The Chinese and the Stanfords: Nineteenth-Century America’s Fraught Relationship with the China Men

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis essay explores nineteenth-century America's complicated and often contradictory relationship with the Chinese who were brought to the American West as labor. In particular, the tensions between the political positions and personal experiences of Leland Stanford – railroad magnate, California governor, and founder of Stanford University – reflect the vexed attitudes encountered by the Chinese as they helped build the United States in the nineteenth century. Citing public discourse of the period on the presence of the Chinese in America, along with Stanford’s varied views on it, the essay describes how Stanford’s own awareness of the significant contributions of Chinese labor was at odds with the politically expedient anti-Chinese rhetoric he often espoused. In addition, the perspectives of Chinese workers employed by the Stanfords are detailed here, representing their agency as social subjects.