Anti-Chinese Politics in California in the 1870s: An Intercounty Analysis

Abstract

This article uses a combination of qualitative and quantitative historical data from all California counties to assess the efficacy of variables derived from the split labor market, cultural division of labor, and ethnic competitive models, as well as variables related to the organizational capacity of majority group workers, to predict efforts in late-nineteenth-century California to institutionalize discrimination against the Chinese through the political system. The results suggest that anti-Chinese voting and support for anti-Chinese legislation are best predicted by presence of large numbers of urbanized majority group workers and the level of organization they achieved and that this was especially true during the period of greatest conflict at the end of the 1870s.