The Chinese and the Iron Road

Published April 2019 by Stanford University Press.

ISBN:: 978-1-5036-0925-9

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 …

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.

3 editions

Ben Waber reviewed The Chinese and the Iron Road by Gordon H. Chang

An Insightful, Accessible, Academic Volume of Essays

5 stars

This compilation of different essays focused on various aspects of the Chinese role in building the transcontinental railroad is a fascinating, eclectic mix of historical detective work, economic history, anthropology, and archeology. This work is all the more important because, as is continually emphasized here, there is essentially no written record of this extremely important group of workers. The interdisciplinary nature of the different contributions, made necessary by this data gap, is nicely organized and contextualized by the editors, making this feel much more like a coherent book than similar academic collections. Standouts for me were the chapter on remittances by Yuan Ding and Roland Hsu, the chapter on encounters between Chinese railroad workers and Native Americans by Hsinya Huang, and the chapter on these workers in photography by Denise Khor. The last chapter tried a bit too hard to whitewash Leland Stanford's extremely racist and exploitative stance towards Chinese …

This compilation of different essays focused on various aspects of the Chinese role in building the transcontinental railroad is a fascinating, eclectic mix of historical detective work, economic history, anthropology, and archeology. This work is all the more important because, as is continually emphasized here, there is essentially no written record of this extremely important group of workers. The interdisciplinary nature of the different contributions, made necessary by this data gap, is nicely organized and contextualized by the editors, making this feel much more like a coherent book than similar academic collections. Standouts for me were the chapter on remittances by Yuan Ding and Roland Hsu, the chapter on encounters between Chinese railroad workers and Native Americans by Hsinya Huang, and the chapter on these workers in photography by Denise Khor. The last chapter tried a bit too hard to whitewash Leland Stanford's extremely racist and exploitative stance towards Chinese people (call me old fashioned but the fact that he didn't abuse his personal Chinese servants means essentially nothing against the vast harms, including death, he caused to tens of thousands of Chinese people). That aside, this is an excellent, insightful book on an important part of American, Chinese, and international labor history. Highly recommend

Ben Waber

rated it

7 hours ago

The Chinese and the Iron Road

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