The Road to Chinese Exclusion: The Denver Riot, 1880 Election, and Rise of the West

Denver in the Gilded Age may have been an economic boomtown, but it was also a powder keg waiting to explode. When that inevitable eruption occurred--in the Anti-Chinese Riot of 1880--it was sparked by white resentment at the growing encroachment of Chinese immigrants who had crossed the Pacific Ocean and journeyed overland in response to an expanding labor market. Liping Zhu's book provides the first detailed account of this momentous conflagration and carefully delineates the story of how anti-Chinese nativism in the nineteenth century grew from a regional political concern to a full-fledged national issue. Zhu tells a complex tale about race, class, and politics. He reconstructs the drama of the riot--with Denver's Rocky Mountain News fanning the flames by labeling the Chinese "the pest of the Pacific"--and relates how white mobs ransacked Chinatown while other citizens took pains to protect their Asian neighbors. Occurring two days before the national election, it had a decisive impact on sectional political alignments that would undercut the nation's promise of equal rights for all peoples made after the Civil War and would have repercussions lasting well into the next century. By examining the relationship between the anti-Chinese movement and the rise of the West, this work sheds new light on our understanding of racial politics and sectionalism in the post-Reconstruction era. As the West's newfound political muscle threatened Republican hegemony in national politics, many Republican legislators compromised their commitment to equal rights and unfettered immigration by joining Democrats to pass the noxious 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act--which was not repealed until 1943 and only earned congressional apologies in 2011 and 2012. The Denver Anti-Chinese Riot strikes at the core of the national debate over race and region in the late nineteenth century as it demonstrates a correlation between the national retreat from the campaign for racial equality and the rise of the American West to national political prominence. Thanks to Zhu's powerful narrative, this once overlooked event now has a place in the saga of American history--and serves as a potent reminder that in the real world of bare-knuckle politics, competing for votes often trumps fidelity to principle.

About the Author :
Liping Zhu is professor of history at Eastern Washington University, author of A Chinaman's Chance: The Chinese on the Rocky Mountain Mining Frontier, and co-author of Ethnic Oasis: The Chinese in the Black Hills.

Review :
"Liping Zhu takes what others might see as local events and shows that they, in fact, rose from outside events. He also shows how such events can sometimes have multiple impacts on the larger world."--Pacific Historical Review"A superb local history, The Road to Chinese Exclusion also makes fruitful efforts in placing Colorado's increasing hostility toward the Chinese in the larger contexts of American national politics surrounding issues of race, sectional conflict, and the growing prominence of the West. . . . Zhu's study sheds valuable light on the extraordinary importance of the Chinese American experience for understanding the development of the United States in the late nineteenth century."--New Mexico Historical Review "Zhu breaks new, important ground in this superbly researched volume. His cross-continental study links the 1880 Denver Anti-Chinese Riot with the unexpected outcome of that year's election. Here, for the first time, we see the revealing connections between racism and politics in the 1880 election and in the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882."--Richard W. Etulain, author of Re-Imagining the Modern American West"Zhu's study of regional politics in the American West leading to the national decision to exclude Chinese from the country is a must-read for those wanting to understand the current immigration dilemma."--William Wei, author of The Asian American Movement "A diligently researched, clearly written, illuminating look into a scary closet of America's dark history. Rarely are local and national history so skillfully intertwined."--Tom Noel, Director of Public History, Preservation & Colorado Studies, University of Colorado Denver "Zhu's revelations about the impact of the Denver Riot are fascinating and offer a new look at the Election of 1880 and the changing sectional rivalries playing out in the late nineteenth century."--Diana Ahmad, author of The Opium Debate and Chinese Exclusion Laws in the Nineteenth-Century American West