The Chinese in California, 1850–1925

This website presents more than 8,000 items—photographs, letters, diaries, speeches, business records, legal documents, pamphlets, sheet music, cartoons, and art work—documenting the immigrant experience of Chinese who settled in California during the 19th and early 20th centuries. Materials on San Francisco’s Chinatown—its architectural space, business and politics, community life, and appeal to outsiders—feature prominently. Additional materials document Chinese involvement in U.S. expansion westward; communities outside San Francisco; agricultural, fishing, and related industries; the anti-Chinese movement and Chinese exclusion; and sentiment concerning the Chinese. An introductory essay contextualizes the website’s materials within a standard narrative of Chinese American immigration history: flight from economic hardship, confronting racial hostility and exclusion, and contributions to American society. Thus, novices approaching this website would do well to recognize the existence of competing interpretations of the Chinese American immigrant experience.

Read a more in-depth review of The Chinese in California, 1850–1925 written by Robert G. Lee of Brown University.

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