HIST 325 Lecture Notes - Burrard Inlet, Crackdown, Overseas Chinese
Document Summary
Review: strangers within our gates : social and institutional responses to. Strangers within our gates: double meaning: 1) immigrants as strangers, gates are boundaries that we can open/close; 2) title of book. Ethnocentrism: anglo-saxon nation critical for canada, tides of foreign immigrants the major national social problem, assimilating immigrants capable of assimilation into anglo-saxon civilization; many organizations (esp. Churches) took up the cause (for empire, not just canada: exclusions of all others, methodists and presbyterians major actors. Lecture: chinatowns and the vancouver anti-asiatic riots, 1907. Chinatowns were critical economic nodes and enclaves for overseas chinese labour migration. Vancouver riots 1907 followed us; precipitated changes to the immigration act and "strangers within our gates" Mackenzie king"s reports that followed led to reinforcement of canada as white nation and south asians becoming targeted as latest oriental threat. Riots combination of majority canadian"s fear of economic competition (from cheap labour) and sense of racial superiority.
