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Abstract
Settler colonies such as those in Australia during the nineteenth century were rife with myths. One myth in particular bears witness to a complex matrix of colonial relations, in which race and gender intersected in the definition of who could be counted as a “respectable” member of the settler population. “Neither black nor white,” the Chinese were invariably disliked by Aboriginal peoples. The present essay takes this myth of racial antagonism as the starting point for an analysis that disentangles the discursive strategies that white settlers adopted to assuage anxieties concerning their identity from the practices that Chinese migrants adopted to uphold their right to settle (in) Victoria. To do so, this essay first charts the liberal, British, imperial order that enabled the mass migration of Chinese men to Victoria, and then maps the counter discourses that were mobilized against the unbridled movement of those men. Second, it examines the measures that were taken to curtail Chinese arrivals (1854–1863) and, by using gender as heuristic, it deconstructs the concomitant myth that the Chinese were “sojourners.” Last, by approaching settler colonialism as a regime that capitalizes upon the aspirations of oppressed groups, this essay illustrates the ways in which ordinary Chinese men turned their characterization as passive recipients of violence into respectability by contraposing themselves against a third racialised and gendered population group: Irish women.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Lorenzo Veracini for his supervision during my stay at Swinburne University, Paul MacGregor and Leigh McKinnon for generously sharing their knowledge with me during my research trip in Melbourne and Bendigo, Sandi Robb and Sophie Loy-Wilson for helping me with retrieving some key archival records and, lastly, Juanita Kwok, Ben Silverstein, and Gaia Giuliani for their insightful comments on a previous draft of this essay.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 A reference to Price (Citation1974).
2 Cronin (Citation1982) and Markus (Citation1979) are amongst the most comprehensive studies that have been conducted on the topic to date, and they both approach the racial exclusion of Chinese migrants as a limitation to emerging liberal political practices.
3 These studies vary from Fitzgerald (Citation2007), which demonstrates that Chinese migrants deeply cherished the same values as Australians and, as such, should also be counted as settlers; to Williams (Citation2018), which argues that Chinese migrants were fundamentally sojourners because they maintained links with their families over many years and generations and, eventually, returned to their ancestral villages.
4 Most studies report that the number of Chinese migrants in Victoria was estimated to be around 2,400 in 1854, 25,400 in 1957, and 42,000 in 1859 (cf. Reeves and Mountford Citation2011, 113).
5 In her study of the Chinese Protectorate in Victoria, Ngai (Citation2011) argues that while the language of protection was borrowed from the legislative system that had been set in place for Aboriginal people, the idea itself was inspired by the colonial practices employed in the British Southeast Asian colonies to govern native populations through indirect rule.
6 Many of the Chinese who arrived in Victoria in the 1850s either moved to newly discovered goldfields in New Zealand and the far north of Queensland or relocated to the tin and gold mines in Northeast Tasmania, New South Wales, and the Northern Territories. As Reeves and Mountford have observed, these subsequent migrations enabled the Chinese to pursue a variety of rural and agricultural economic activities in both Southeastern and Northern Australia (Citation2011, 122).
7 See, for instance, “Chinese Case,” Bendigo Advertiser, 29 December 1855; “Swearing by the Saucer,” Bendigo Advertiser, 12 June 1856; “Epsom Police Court,” Bendigo Advertiser, 22 August 1857; “A Peep at the Celestials on Campbell’s Creek,” 27 October 1857; “The Chinese on Bendigo,” Geelong Advertiser, 29 March 1859.
8 See, for instance, Thomas Halliburton, “The Chinese at the Diggings,” The Argus, 27 April 1855; “John Chinamen at the Diggings,” The Argus, 23 May Citation1855; “The Chinese in Victoria,” Kyneton Observer, 18 September 1857; and “Meeting on the Chinese Question,” Mount Alexander Mail, 31 July 1857.
9 In their article documenting Sino-Aboriginal relations in the goldfields of Victoria, Cahir and Clark base the claim that Aboriginal local people held the Chinese in contempt on the records left by a few white settlers (Citation2015, 31–32). No explanation is provided and no corroboration is sought among the records left behind by the Chinese. Consequently, they reduce the complex array of relationships that Chinese and local Indigenous people had formed for inhabiting the same spaces to the status of a mere folkloric curiosity that does not require socio-historical explanation.
10 “Outrage by the Blacks at the Gilbert,” Argus, 19 December 1872; “Queensland Blacks Attacking Chinese Diggers on the Gilbert River,” Illustrated Australian News for Home Readers, 30 January 1873; “The Queensland Blacks,” Weekly Times, 13 November 1875; “The Chinese and the Aborigines,” Advocate, 24 December 1875; “The Palmer Blacks,” Argus, 19 February 1876; and “The Chinese in Cooktown,” Ballarat Courier, 31 January 1877.
11 The Bill to Regulate the Residence of the Chinese in Victoria was designed to penalise Chinese miners who had evaded the immigration poll tax by landing either in South Australia or New South Wales. In this regard it established that Chinese miners could only receive their residence licence if they could provide evidence they had paid the aforesaid poll tax. In addition, any Chinese who were found without a residence licence could be apprehended without a warrant by any person, and brought to a Justice of the Peace (Kyi Citation2009, 18).
12 Following the petitions, the Bill to Regulate the Residence of the Chinese in Victoria was revised and implemented in 1857 as An Act to Regulate the Residence of Chinese in Victoria. This Act halved the residence tax to £6 per year and abolished the provision that Chinese miners could be apprehended if they did not have the residence licence. However, if Chinese miners did not pay for a residence licence, they could not instigate legal proceedings against those who illegitimately took possession of their mining claims and/or businesses (Kyi Citation2009, 20).
13 Due to a number of loopholes, the Chinese rendered the penalties attached to the lack of a residence licence almost ineffective. To redress this state of affairs, An Act to Consolidate and Amend the Laws Affecting the Chinese Emigrating to or Resident in Victoria introduced imprisonment for any form of tax evasion (Kyi Citation2009, 22).
14 Finnane examined 67 appeals put forward by Chinese defendants from 1864 to 1912.
15 Holst reviewed police court cases initiated by Chinese plaintiffs between1860 and the mid-1890s.
16 See, for instance, “Irish Poor Houses and Orphan Immigration,” Argus, 24 April 1850; “Irish Orphan Immigration,” Argus, 15 March 1850; “Irish Servants,” Argus, 2 January 1863.
17 As Robb (Citation2019) has synthesised, this myth holds true with regard to the 1850s and 1860s, which is when Chinese men mainly, although not exclusively, married white women of Irish origin; however, it does not apply to the following decades, when more diverse marriage trends emerged (151).
18 Ellen’s death certificate states that both she and her husband were born in Clare, Ireland (Victoria Death Certificate, 5093264, Ellen Spellacy).