The completion of the transcontinental railroad in May 1869 is usually told as a story of national triumph and a key moment for American Manifest Destiny. The Railroad made it possible to cross the country in a matter of days instead of months, paved the way for new settlers to come out west, and helped speed America's entry onto the world stage as a modern nation that spanned a full continent. It also created vast wealth for its four owners, including the fortune with which Leland Stanford would found Stanford University some two decades later. But while the Transcontinental has often been celebrated in national memory, little attention has been paid to the Chinese workers who made up 90 percent of the workforce on the Western portion of the line. The Railroad could not have been built without Chinese labor, but the lives of Chinese railroad workers themselves have been little understood and largely invisible.
This landmark volume explores the experiences of Chinese railroad workers and their place in cultural memory. The Chinese and the Iron Road illuminates more fully than ever before the interconnected economies of China and the US, how immigration across the Pacific changed both nations, the dynamics of the racism the workers encountered, the conditions under which they labored, and their role in shaping both the history of the railroad and the development of the American West.
Edited by:
Gordon H. Chang,
Shelley Fisher Fishkin
Imprint: Stanford University Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions:
Height: 229mm,
Width: 152mm,
ISBN: 9781503609242
ISBN 10: 1503609243
Series: Asian America
Pages: 560
Publication Date: 30 April 2019
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Undergraduate
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Unspecified
Introduction —Gordon H. Chang, Shelley Fisher Fishkin, and Hilton Obenzinger 1. Chinese Railroad Workers and the US Transcontinental Railroad in Global Perspective —Gordon H. Chang 2. Chinese Labor Migrants to the Americas in the Nineteenth Century: An Inquiry into Who They Were and the World They Left Behind —Evelyn Hu-DeHart 3. The View from Home: Dreams of Chinese Railroad Workers Across the Pacific —Zhang Guoxiong, with Roland Hsu 4. Overseas Remittances of Chinese Railroad Workers in North America —Yuan Ding, with Roland Hsu 5. Chinese Railroad Workers' Remittance Networks: Insights Based on Qiaoxiang Documents —Liu Jin, with Roland Hsu 6. Archaeological Contributions to Research on Chinese Railroad Workers in North America —Barbara L. Voss 7. Living between Misery and Triumph: The Material Practices of Chinese Railroad Workers in North America —Barbara L. Voss 8. Landscapes of Change: Culture, Nature, and the Archaeological Heritage of Transcontinental Railroads in the North American West —Kelly J. Dixon, with contributions by Gary Weisz, Christopher Merritt, Robert Weaver, and James Bard 9. The Health and Well-being of Chinese Railroad Workers —J. Ryan Kennedy, Sarah Heffner, Virginia Popper, Ryan P. Harrod, and John J. Crandall 10. Religion on the Road: How Chinese Migrants Adapted Popular Religion to an American Context —Kathryn Gin Lum 11. Tracking Memory: Encounters between Chinese Railroad Workers and Native Americans —Hsinya Huang 12. Railroad Frames: Landscapes and the Chinese Railroad Worker in Photography, 18651869 —Denise Khor 13. 'Les fils du Ciel': European Travelers' Accounts of Chinese Railroad Workers —Greg Robinson 14. The Chinese Railroad Worker in United States History Textbooks: A Historical Genealogy, 1849-1965 —William Gow 15. Representing Chinese Railroad Workers in North America: Chinese Historiography and Literature, 19492015 —Yuan Shu 16. History Lessons: Remembering Chinese Railroad Workers in Dragon's Gate and Donald Duk —Pin-chia Feng 17. The Chinese as Railroad Builders after Promontory —Shelley Fisher Fishkin 18. The Construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway and the Transpacific Chinese Diaspora, 18801885 —Zhongping Chen 19. Beyond Railroad Work: Chinese Contributions to the Development of Winnemucca and Elko, Nevada —Sue Fawn Chung 20. The Remarkable Life of a Sometimes Railroad Worker: Chin Gee Hee, 18441929 —Beth Lew-Williams 21. The Chinese and the Stanfords: Nineteenth-Century America's Fraught Relationship with the China Men —Gordon H. Chang
Gordon H. Chang and Shelley Fisher Fishkin are Co-Directors of the Chinese Railroad Workers in North America Project at Stanford; Hilton Obenzinger is Associate Director and Roland Hsu is Director of Research.
Reviews for The Chinese and the Iron Road: Building the Transcontinental Railroad
To understand the emergence of the United States as a major player on the world stage, we must recognize the importance of its two-ocean power, which the transcontinental railroad made possible. Deeply researched and richly detailed, The Chinese and the Iron Road brings to life the Chinese immigrants whose work was essential to the railroad's construction. -- Thomas Bender * author of <i>A Nation Among Nations: America's Place in World History</i> * The long-awaited The Chinese and the Iron Road makes visible the previously invisible Chinese railroad workers who built America's first transcontinental railroad. They are given names, family lives, homes, spiritual beliefs, and agency. The research is astounding. The wide variety of interdisciplinary, international, and collaborative perspectives - from archaeology to family history - is revelatory and a model for future collaborative projects. This timely and essential volume preserves the humanity of the often-ignored and forgotten immigrant worker, while also uncovering just how important Chinese American railroad workers were in the making of America and its place in the world. -- Erika Lee * author of <i>The Making of Asian America</i> * Destined to become the go-to resource about Chinese railroad workers in the American West. This anthology assembles an international, interdisciplinary team of leading scholars to conduct the most extensive and thoughtful exploration of these near-mythic, yet heretofore scantly researched, historical subjects producing insights not only into the material conditions of their labor and lives but also the ideological implications of their ubiquity contrasted against their individual illegibility. -Madeline Hsu, author of The Good Immigrants: How the Yellow Peril Became a Model Minority
