Society. Chinese Immigrants Between 1840s And 1900s

Chinese Immigrants Between 1840s And 1900s
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Chinese Immigrants between 1840s And 1900s
The American relations with China tend to be dicey for the most part, and while that is the case today, it is an aspect that can be traced back to the 19th century. The relations that China shares with American have historical ramifications dating back to the gold rush and later on the Chinese Exclusion Act of the year 1882. The largest group of Chinese immigrants started coming to the United States in the year 1849. This was following years of political upheaval and poverty back home. They came by ships and within several years they were quite many, in the thousands (Office of the Historian, 2018). America at the time and in particular California had discovered gold and there was a gold rush with immigrants flooding in to come and work in the mines. It was not just the Chinese who came, there were Germans, Irish and some from England. Given that most of the Chinese that were coming in at the time were targeting the mines, it was largely the males. They left their families behind to come and make a livelihood, which they would then send to their families back home. They were offering cheap labor compared to the likes of the European immigrants, as such, they could easily find work in the mining industry (Office of the Historian, 2018). Later on they also moved to the agricultural sector where they worked as laborers for minimal wages that they would also send back to their families. Those that did not work in the mining industry or in agriculture, started their own businesses. For most of them, the service industry was a booming business. This is relative to the fact that, there were not enough businesses offering the services. Ideally, these businesses included laundries, restaurants among other services. With the boom of industrialization, came the railway constructions. Again the Chinese joined the laborers on the rail construction across the country and made significant impacts on the same.
Although the Chinese suffered serious discrimination from the Anglo Americans and other ethnics, they had significant contributions to the American economy between the mid of the 19th century to the early 20th century. Largely their contribution can be traced to the mining industry, agriculture and more importantly in the transcontinental railroad. The latter, is the most influential contribution that they made to the American economy relative to the i...