Source: Patch One Knife
Writer/ Hu Yi knife
"At that time, they were forced to work in pigtails and suffered the humiliation of racial discrimination in silence."
The man who said this was madsen.
On October 25, local time, a large-scale exhibition introducing the hard work experience of Chinese Americans for more than 200 years, the "Physical Exhibition of Pictures of the History of the Struggle of Chinese Americans", began to be held in New York for seven consecutive days, and Madsen was the person in charge of the exhibition organizers.
This exhibition recreates American society in the form of real historical materials and pictures and texts, and the Chinese at that time made contributions to the construction of the New World and to politics and economy. Beginning in the late 18th century, thousands of Chinese were sent to the United States as "piglets" and participated in many of the arduous projects that would later lay the foundation for American prosperity.
At that time, the americans used the same means that they used today to smear China's "forced labor."
In fact, behind this word used to attack China, there is also a "black history" that the United States does not want to mention. Moreover, this black history is a profound reflection not only of forced labor, but also of the shameless behavior of white Americans and political elites far darker and more evil than this.
01
When it comes to the rise of the United States, many people know that since the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century, the United States began to embark on the road of industrialization, and after the end of the Civil War, it gradually entered a mature stage. In less than 50 years, from the Civil War to World War I, the United States was upgraded from a rural republic to an urbanized country with an industrial system.
So, who laid the foundation for the 50-year "period of rapid development" in the United States?
In the history books of the United States, of course, those "sages" who represented the American political elite and the "free and courageous pioneers" who were mainly white groups. But the enormous contributions of laborers who lost their freedom and paid them cheaply (and some did not get paid at all) to dig gold mines and build railroads for the United States were hardly mentioned.
Even at that time, those laborers tried to change their fate several times by virtue of their duties, hard work, and ability to endure hardships, but they were snuffed out by the "black hand" again and again.
In the mid-19th century, gold mines were discovered in the United States, and workers from all over the world, including Chinese, poured into the United States to pan for gold.
According to the late Chinese-American writer Zhang Chunru in his book Chinese American, in early 1848, California had just discovered a huge gold mine. In February of that year, the first american eagle on board the american eagle, which sailed from Guangzhou to California, arrived in San Francisco.
As the news of "California's gold mine discovery" spread more and more widely in China, coupled with the recruitment of recruits to weave a sky-high "gold panning success" story, more and more Chinese who are eager to change their lives or families by developing overseas have traveled to the United States. In 1849, the number of Chinese workers coming to California increased to 325.
Wang Yuanchong, a historian in the United States, said in his article "1882, The Life Before the Chinese Exclusion Act" that by the end of 1850, the number of Chinese workers arriving in San Francisco, California, had risen sharply to 4,000, and by 1851 there were 25,000. At that time, San Francisco was called "Golden Mountain" in the Chinese industrial circle, and after the discovery of gold in Melbourne, Australia in 1855, it became the "new golden mountain", San Francisco was renamed "San Francisco" in the Chinese industrial circle. The name continues to this day.
Why were Americans willing to recruit Chinese laborers in the far East at that time?
On the one hand, it was because the white capitalists found it increasingly difficult for blacks and homeless people from Europe to listen to their control, and saw that Chinese could endure hardships, low wages, and were very obedient, so they began to recruit Chinese in large numbers.
On the other hand, from the early Qianlong period (1740s) to the late (1790s), the total number of people in the provinces in the interior counted by the Ministry of Households alone has increased rapidly from 100 million to 300 million, and by the early 1830s of the Daoguang Dynasty, that is, on the eve of the Opium War, it had theoretically reached 400 million.
In just 100 years Chinese has increased by 300 million, while the domestic economic structure and social resource allocation model have not fundamentally changed in the same period. So after the First Opium War in 1840, the United States found that China had a large number of young and non-fixed labor force, which became a "gold mine" in the eyes of Americans.
What many people today can hardly imagine is that for the successive Chinese, the American political circles at that time were initially encouraged, and even used various "gold everywhere, life is more comfortable than farming" words in China to deceive more Chinese laborers, and the American political elite also acquiesced, because the expanding United States needed a lot of cheap labor.
For example, in 1849, the mayor of San Francisco, John Geary, held a special welcome ceremony for Chinese workers. Around 1952, California's second governor, John McDougal, encouraged the Chinese to reclaim the Sacramento Delta, and soon the 5 million acres of useless swamp became fertile farmland.
An ironic historical scene is that on June 23, 1868, New York City held a dinner party to welcome Chincha Pu'anchen from the Qing Dynasty. At the dinner, Rep. Edward Pippende of New York State spoke to Pu about how the United States can protect Chinese workers from hatred of foreign workers that has occurred in American history.
Pippend said, "What the United States needs most is workers, and what China needs most is to export these labors. ”
Look at how eager and enthusiastic the U.S. government was at that time for the introduction of Chinese laborers. Wang Yuanchong wrote in the article: It was in this atmosphere that Washington and the Qing government represented by Pu Anchen concluded the "Subsidiary Treaty of Tianjin Treaty", and the fifth article of which stipulates that "free immigration between the two countries shall not be prohibited" and legally guarantees that a large number of Chinese laborers can easily enter the United States.
Article 5 of the Treaty of Pu'anchen encourages free migration between the two countries
In the late 1860s, the American writer Mark Twain estimated that there were between 70,000 and 100,000 Chinese laborers in the Western United States.
However, from the day they actually boarded the ship to the United States, the "laborers" became "coolies" to be slaughtered.
Before arriving in Jinshan at that time, the Chinese workers had to drift at sea for 3 months, as described in some previous film and television dramas, most of them were on cargo ships similar to the slave trade period, curled up in a small space below the deck, very susceptible to disease or accidental death.
And the scenes in reality are far more cruel and more tragic than these.
For example, in 1850, a ship called Lady Montague carried 450 Chinese workers, and by the time it arrived in the Americas, 300 people had already died of infection; in 1871, the Dolores Ugarte caught fire, and the crew locked the Chinese workers in the cabin under the deck and abandoned the ship, resulting in the tragedy of 500 Chinese killed.
In the eyes of those North American merchants, Chinese workers were not much different from tea, porcelain and other goods, and rarely gave humanitarian consideration. In their eyes, Chinese workers are a substitute for machine labor, and the cost is lower, and "forced labor" has become their standard operation.
At that time, Chinese laborers were recruited to the United States to do two main jobs, in addition to the gold mining mentioned earlier, the other job was to help the United States build railroads.
In 1865, the Central Pacific Railroad recruited workers to build transcontinental railroads in California, and only a handful of white applicants were candidates. The owner of the company held the attitude of trying it out and recruited 50 Chinese workers. At first, white managers were skeptical that the thin Chinese workers could take on the heavy physical work of building the railway.
However, under their "cruel and high-pressure management", the value of Chinese workers' reluctance to make trouble and hard-working has been reflected.
According to historical records, about 15,000 Chinese workers participated in the construction of the Transcontinental Railroad in the United States, accounting for 90% of the railroad's workforce. Under the whips of white overseers, it took only 7 years to build the railway, which was originally planned to take 14 years to complete.
The book "Chinese Americans" also records a story that can confirm the "forced labor with braids":
In April 1869, a boss who employed Chinese laborers said his workers could lay 10 miles of rail a day. Another boss who employed Irish laborers was not convinced. The former said that he was willing to gamble with $10,000 to win or lose. As a result, the Chinese laborers laid more than 10 miles of rail in 12 hours and 45 minutes.
02
According to incomplete statistics, by the end of the 1860s, hundreds of thousands of Chinese workers had participated in the construction of American railroads.
May 10, 1869, was a day that could go down in history for the United States. In Promontory, Utah, the first transcontinental railroad in the United States opened to traffic. A dangerous journey that used to take months can be completed in a week. This has given the United States the necessary conditions for the large-scale development of the western region.
However, for the Chinese laborers, it also meant that some of them could get rid of the white overseers and find new jobs.
At that time, not only California, but also a third of the population of Edhe and Montana, and while most were still working in mining, others ran laundromats, restaurants, and small grocery stores, hoping to live a free life in the United States.
However, the good times were short-lived, and most of the railroads in the United States were completed in the 1870s, just in time for the economic depression at the end of the Civil War, and many white soldiers became members of the unemployed army, at this time, hard-working, intelligent and capable Chinese laborers were regarded as the "scapegoats" of white unemployment, and anti-Chinese anti-Chinese sentiment spread in the white world.
These new white immigrants were not skilled on the one hand, and on the other hand, they were free and scattered, so it was difficult to find work in California at that time. But instead of looking for problems with themselves, they have a very shameless and evil idea, that is, if they drive the Chinese out, they will naturally have a job.
So they quickly pointed the finger at the Chinese workers who had just survived, believing that the Chinese workers had not only robbed them of their jobs, but also depressed their wages. For example, on June 30, 1870, the New York Tribune published hateful remarks stating that "Chinese as stupid as blacks" and that they do not deserve to live in a democratic society, and that "what is important now is not to discuss and make decisions, but to put them into action."
Since then, violent incidents against the Chinese have emerged one after another, tragedies have continued, and Chinese exclusion has gradually become the mainstream trend.
Joan Filzer, a professor of East Asian Studies and Women's Studies at the University of Delaware, wrote "Expulsion: The Forgotten War of Chinese Exclusion", which details the tragic situation of the Chinese in San Jose in the mid-to-late 19th century.
After the "Dream of the Golden Mountain", many Chinese laborers returned to the warm and fertile valleys, relying on their own and their families' efforts to reclaim the land and grow fruits, and the Chinese community arose in the pastures and farms of San Jose, and by 1880 the Chinese accounted for one-third of the local agricultural labor force.
However, white Americans have difficulty tolerating any "ethnic integration." As early as 1869, the San Jose Courier insultingly declared: "The Chinese as a race are born with few qualities that match the qualities of American citizens, like the barbaric Bushmen of South Africa." ”
In the mid-1880s, San Jose built six Chinatowns, all located downtown or in the riverfront, but always set on fire. During this period, San Jose also passed a number of ordinances restricting Chinese laundromats and prohibiting Chinese from taking on small businesses.
In March 1887, hostility against the Chinese peaked. The mayor of San Jose and the City Council issued a decree declaring Chinatown a "public nuisance" in plans to build a new city hall.
On March 4, Chinatown was deliberately set on fire, displacing more than 1,400 Chinese. The San Jose News even posted on the same day that "after a day of barbecue and destruction, you can enjoy the fresh air in the open air." Two months later, the San Jose Herald declared: "Chinatown is dead, dead forever." ”
In a phrase from the book "Expulsion: The Forgotten War of Chinese Exclusion," the "San Jose Purge" was merely "part of a long history of ethnic cleansing and massacres in the United States."
Mark Twain's 1872 book, Asceticism, also describes the state of the Chinese community near San Francisco.
On October 24, 1871, more than 500 white men stormed Los Angeles' Chinatown to rob and kill people, and 18 Chinese were killed. "As I was writing these words, I saw the news that on the streets of San Francisco in broad daylight, some boys had stoned an innocent Chinese to death, and although many had witnessed such a shameless act, no one had stepped forward to intervene," Mark Twain said.
It can be seen that the discrimination and injustice suffered by the Chinese community were very common at that time. Chinese laborers did not gain anything from the hard work of building the Transcontinental Railroad in the United States, but many of them lost their lives under the cruelty of the local white mob.
At that time, American newspapers and some picture albums also tried their best to distort and vilify the image of the Chinese. Among them, "Fu Manchu", who represents the high-IQ villain, (Dr. Fu Manchu) was formed at that time and was common in European and American literature, film, television, and anime works in the first half of the 20th century, with the intention of emphasizing that the Chinese were often evil and treacherous, secretly manipulating criminal organizations with the intention of subverting the Western world.
For Chinese women, the American media at that time scandalized and described that "prostitution for a living, causing moral and social harm, should be explicitly prohibited." At that time, the American Medical Association even provided so-called "scientific proof" to slander the Chinese who carried their own immunity but the white people would undoubtedly die after infection, and Chinese women were the vectors for spreading the virus.
Data from the August 2018 website of the Center for The Study of Chinese Descent in the Northwestern United States showed that there were hundreds of violent expulsions or maiming of Chinese in the northwestern United States in the late 19th century alone.
It was in this atmosphere that at the end of March 1882, the United States Congress passed the infamous Chinese Exclusion Act. The Chinese Exclusion Act thus became the first U.S. law to restrict immigration to specific ethnic groups and prohibit naturalization of their members.
In contrast to the previous "Annex to the Treaty of Tianjin", which advocated "protecting the free entry of Chinese into the United States", in just 12 years, the change in the attitude of the US government towards the Chinese reflects the hypocrisy of its political elite.
Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882
It was not until 1943 that the U.S. Congress repealed the Chinese Exclusion Act. But for too long, the Chinese have not received an apology, and the U.S. government and political elite have a "forgotten attitude" toward it.
On May 14, 2019, the website of the New York Times published an article titled "Railway Chinese Workers Are Almost Erased by History". 150 years ago, Chinese laborers made a huge contribution to the construction of a transcontinental railroad, but their contribution has long been almost forgotten.
03
From this period of history, we can see that in recent years, the United States has talked a lot about the issue of "forced labor", but for a long time, the United States itself has engaged in "forced labor" and is also a major country that shields, connives and even relies on "forced labor" to achieve development and rise. Historically, the "forced labor" of the United States was mainly manifested in the fact that in addition to enslaving Chinese workers, it also wantonly traded black slaves and oppressed Indians.
In 1619, the first recorded black Africans arrived in Jamestown, North America, beginning the history of the tragic enslavement of blacks in this "New World." According to the Transatlantic Slave Trade Database, in the history of the slave trade, there were at least 36,000 "slave expeditions" between 1514 and 1866, and more than 12.5 million Africans were trafficked to the "New World", not counting the many who died on the journey.
According to the German Stadtista Survey, in 1790, there were nearly 700,000 black slaves in the United States. In 1860, there were more than 3.95 million black slaves in the United States, while fewer than 490,000 free African-Americans were in the United States.
Why do we rarely see the United States preserving this part of its history now, and the political elite rarely mentioning it?
Jia Chunyang, an associate researcher at the American Institute of the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations, told "Making Up a Knife" that there are three reasons for this:
First, "forced labor" is a serious violation of international law and is an inhumane act recognized by the international community. The United States often labels other countries as "forced labor," but it is well aware of the badness of its own "forced labor." As a result, U.S. elites, even if they know their own history of "forced labor," selectively forget about their crimes.
Second, there are many elites in American history who came from "slave owners", and admitting their historical crimes is tantamount to denying the "founding fathers" of the United States.
Charles Bulllow, an African-American columnist at the New York Times, wrote that eight of the first 10 presidents in U.S. history were slave owners, "Historically, there is no doubt that this country was founded by racists and white supremacists, that much of the country's early wealth was built on enslaved Africans, and that much of the early expansion came at the cost of slaughtering natives of the land and breaking treaties with them." ”
Third, the United States still has a serious problem of "forced labor" and has not really reflected on its own historical sins.
According to a university in the United States, at least 500,000 people in the United States currently live under modern slavery and are forced to work. The Department of Homeland Security also acknowledges that forced labor is widespread in the United States, with victims ranging from their own citizens to foreign nationals from almost every region of the world, even vulnerable groups such as women, children, and people with disabilities.
It is inevitable that the political elite in the United States will turn a blind eye to or deliberately avoid the problem of "forced labor" in itself, let alone mention its own black history.
In fact, to this day, "forced labor" remains an important part of the U.S. economy. According to 2019 data, there are more than 200 private prisons in the United States, holding nearly 120,000 prisoners for the government, and prison authorities use prisoners as cheap labor.
In addition to prisoners, immigrants have also become the main target of "forced labor". According to statistics, in 2019 alone, the FBI reported 1,883 human trafficking cases, more than 500 more than in 2018; as many as 100,000 people were trafficked from abroad to the United States for forced labor each year, half of whom were trafficked to "sweatshops" or subjected to domestic slavery.
The reason why the United States often accuses other countries of "forced labor" is that Jia Chunyang told "making up a knife" that there are also political considerations behind this.
The first is to cover up one's inaction in dealing with and countering "forced labor."
Although the United States talks a lot about "forced labor", it has not actually signed the relevant international regulations. To date, the United States has not signed international labor rights protection documents, such as the Forced Labor Convention adopted by the International Labour Organization in 1930, the Supplementary Protocol to the Forced Labor Convention adopted in 2014, and the Convention on the Abolition of Forced Labor, adopted in 1957 and entering into force in 1959.
The second is to put hats and "black labels" on countries that do not obey the US orders, so that they are in a moral disadvantageous position.
Third, it is the intention to maliciously suppress the industrial development of other countries and support the development of corresponding industries in their own countries. Since the end of the Cold War, the United States has successively labeled the cotton industries of Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, China and other countries with the hat of "forced labor", which is very important in order to suppress the development of cotton and related industries in related countries and provide improper help for the development of the cotton textile industry in the United States.
Therefore, today we are going to uncover the black history of "forced labor" that the United States is least willing to mention, so that more people know that this is the real United States.
Resources:
Zhang Chunru: "Chinese American"
Joan Filzer: Expulsion: The Forgotten War of Chinese Exclusion
Wang Yuanchong: "1882, Before the Chinese Exclusion Act"
Image from the web