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E-book
Author Jung, Moon-Ho, 1969-

Title Coolies and cane : race, labor, and sugar in the age of emancipation / Moon-Ho Jung
Published Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press, ©2006

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Description 1 online resource (x, 275 pages) : illustrations, maps
Contents Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- 1 Outlawing Coolies -- 2 Envisioning Freedoms -- 3 Demanding Coolies -- 4 Domesticating Labor -- 5 Redeeming White Supremacy -- 6 Resisting Coolies -- Conclusion -- Notes -- A Note on Primary Sources -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- Y
Summary How did thousands of Chinese migrants end up working alongside African Americans in Louisiana after the Civil War? With the answer to this question and stories of these workers, Coolies and Cane advances a view of emancipation that moves beyond U.S. borders and the black-white racial dynamic. Tracing the source of Asian labor to the sugar plantations of the Caribbean, Moon-Ho Jung argues that the racial stereotypes of "coolies" played a pivotal role in reconstructing concepts of race, nation, and citizenship in the United States. Jung examines how the Chinese appeared in major U.S. political debates on race, labor, and immigration between the 1830s and 1880s. He finds that white conceptions of "coolies" were articulated in many, often contradictory, ways. These laborers could mark the progress of freedom; they could remind Southerners of the barbarism of slavery. Welcomed and rejected as neither black nor white, "coolies" emerged recurrently as both the salvation of the fracturing and reuniting nation and a threat to American civilization. Based on extensive archival research, this study makes sense of these contradictions to reveal how American impulses to recruit and exclude Chinese labor enabled and justified a series of historical transitions: from slave-trade laws to racially coded immigration laws, from a slaveholding nation to a "nation of immigrants," and from a continental empire of manifest destiny to a liberating empire across the seas. Combining political, cultural, and social history, Coolies and Cane is a compelling study of race, Reconstruction, and Asian American history.--Publisher description
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 227-266) and index
Notes Print version record
Subject Asian Americans -- History
Reconstruction (U.S. history, 1865-1877) -- Louisiana
Chinese Americans -- Louisiana -- Social conditions -- 19th century
Immigrants -- Louisiana -- Social conditions -- 19th century
Agricultural laborers -- Louisiana -- Social conditions -- 19th century
Foreign workers, Chinese -- Louisiana -- History -- 19th century
Sugar growing -- Social aspects -- Louisiana -- History -- 19th century
SOCIAL SCIENCE -- Anthropology -- Cultural.
SOCIAL SCIENCE -- Discrimination & Race Relations.
SOCIAL SCIENCE -- Minority Studies.
Reconstruction (U.S. history, 1865-1877)
Agricultural laborers -- Social conditions
Asian Americans
Chinese Americans -- Social conditions
Economic history
Foreign workers, Chinese
Immigrants -- Social conditions
Race relations
Social conditions
SUBJECT Louisiana -- Race relations
Louisiana -- Social conditions -- 19th century
Louisiana -- Economic conditions -- 19th century
Subject Louisiana
United States
Genre/Form History
Form Electronic book
ISBN 080188876X
9780801888762