mostly peasant farmers without any sort of human rights. Sakai points out that the British had already established a shipyard in Vancouver Bay in 1788 so by the time Lewis and Clark arrived on the Pacific coast they would have found a bustling port with an entirely Chinese workforce. He elaborates that the textiles mills, the shoe makers, the brick makers, fish canneries and commercial fishing as well as the majority of farm laborers were Chinese. This is by necessity by the way, the British and Europeans were not numerous enough in North America to expand the productive base by participating in these industries themselves. It was finally the Gold Rush of 1848 that fueled the post Civil War railroad boom that was also built by Chinese laborers that brought the issue to a head. 15,000 Chinese workers built the Transcontinental railroad through the Sierra and Rocky mountains. Again Sakai really cuts to the chase: “The time-distance across the continent was now cut to two weeks, and cheap railroad tickets brought a flood of European workers to the West.” He continues, “By 1870, some 42% of the whites in California were European immigrants. With their dreams of finding gold boulders lying in the streams having faded before reality, these new crowds of Europeans demanded the jobs that Chinese labor had created.”

Sakai doesn’t stop there either. He links especially the vigilantism of the time period in Los Angeles with the attacks from the Knights of Labor on the side of the capitalists to break Chinese labor strikes. “Scabbing was praised, and the Knights of Labor and other European workers’ organizations led a successful boycott of all cigar companies that employed Chinese workers. Boycotts were widely used in industry after industry to seize Chinese jobs.” “Anti-Coolie” laws were passed in municipalities banning all Chinese people and special taxes and license fees were used to further punish this labor pool. This campaign eventually resulted in the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act in which the Federal Government banned all Chinese immigration and made Chinese citizens ineligible for US citizenship. The role of the national government in the movement shouldn’t be understood as just a populist effort either, its role as always was the appeasement of the white settler masses and their desire to resist true proletarianization. Sakai continues: “The national bourgeoisie used the ‘Anti-Coolie’ movement and the resulting legislation to force individual capitalists to follow Empire policy and discharge Chinese in favor of Europeans.” This was necessary of course because Chinese labor could be paid more or worked harder in more brutal conditions than white labor would tolerate, essentially making them the preferred labor pool because of their ability to generate richer profits.

Sakai concludes darkly: “Now that the Chinese had built the economy of the Pacific Northwest, it was time for them to be stripped and driven out.” Goes to show that where spoils are concerned - land, jobs, anything - labor was still limited in its ability to offer solidarity to oppressed workers without being explicitly anti-racist or anti-imperialist.