The Oriental Question: Consolidating a White Man's Province, 1914-1941 (review)

The Oriental Question continues the story begun in the author's White Man's Province (1989), which covered the period 1858-1914. This volume is subtitled 'Consolidating a White Man's Province, 1914-1941.' A third volume will cover the era from 1941 to the 1960s, when Canada's immigration laws and policies ceased to discriminate against persons of Asian origin. As before, Roy's sources are principally documents of politicians and governments and the popular press.

The two periods covered by her books are quite different from one another. In the first, a 'white man's province' was created by European settlers who limited the number of Chinese who could come and restricted their economic and political opportunities once in BC. The Chinese were mostly individual males, and a government head tax levied exclusively on Chinese immigrants kept them that way. They had little choice but to accept their marginalized status. China, chaotic and weak at the time, was in no position to assert itself on their behalf.

In the second period the situation has changed and with it the issues of the 'Oriental question' debates that form the theme of this volume. Instead of how to exclude or marginalize some seemingly compliant Chinese, the question increasingly becomes how to deal with the new and very different Japanese immigration - familial, not individual. Appropriately, the cover illustration of The Oriental Question is a 1931 photo of a Victoria Japanese school class. It is really these local-borns who are the most important part of the 'Oriental question' in this period. The term Oriental still includes the Chinese, but the focus from the 1920s onward is increasingly upon the Japanese. Citizens of a newly modernized and highly assertive Japan, they were inclined to seek the respect that their country of origin was now given by the world.

Unlike many Chinese, the Japanese clearly intended to stay in BC. They set up farms and fishing operations; their youth attended schools at all levels. Above all, the Japanese were assertive. Again unlike the Chinese, they seemed unwilling to be used as labourers in the interests of European society. Instead, they showed every indication that they wanted and even expected to be a part of that society. By the 1920s and 1930s the presence of the Nisei youth was raising serious questions about whether the Japanese could be assimilated and what the costs might be. If given the franchise, could a 'white man's province' be consolidated and maintained?

But there was more. In the 1920s, Japan moved away from being Britain's ally and towards expansionist policies on the Asian mainland and in the Pacific. That move made it possible for Canada to further restrict Japanese immigration, so that by the 1930s both Chinese (in the Exclusion Law of 1923) and Japanese immigration had largely ceased to be a problem. As Canadians began to see Japan as a threat, the loyalty of the still-marginalized Japanese in BC became a major concern. Indeed, one of the ironies of this situation was that it was the Japanese in BC, who seemed to want so much to be part of local society, who were, unlike the Chinese, dependent upon an alien country (Japan) for protection. That only increased suspicions about their 'loyalty.'

Though the issues in this period have changed, much of the earlier rhetoric remains. With immigration under control, there are no longer expressions of anxiety about being swamped by hordes from the East. There are now fears of miscegenation. But there are also the familiar and repeated assertions of the incompatibility of Asians and Europeans. The terminology continues to stress race: 'White man's country' continues to be evoked. Here Roy is at her best. As in her earlier volume, she argues that the old debate on whether anti-Oriental sentiment was an expression of racist views or of economic interest grossly oversimplifies a complex and changing situation...