Plague, Fear, and Politics in San Francisco's Chinatown

Introduction

Located at the intersection of powerful American ideologies—race and xenophobia , dread of disease,1 and modern sanitation—this study seeks to enhance our understanding of a singular episode in American public health history : the appearance and management of bubonic plague in San Francisco’s Chinatown between 1900 and 1905. Following the California gold rush of 1849, Chinatown was repeatedly condemned for its filth and bad smells, which were believed to breed disease. For more than half a century, such discourse, heavily tinged with racial prejudice and amplified by a sensational print media, found widespread acceptance. Playing on public anxiety regarding contagion, the periodic rants not only dehumanized an entire population but also motivated local authorities to employ muscular strategies of social isolation, control, and removal. Sanitary representations and the employment of stereotypes came to underpin political, economic, and cultural considerations designed to negatively portray Chinese in California, becoming a potent and permanent component of anti-Asian prejudice.2 Historical revisionism is an ongoing enterprise.3 Influenced by current events, we continue to seek new frames and explanations for past stories, inquiring after Introduction Living in America, we overseas Chinese are far from our homeland. We will omit nothing about events in China, but must be particularly attentive to American news because living among foreigners, our readers need to know what to follow or avoid, especially regulations directed against us that are becoming ever more inflexible. —deng yiyun, chung sai yat po (chinese western daily), inaugural editorial (february 14, 1900). 2 Plague, Fear, and Politics in San Francisco’s Chinatown better insights and understanding. History is periodically updated and remodeled , its meaning refurbished as new sources and sensibilities suggest a fresh interpretation.4 Specific case studies contribute to a better understanding of the multiple forces shaping medicine, science, and public health. Individual epidemic episodes examined in their fullest context capture the construction and contested nature of policy and intervention. All politics are contingent and local, but their complex interplay also reveals some universal values and behavior with potential for application to contemporary issues and problems. Much has already been written about San Francisco’s Chinatown plague of 1900 to 1905. This study seeks to expand the analysis by placing events into a broader transnational frame that allows for greater attention to the dynamics of the cultural and material transition from the original to the host society. Transnational history is particularly apt in the examination of immigration to America and especially valuable for local studies.5 Indeed, historians have come to depict Chinatown as a “community of fate,”6 a “trans-Pacific” society,7 or a “transnational ghetto,”8 with a set of values and relationships that bound its population not only to their motherland, China, but also to America.9 Instead of being detached “sojourners ,”10 Chinatown residents eagerly engaged on multiple levels with their new world, fighting for their legal rights and managing a potentially lethal plague epidemic. Gone is the celebratory historiography focused on national narcissism and progressive scientific achievements. Such studies neglected to describe fully the contested nature of public health policies and interventions, and they failed to portray the complex interplay of factors responsible for the often bizarre events that unfolded following the appearance of plague. Fueled by fearmongering, public health responses can be intrusive and controlling, as well as stigmatizing, exclusionary, and, above all, arbitrary.11 They can also be powerful tools for revealing and solidifying biases of class and race. Public health was born from concerns with social order and trade, both of which are threatened by the spread of epidemic disease. Like other human emergencies , disease outbreaks can expose coping mechanisms at the local, regional, and national levels. Panic, flight, and economic ruin demanded rapid, robust, and even radical measures, which were achieved through the employment of police and military forces. The sanitary inspections into Chinatown were punitive invasions designed to coerce a recalcitrant population into submitting to recent canons of western hygiene and domesticity promoted by a more affluent class of Americans. To this day, public health remains messy, forced to engage with mul- Introduction 3 tiple interests and the manifold values—with all their limitations and contradictions —deeply imbedded in the daily lives of people. Given public health’s early martial character, a play on the often-quoted phrase from Carl von Clausewitz, the famous Prussian military theorist and strategist, that “war...