The Chinese Must Go

“The Chinese Must Go shows how a country that was moving, in a piecemeal and halting fashion, toward an expansion of citizenship for formerly enslaved people and Native Americans, came to deny other classes of people the right to naturalize altogether… The stories of racist violence and community shunning are brutal to read. Lew-Williams particularly excels at invoking the psychological effects of the law on Chinese people living in the United States after the exclusion acts passed.”—Rebecca Onion, Slate

“In her skillful retelling of the history of white workers’ violence against Chinese immigrants and the formulation of laws to first restrict, and then exclude, Chinese laborers from the United States in the mid-late 19th century, Beth Lew-Williams weaves a story of racial discrimination and nativism that continues to resonate today.”—Andrea Worden, South China Morning Post

“An original and compelling analysis of Chinese exclusion in the second half of the nineteenth century, analyzing how the outbreak of anti-Chinese violence in 1885 was both caused by and helped shape American immigration policies.”—Ray Allen Billington Prize Jury

“Simultaneously a beautifully paced, moving read—a powerful and deeply humane account of the emergence of the racialized border, the consequences of which have echoed down to the present.”—Ellis W. Hawley Prize Jury

“With scrupulous research and conceptual boldness, Lew-Williams applies the nuances of a ‘scalar’ lens to contrast anti-Chinese campaigns at local, regional, and national levels, producing a social history that significantly remakes the well-established chronology of Chinese exclusion by highlighting the role of anti-Chinese violence and vigilantism in advancing immigration controls on the Chinese from goals of restriction to exclusion.”—Madeline Y. Hsu, author of Asian American History: A Very Short Introduction

“The Chinese Must Go presents a powerful argument about racial violence that could not be more timely. It shows why nineteenth-century pogroms against the Chinese in the American West resonate today. White nationalists targeted Chinese immigrants as threats to their homes and jobs and blamed the American government for failing to seal the borders.”—Richard White, author of The Republic for Which It Stands: The United States during Reconstruction and the Gilded Age, 1865–1896

“Moving seamlessly from the local to the international, The Chinese Must Go offers a riveting, beautifully written new account of Chinese exclusion, one that foregrounds Chinese voices and experiences. A timely and important contribution to our understanding of immigration and the border.”—Karl Jacoby, Columbia University