A transnational history of immigration restriction: Natal and New South Wales, 1896–97

Abstract

This article investigates the creation of Natal's 1897 Immigration Restriction Act and traces the legislative connections between southern Africa and Australia. It describes Natal's anti-Indian agitation of 1896–97 and argues that the colony's government initially sought to solve the ‘Asiatic question’ by adopting a racial immigration bill passed in New South Wales in 1896. However, the threat of violent extra-legal action by white settlers convinced the Natal government to replace this bill with one that made no direct reference to race. Natal ministers realised that racial legislation would face constitutional obstacles and were anxious to enact a restrictive immigration law without delay. The new Act was partly modelled on American immigration legislation and, though not explicit on race, its educational test was primarily designed to restrict Indian immigration. The Natal law was in turn used as the basis for Australian immigration legislation. Given these transnational connections, Natal's response to the ‘Indian question’ should be placed in a global context.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Norman Etherington, Charlie Fox, Andrea Gaynor, Jan Gothard, Michael Ondaatje and other members of the History Discipline, University of Western Australia, for their comments on early versions of this article.

Notes

1. Windschuttle, The White Australia Policy, 1–3, 289–90.

2. Willard, History of the White Australia Policy, 109–15; Yarwood, Asian Migration to Australia, 11–13; Huttenback, ‘The British Empire’, 108–37.

3. Price, The Great White Walls, viii–ix.

4. See Price, Great White Walls and Markus, Fear and Hatred.

5. Lake, ‘White Man's Country’, 347–48, 352.

6. Miles Ogborn's term ‘geographies of connection’ is cited in Lester, Imperial Networks, 5.

7. Denoon, Settler Capitalism; Stasiulis and Yuval-Davis, Unsettling Settler Societies; Kirkby and Coleborne, Law, History, Colonialism; Lester, Imperial Networks; Evans, Grimshaw, Philips and Swain, Equal Subjects, Unequal Rights; McLaren, Buck and Wright, Despotic Dominion. See also McKenzie, Scandal in the Colonies.

8. Iriye, ‘Transnational History’, 213, defines transnational history as the ‘study of movements and forces that cut across national boundaries’. While strictly speaking I am engaging in ‘transcolonial’ history, I use ‘transnational’ as it is a term widely used in comparative work.

9. For an overview of Indian immigration to Natal, see Bhana and Brain, Setting Down Roots, 15–76; for a recent study of the recruitment of indentured labourers for Natal, see Metcalf, ‘“Hard Hands and Sound Healthy Bodies”’, 1–26. It should be noted that, although most white Natalians supported the system of indenture, they resented indentured labourers who chose to stay in Natal after their contracts expired.

10. Colony of Natal, Report, 74–75.

11. Cited in Evans, Grimshaw, Philips and Swain, Equal Subjects, Unequal Rights, 169–70.

12. Bhana, Gandhi's Legacy, 14–15; Eybers, Select Constitutional Documents, 215.

13. Hely-Hutchinson to Chamberlain, 15 Jan. 1897, GH 1282 (121), Pietermaritzburg Archives Repository (PAR); ‘Document 51, Report of the Natal Indian Congress, 15 March 1897’, in Meer, The South African Gandhi, 219–20.

14. Dada Abdoola & Co. to Colonial Secretary, 8 Jan. 1897, CSO 1495 (257/1897), PAR.

15. ‘Document 51’ in Meer, South African Gandhi, 220; Gandhi, Satyagraha in South Africa, 50.

16. ‘Document 51’ in Meer, South African Gandhi, 220.

17. Dada Abdoola & Co. to Colonial Secretary, 8 Jan. 1897, CSO 1495 (257/1897).

18. ‘Document 51’ in Meer, South African Gandhi, 220.

19. CSO 1506 (2061/1897). Given that the total white population of Natal at this time was approximately 50 000, the number of signatures is sizeable.

20. Dada Abdoola & Co. to Colonial Secretary, 8 Jan. 1897, CSO 1495 (257/1897).

21. Proclamation No. 135, 1896, CSO 1496 (446/1897); Hely-Hutchinson to Chamberlain, 15 Jan. 1897, GH 1282 (122).

22. ‘Document 39, Prince to Goodricke, Laughton & Cooke, 22 December 1896’, in Meer, South African Gandhi, 210.

23. For a brief description of the Afghan crisis, see Markus, Fear and Hatred, 143–44.

24. Hely-Hutchinson to Chamberlain, 15 Jan. 1897, GH 1282 (123).

25. Dada Abdoola & Co. to Colonial Secretary, 9 Jan. 1897, CSO 1495 (257/1897).

26. Dada Abdoola & Co. to Colonial Secretary, 8 Jan. 1897, CSO 1495 (257/1897).

27. ‘Document 51’, in Meer, South African Gandhi, 231.

28. CSO 1495 (220/1897), (221/1897), (266/1897).

29. Martens, ‘Settler Homes’, 398–400.

30. Cited in Comrie, ‘The Ministry of Harry Escombe 1897’, 14–15.

31. ‘Document 51’, in Meer, South African Gandhi, 227.

32. Cited in Comrie, ‘The Ministry of Harry Escombe 1897’, 16.

33. Dada Abdoola & Co. to Colonial Secretary, 8 Jan. 1897, CSO 1495 (257/1897).

34. ‘Document 51’, in Meer, South African Gandhi, 230. Governor Hely-Hutchinson provided the figure of 5000 in Hely-Hutchinson to Chamberlain, 15 Jan. 1897, GH 1228 (265).

35. Robinson to Escombe, 13 Jan. 1897, Escombe Papers A159, 2 (8/1/5), PAR, emphasis in original.

36. Hely-Hutchinson to Chamberlain, 15 Jan. 1897, GH 1282 (123–24).

37. Hely-Hutchinson to Chamberlain, 15 Jan. 1897, GH 1228 (266).

38. Comrie, ‘The Ministry of Harry Escombe 1897’, 22.

39. Ibid.; Hely-Hutchinson to Chamberlain, 15 Jan. 1897, GH 1228 (266).

40. Hely-Hutchinson to Chamberlain, 15 Jan. 1897, GH 1228 (267).

41. This description is drawn from Gandhi, Satyagraha in South Africa, 57–58 and ‘Document 51’ in Meer, South African Gandhi, 232.

42. Gandhi, Satyagraha in South Africa, 59–61. See also Swan, Gandhi, 66.

43. Governor Hely-Hutchinson, after describing Gandhi's assault as an ‘untoward event’ in a dispatch, added ‘I learn that Mr Gandhi, in coming ashore at so inopportune a moment, when ill-disposed persons were angry at the peaceful issue of the demonstration, and before passions had had time to cool, acted on advice which he now admits to have been bad: and accepts the responsibility of his action in the matter’ (Hely-Hutchinson to Chamberlain, 15 Jan. 1897, GH 1228 (267)). Gandhi later disputed this version of events in a letter to the Natal colonial secretary (Gandhi to Colonial Secretary, 26 March 1897, CSO 1506 (2132/1897)).

44. Hely-Hutchinson to Chamberlain, 15 Jan. 1897, GH 1282 (124).

45. Governor to S. of S., 15 Jan. 1897, GH 1317 (126).

46. Escombe to Robinson, 15 Oct. 1896, NPP 176 (102/1897).

47. New South Wales, Act No. 41 of 1896 (Reserved, 23 Nov. 1896). See also Markus, Fear and Hatred, 185.

48. Yarwood, Asian Migration, 11.

49. Ibid.

50. Colony of Natal, Debates of the Legislative Assembly of the Colony of Natal XXV (1897), 65–66.

51. CSO 1506 (2061/1897).

52. Natal Witness 19 Jan. 1897. For other discussions of Australian immigration legislation in the colonial press see Natal Mercury 20 Feb. 1897, 5 Sept. 1896. Copies of these editorials can be found in GH 1590 (130–41).

53. S. of S. to Governor, 13 Jan. 1897, GH 1317 (125).

54. Ibid.

55. Bramston to Under Secretary of State India Office, 14 Jan. 1897, GH 1591 (65), emphasis added.

56. Natal Government Gazette, 23 Feb. 1897.

57. 26 Stat. L., 1084, 3 March 1891, ‘An act in amendment to the various acts relative to immigration and the importation of aliens under contract or agreement to perform labor’.

58. S. of S. to Governor, 13 Jan. 1897, GH 1317 (125).

59. Section 3 of the Natal Immigration Restriction Act, 1897 reads as follows: ‘The immigration into Natal, by land or sea, of any person of any of the classes defined in the following subsections, hereinafter called “prohibited immigrant,” is prohibited, namely:- (a) Any person who, when asked to do so by an officer appointed under this Act, shall fail to himself write out and sign, in the characters of any language of Europe, an application to the Colonial Secretary in the form set out in Schedule B of this Act. (b) Any person being a pauper, or likely to become a public charge. (c) Any idiot or insane person. (d) Any person suffering from a loathsome or a dangerous contagious disease. (e) Any person who, not having received a free pardon, has within two years been convicted of a felony or other infamous crime or misdemeanour involving moral turpitude, and not being a mere political offence. (f) Any prostitute, and any person living on the prostitution of others’.

60. Debates of the Legislative Assembly, 66. The American immigration bill (H.R. 7864) referred to by Escombe was passed by both Houses of Congress but was vetoed by President Grover Cleveland in March 1897. A literacy test was finally incorporated into American immigration legislation in 1917. See Hutchinson, Legislative History of American Immigration Policy 1798–1965, 114–21; Petit, ‘Breeders, Workers, and Mothers’.

61. Hely-Hutchinson to Chamberlain, 12 March 1897, GH 1282 (134–36).

62. Governor to S. of S., 12 March 1897, GH 1317 (131); Hely-Hutchinson to Chamberlain, 12 March 1897, GH 1282 (135).

63. S. of S. to Governor, 20 March 1897, GH 1317 (133).

64. Hely-Hutchinson to Chamberlain, 27 March 1897, GH 1282 (138–39).

65. Debates of the Legislative Assembly, 64–71.

66. Ibid., 71–72.

67. Ibid., 88–91.

68. Ibid., 91.

69. Ibid., 92.

70. Hely-Hutchinson to Chamberlain, 3 April 1897, GH 1282 (140).

71. Governor to S. of S., 3 April 1897, GH 1317 (134).

72. Hely-Hutchinson to Prime Minister, 9 March 1897, PM 84 (97/1897), PAR.

73. ‘Despatch and Memorandum on 1897 Colonial Conference’ in Western Australia, Minutes, and Votes and Proceedings of the Parliament during the Second Session of the Third Parliament, 1897 1 (Perth, 1897), No. 16, 3–9.

74. Ibid., 9.

75. Ibid., 9.

76. Ibid., 9–10.

77. Cited in Yarwood, Asian Immigration, 13.

78. ‘Memorandum on 1897 Colonial Conference’, 9.

79. New South Wales, Parliamentary Debates, Legislative Assembly, 5040, 5069, 24 Nov. 1897.

80. Yarwood, Asian Immigration, 15.

81. Godley to Under Secretary of State Colonial Office, 21 July 1897, GH 1591 (67–68).

82. Ibid.

83. Wingfield to Under Secretary of State, India Office, 2 Oct. 1897, GH 1591 (70–71). The effectiveness of the Immigration Restriction Act is evidenced by the fact that 34,872 Indians were prohibited from entering Durban between 1898 and 1910. See Bhana and Brain, Setting Down Roots, 133.

84. Wingfield to Under Secretary of State, India Office, 2 Oct. 1897, GH 1591 (71).

85. Lake, ‘White Man's Country’, 352.

86. Huttenback, ‘The British Empire as a White Man's Country’, 111–12.