![Sample our Humanities journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5939/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Humanities.jpg"})
Abstract
‘I have been engaged during this past week in going around the District and enforcing on the Chinese the necessity of taking out the Protection Tickets—but the want of headmen in many parts of the district render this rather a difficult task. Those headmen whom I had appointed having all either been found incompetent for their duties or have refused to interfere in any matter which would render them obnoxious to their fellow countrymen’.
Chinese Protector, Castlemaine, 1855
Acknowledgements
The author thanks Keir Reeves, Tseen-ling Khoo, Richard Broome, and anonymous reviewers for their comments.
Notes
1Chinese Protector to Resident Warden, Castlemaine, Oct. 22, 1855, Public Records Office, Victoria (N. Melbourne), VPRS 1189/P0000, file R13/871. All Victorian public records hereafter cited as PROV.
2The Chinese Question actually first arose in the 1840s when Victorian pastoralists, facing the end of transportation and a decline in convict labour, imported indentured Chinese as shepherds, farm workers, and domestic servants. The practice, as well as an early debate over the racial implications of ‘coolie-ism’, was soon overshadowed by the gold rush, where the ‘Chinese Question’ became resituated, albeit with some ideological carry-overs from the indentured phase, discussed below. Kathryn Cronin, Colonial Casualties: Chinese in Early Victoria (Melbourne: University of Melbourne Press, 1982), 4–13.
3Exemplary works include John Fitzgerald, Big White Lie: Chinese Australians in White Australia (Sydney, NSW: University of New South Wales Press, 2007); Sophie Couchman et al., eds., After the Rush: Regulation, Participation, and Chinese Communities in Australia 1860–1940, special edition of Otherland (Melbourne: Otherland Press, 2004); Keir Reeves and Benjamin W. Mountford. “Court records & cultural landscapes: Rethinking the Chinese gold seekers in central Victoria.” Provenance, September no. 6 (2007); Barry McGowan, ‘Reconsidering Race’: The Chinese Experience on the Goldfields of Southern New South Wales’, Australian Historical Studies 124 (2004): 312–31; Marilyn Lake and Henry Reynolds, Drawing the Global Color Line: White Men's Countries and the Challenge of Racial Equality (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008); Ann Curthoys, “Men of All Nations, Except Chinamen: Chinese on the New South Wales Goldfields”, in Iain McCalman et al., eds., Gold Forgotten Histories and Lost Objects of Australia, Cambridge University Press, 2001).
4Pauline Rule, ‘The Chinese Camps in Colonial Victoria: Their Role as Contact Zones’, in Couchman et al, After the Rush, 119–31.
5See Cronin, Colonial Casualties, chapter 4, ‘An Exceptional Solution’.
6Figures cited in D. Gillies, Premier, Memorandum for His Excellency the Governor, April 11, 1888, printed in Australasia: Correspondence relating to Chinese Immigration into the Australasian Colonies, presented to both Houses of Parliament by Command of Her Majesty (London: 1888), 25.
7Geoffrey Serle, The Golden Age: A History of the Colony of Victoria 1851–1861 (Melbourne: University of Melbourne Press, 1963), 320.
8J. M. Bull to Chief Secretary, Feb. 5, 1856, 1189/P0000 J56/189, PROV.
9David Goodman, Gold Seeking: Victoria and California in the 1850s (St. Leonards, NSW: Allen and Unwin, 1994), 64, 70.
10Cronin, Colonial Casualties, 81.
11Robert Rede, Resident Commissioner, Ballarat, to Capt. Kaye, Private Secretary (to the governor), Sept. 24, 1854, file “petitions of Amoy etc,” unit 3, VPRS 1095/PO, PROV.
12Cronin, Colonial Casualties, 82. The Aboriginal protectorate, established at the request of the British Colonial Office, bears striking resemblance to the American Indian reservations in the United States.
13J. N. Matson, “The Common Law Abroad: English and Indigenous Laws in the British Commonwealth,” International and Comparative Law Quarterly 42 (Oct. 1994): 753–79; David Buxbaum, Family Law and Customary Law in Asia (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1968); W.R. Collyer, “Straits Settlements: Malacca Lands,” Journal of the Study of Comparative Legislation 4 (1902): 82–4. It should be noted that the promulgation of dual governance necessitated the British production and codification of racialised knowledges about ‘tribes’, ‘ethnicities’, and ‘custom’.
14For an overview of Chinese middlemen, headmen, and kapitan in Southeast Asian colonies, Philip Kuhn, Chinese Among Others: Emigration in Modern Times (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2008), Chapter 2, ‘Early Colonial Empires and Chinese Migrant Communities’, 55–106; see also Sharon A. Carstens, ‘Chinese Culture and Polity in Nineteenth-Century Malaya: The Case of Yap Ah Loy’, ‘Secret Societies’ Reconsidered: Perspectives on the Social History of Modern South China and Southeast Asia, ed. David Ownby and Mary Somers Heidhues (Armonk NY and London: M. E. Sharpe, 1993), 120–52. Cronin also cites as antecedents both the Port Phillip Aboriginal Protectorate and practices in Southeast Asia, but in positing Chinese ‘compounds’ in Asia (which were uncommon) suggests a closer similarity to the Australian protectorates than actually existed. Colonial Casualties, 82.
15Memorandum of conversation, (Colonial Governor) with Chamber of Commerce on the Chinese Question, May 8, 1855, VPRS 1095/P0000/3 Special Deputation from the Chamber, PROV.
16Quoted in Cronin, Colonial Casualties, 82.
17Rede to Capt. Kaye [sic], Sept. 24, 1854, op. cit.
19‘Rules of a Chinese Society of Ballarat (Su-Yap clan)’, 1854, trans. Rev. William Young, reprinted in Ian F. McLaren, The Chinese in Victoria: Official Reports and Documents (Ascot Vale, Vic.: Red Rooster Press, 1985), 46–7. On native place associations and secret societies in Australia, see John Fitzgerald, Big White Lie, 62–70. Fitzgerald posits that native place and secret societies oversaw the system of recruitment, migration, debt-collection on credit tickets, and supervision of Chinese labour to Australia.
18Rede to Capt. Kaye [sic], Sept. 24, 1854, op. cit., “Humble Petition of Amoy and other Chinamen,” Aug. 29, 1859, VPRS1095/P0000/3 Petitions of Amoy etc., PROV.
20‘Rules of a Chinese Society of Ballarat’, op. cit.
21‘Rules of a Chinese Society Established at Ballarat,’ in Lionel Welsh, Vermilion and Gold: Vignettes of Chinese Life in Ballarat (Sandy Bay, Tas.: Banyan Press, 1985), 43–7. Translation attributed to Rev. William Young and published in the Ballarat Star in May 1861.
22 Argus, July 15, 1854, quoted in Serle, The Golden Age, 323.
23Cronin, Colonial Casualties, 83.
24O Cheong, letter to private secretary [Kay] to the Lieutenant Governor [Hotham], Dec. 23, 1854, VPRS 1095/P0000/3 Petitions of Amoy etc., PROV. The placement of Cheong's letter in this file suggests that he was not from the siyi of Guangdong but from the neighboring province of Fujian (called Amoy, after its treaty port).
25An Act to Make Provision for Certain Immigrants, 18 Vic 39 (June 22, 1855), sec. 6–8. Section 1 of the Act defined ‘Immigrant’ as ‘any male adult native of China or its dependencies or of any islands in the Chinese Seas or any person born of Chinese parents’. The protectorate system was codified in Regulations for the Chinese on the Gold Fields, Victorian Parliamentary Papers (Legislative Assembly) A.13/1856–57 (Dec. 2, 1856).
26Serle, The Golden Age, 184.
27 Report of the Commission appointed to enquire into the conditions of the gold fields of Victoria, 1855, VPP (Legislative Council) A.76/1854–55 (Mar. 29, 1855). The commission summarised European sentiment toward the Chinese: ‘The question of the influx of such large numbers of a pagan and inferior race is a very serious one. Even if the Chinese were considered desirable colonists, they are unaccompanied by their wives and families, under which circumstances no immigration can prove of real advantage to any society … Their proceedings on the Gold Fields are certainly such as many occasion inconvenience to the general population, if not strife and collision with the European laws … [T]hat some step is here necessary, if not to prohibit, at least to check and diminish this influx, seems quite evident.’
28Cronin, Colonial Casualties, 84.
29William Foster, ‘Diary for the fortnight ending Saturday, Mar. 1, 1856’, VPRS 1189/P0000/467 J56/1791, PROV.
30F. Standish, ‘Estimated expenditures for the protection of the Chinese for 1856’ [1855], VPRS 1189/P0000/467 R55/14,639, PROV. The post of European clerk seems to have remained unfilled in most districts.
31F. Standish, Letter to Chief Secretary, Oct. 22, 1855, VPRS 1189/P0000 R55/13,887, PROV.
32‘Precis of recommendations of Chinese Protectors regarding payment of Chinese headmen of villages’ (Dec. 31, 1855), PRVS 1189/P0000/467 Y562028, PROV; Fortnightly report of the Resident Warden, Ballarat, period ending Mar. 1, 1856, PRVS 1189/P0000/467 J56/1791, PROV.
33Chinese Protector to Resident Warden, Castlemaine, Oct. 22, 1855, op. cit.
34Quoted by Cronin, Colonial Casualties, 87.
35W. Foster to Resident Warden, Ballarat, Jan. 9, 1856, VPRS 1189/P0000/467 T56/243, PROV. Foster's proposal was overruled by the Solicitor General as inconsistent with the general personnel policy of the colony. The Solicitor General advised that ‘discharge from office’ was the ‘fittest means of punishment,’ although that would have only exacerbated the lack of headmen. Opinion (nd), VPRS 1189/P0000/467 J56/4628, PROV.
36F. Standish, Letter to Colonial Secretary, July 9, 1855, VPRS 1189/P0000/467 P55/8757, PROV.
37Standish conceded this last fee was unjust, especially since ‘in the great majority of cases the Chinese complainants are in the right’. According to Cronin the government's Chinese funds recorded a surplus every year save for one. Cronin, Colonial Casualties, 93.
38On background of Chinese headmen and interpreters see Cronin, Colonial Casualties, 85–86.
39On background of Chinese headmen and interpreters see Cronin, Colonial Casualties, 88. A similar complex of dynamics attended Chinese interpreting in the United States. See Mae M. Ngai, ‘‘A Slight Knowledge of the Barbarian Language’: Chinese Interpreters in Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century America’, Journal of American Ethnic History Vol. 30 no. 2 (Winter 2011): 5–32.
40J. M. Bull to Chief Secretary, Feb. 5, 1856, VPRS 1189/P0000/467 J56/189, PROV; Willebrand to J. M. Bull, Mar. 10, 1856, VPRS 1189/P0000/467 T56/1894, PROV; see also M56/21, J56/541; B. Smith to Chief Secretary, May 14, 1856, VPRS 1189/P0000/467 J56/4096, PROV; G. Webster to Resident Warden (Avoca), Aug. 18, 1856, VPRS 1189/P0000/467 W56/7206, PROV.
41W. Foster to Resident Warden (Ballarat), VPRS1189/P0000/467 J56/2307, PROV.
42Cronin notes that the first Chinese officers were skilled linguists but that among the second generation of interpreters, some spoke English that was ‘apparently at times scarcely intelligible’. Rev. William Young observed that, ‘Almost any Chinese who has a smattering of English thinks himself fit to occupy the post of interpreter’. Quoted in Cronin, Colonial Casualties, 86.
43W. Drummond, ‘Regulations for keeping camp clean’, Sept. 2, 1858, VPRS 1189/P0000/522 A58/266, PROV; see also Cronin, Colonial Casualties, 90–1.
44F. Standish to Colonial Secretary, Nov. 30, 1855, VPRS 1189/P0000/467 R55/15,543, PROV.
45G. Webster to Resident Warden (Avoca), July 28, 1856, VPRS 1189/P0000 W6629, PROV.
46B. Smith to Resident Warden (Castlemaine), Oct. 22, 1855, VPRS 1189/P0000 R13/871, PROV.
47B. Smith to Resident Warden (Castlemaine), July 21, 1856, VPRS 1189/P0000 X6233, PROV.
48Resident Warden (Bendigo) to Chief Secretary, Oct. 7, 1858, VPRS 1189/P0000/522 G8441, PROV.
49‘Statement of the number of Chinese reported to have arrived in this Colony overland to avoid the payment of the capitation tax authorised to be levied under the Act 18 Victoria no. 39’, Aug. 21, 1856, VPRS 1189/P0000/467 K56/7025, PROV; G. Webster to Chief Secretary, Sept. 6, 1856, VPRS 1189/P0000 W56/7831, PROV.
50Act to Regulate the Residence of the Chinese Population in Victoria, 21 Vic. 41, Nov. 24, 1857.
51Act to Consolidate and Amend the Laws affecting the Chinese Emigrating to or Resident in Victoria, 22 Vic. 80, Feb. 23, 1859; Cronin, Colonial Casualties, 98.
52John O'Shanassy, ‘Regulations for the Guidance of Chinese Protectors’, Feb. 28, 1859 (Min 59.27), VPRS 1189/P0000/522 J56/1988, PROV.
53Serle, The Golden Age, 329–331; Cronin, Colonial Casualties, 98–9.
54Serle, The Golden Age, 329–331; Cronin, Colonial Casualties, 101; Acts Consolidating and Amending the Laws Affecting the Chinese Emigrating to and Resident in Victoria (1862, 1863).
55Rev. William Young, Report on the Conditions of the Chinese Population in Victoria, Presented to both Houses of Parliament by his Excellency's Command, report no. 36, 1868, reprinted in McLaren, The Chinese in Victoria, op. cit., 31–8.
56Specifically, that the protectorates’ displacement of Chinese sanitary regimes and benevolent functions. Cronin, Colonial Casualties, 102.
57Fitzgerald, Big White Lie; Amanda Rasmussen, ‘The Chinese in Nation and Community, Bendigo, 1870s–1920s’, PhD dissertation, La Trobe University, 2009; Cai Shaoqing, ‘From Mutual Aid to Public Interest: Chinese Secret Societies in Australia’, in After the Rush.
58Serle, Golden Age, 324; Rule, ‘Chinese Camps’, 120.
59Fitzgerald, Big White Lie, 28–9.
60Goodman, Gold Seekers, 25.