HIS312H1 Lecture 8: Asian Immigrants
Document Summary
Pull: jobs, aboard, the coolie trade, gold rushes, and the railway construction jobs. Rags to riches, chang toy, sam kee company. One of the distinct feature of west coast immigration, was that it fronted on the pacific, so asian immigration much more substantial. Asian immigrants from china, japan, india in the days of the gold rush to about 1908. Most were not looking to settle permanently, but looking to earn wages, and save money to send/take back home to improve lives. Some canadians welcomed these ppl, mostly employers, saw them as hard workers who worked for much less then white counterparts. Many white canadians in bc and elsewhere, didn"t welcome them, saw them as threat to the whiteness of bc and the white future of bc. Organized against them, institutionalized racialism, with gov"t at all a levels. Chinese began immigrating to bc in the mid-19th c. in the days of the gold rush.
