Closing the Gate: Race, Politics, and the Chinese Exclusion Act (review)

Closing the Gate: Race, Politics, and the Chinese Exclusion Act. By Andrew Gyory (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 1998) 354 pp. $49.95 cloth $19.95 paper.

Why did the United States pass the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882? This is the question that Gyory seeks to answer in Closing the Gate. The Act, which marks the first time that an immigrant group was excluded on the basis of race or nationality, has long been recognized as a major turning point in American immigration history. The question itself is not new; other historians have written extensively on the subject. ¹ They have generally explained the passage of the Exclusion Act by focusing on three factors: pressure from workers, politicians, and others in California, where most Chinese had settled; a racist atmosphere that pervaded the nation in the nineteenth century; and persistent support and lobbying by the national labor movement. Taking issue with these widely accepted interpretations, Gyory argues that the first two forces were "important, but not decisive," and the third was "nonexistent" (1). Instead, Gyory asserts that national politicians "seized and manipulated the issue in an effort to gain votes." While claiming to speak for the American working class, congressional leaders passed Chinese exclusion, and, from Gyory's perspective, workers have been blamed for it ever since. For Gyory, the "double tragedy" of the Chinese Exclusion Act is that "not only did politicians close the gate on an entire race of people, but they also blamed this act on a group that did not seek it" (16).

At the heart of Closing the Gate is an attempt to explain the political process by which the anti-Chinese movement in California came to occupy the national stage and result in the Chinese Exclusion Act. This is a most important contribution to the historiography of Chinese exclusion, and Gyory does an admirable job of sifting through almost two dozen eastern newspapers, as well as numerous testimonies in the Congressional Record. The result is the most detailed account available of Chinese exclusion as a national issue. ²

Gyory's main focus is defense of his argument that eastern workers were not interested in restricting Chinese immigration and had little to do with the Exclusion Act's passage. This point does not mean that they did not hold racist views of the Chinese or that they wholeheartedly welcomed Chinese immigration. Instead, eastern workers chose to make their stand not against Chinese labor per se, but against imported labor, of any nationality. Although workers may have resisted Chinese immigration restriction, the public's perception was that workers were overwhelmingly for Chinese exclusion. Gyory warns that there is a "critical distinction between public opinion and people's perception of public opinion" (110). Convinced that workers supported exclusion, national politicians took it upon themselves to propel the Chinese exclusion issue onto the national scene.

Gyory's detailed research indicates that eastern workers and national labor leaders were not as concerned about, or committed to, the Chinese exclusion issue as were their counterparts in California. This is an important contribution. However, the question remains as to how rank-and-file workers in the East managed to make a real and defined distinction between imported Chinese laborers and voluntary Chinese immigrants who tended to work for lower wages when newspapermen, politicians, and even their own labor leaders did not? The line between imported labor and voluntary immigrant seems fuzzy at best. It is hardly clear just how successful eastern workers were at separating the two in their own minds--despite their rhetoric.

Moreover, though Gyory interprets eastern workers' silence about the exclusion issue to be a sign of their non-involvement and lack of interest, their silence could also be read as indicative of passive support. Clearly, there were no organized protests against exclusion on the part of eastern workers. This implicit support would also better explain how and...