The final element of the “White Australia” myth which is contradicted in the pivotal experience of Queensland in the late 1870s, is the idea that the exclusion of the Chinese was a product of the agitation of the working classes or plebeian miners.92 An examination of the Brisbane Courier for the years 1876 and 1877 showed just one report of a protest against the substantial Chinese immigration into the Palmer River goldfields. On 15 and 17 October 1876, a crowd of whites had fired on Chinese people attempting to land at Trinity Bay (Cairns). The government sent in extra police and the tensions were contained.93
Significantly, this incident occurred after the passing of the first anti-Chinese laws in parliament, with all the attendant anti-Chinese rhetoric, and a few days after the Governor, Cairns, reserved them for the consideration of the Colonial Office.94 When the Courier’s weekly stablemate, The Queenslander, came out for restrictions on Chinese immigration in March 1876, seven months before the attack at Trinity Bay, it claimed that there had not been any kind of racial war on the goldfields; that while “some snarling occurred between the races, they were, as a rule, too fully and profitably employed to be able to spare the time necessary for a settlement of their animosity of race and color.”95 Within a
92 This appears to be the argument of Kathryn Cronin in Yellow agony, p. 283.
93 This was first raised in parliament, QPD, vol. XX, p. 1018 (LA Adjournment debate, 18 October 76), and then QPD, vol. XX, p. 1046 (LA Question without notice, 19 October 76). These were included in the verbatim reports of parliament in the Brisbane Courier. A short follow up item was published in the Brisbane Courier, 20 October, p. 2 col. 7.
94 This was the Gold Fields Amendment Bill, reserved on 11 October. The Governor was then sent a substantial petition against Chinese immigration from Cairns (the place), dated 18th October;
letter 76/2870 in QSA, Col Sec inwards corresp, SRS5253-1-229.
95 Queenslander, 25 March 1876, p. 16. Hostility to Chinese miners was far more intense than the magazine allowed.
month, the magazine was railing against “The invasion of the Chinese”, and publishing “humorous” items on how Chinese people supposedly had the worst smell of all foreigners.96
The mainstream political and press reaction against Chinese immigration into Queensland in 1876-7 simply cannot be understood as some kind of “working class” campaign. This is not to deny or downplay the significance of plebeian anti-Chinese agitation or actions. Kathryn Cronin has documented a series of anti-Chinese agitations, and brutal attacks on Chinese miners on Queensland goldfields from 1867 to 1872.97 But with the opening of the massive Palmer River goldfield in 1873, there seems to have been a decline in such tensions.
Indeed, it was at this time that the Queensland government took the first steps towards recruiting Chinese agricultural labourers for the sugar industry—an action that is inexplicable if one sees government policy as shaped by goldfields violence. Cronin’s own research would suggest that the re-emergence of anti-Chinese agitation on the goldfields in 1875 followed, rather than led, agitation in parliament for measures to restrict Chinese gold mining and Chinese immigration, and the adoption of anti-Chinese campaigning by the press.98
96 Queenslander, 29 April 1876, p. 16; 1 April 1876, p. 17.
97 Kathryn Cronin, Yellow agony, pp. 279-81.
98 The first legislative move to restrict Chinese miners on Queensland goldfields came on 29 April 1875, from Henry King MLA, V&P Qld, 1975, vol. 1, p. 21. He tabled “a bill to amend ‘The Gold Fields Act of 1874’ so far as relates to Asiatic and African Aliens”, but it seems that it was never debated, and was removed from the Order Paper at the end of the parliamentary session, V&P Qld, 1875, vol. 1, p. 357. The first plebeian move against Chinese miners since 1872, noted by Cronin, came in June 1875, with white miners on a number of Palmer River goldfields, posting notices threatening Chinese with death, Yellow agony, p. 282. Cronin notes increasingly serious actions against Chinese miners in the north in late 1876, after the passage of the Gold Fields Act of 1874 Amendment Bill, and its reservation by the Governor in October, Yellow Agony, p. 282. The organisation of a series of anti-Chinese associations at Thornborough, Hodgkinson and Charters Towers happened only after the Gold Fields Act of 1874 Amendment
Significantly, most of the anti-Chinese actions in this period were on (often remote) goldfields, and these were not mirrored by protests or organising in the larger towns and Brisbane. The predominant pressure for restrictive legislation came from above, not below.
The fear of Chinese colonisation of northern Australia was a specifically ruling class concern. Working class people in Sydney or Melbourne or Brisbane had no reason to fear settlement by other people two or three thousand kilometres away. Chinese people in Darwin were no threat to “white” jobs in Sydney. It is significant that, during 1876-77, while the Sydney Morning Herald was agonising over the “enormous number of Chinese who are locating themselves in
Northern Queensland”,99 there was virtually no response from either the trade union movement in Sydney or Melbourne, nor from the populist plebeian movement in Sydney. This latter is especially significant, because a mass movement against state-funded assisted immigration was built in Sydney during 1877, a movement powerful enough to seriously threaten the grip of the Premier, Sir John Robertson, on his seat in parliament. In the dozens of mass meetings held during 1877 to protest against assisted immigration, there were only a few off-hand references to Chinese immigration, and as late as January 1878, there was no mention of opposition to Chinese immigration in the
Bill was vetoed in London, leading to both a public campaign by the Queensland Government, and its decision to introduce restrictive legislation.
99 This conclusion is based on a thorough reading of SMH coverage of the anti-assisted
immigration meetings held in 1877. Quote from SMH 18 May 1876, p. 4, cc. 5-6; other editorials dealing with the Chinese “crisis” in Queensland on 11 Aug. 1876, p. 4, cc. 4-5; 19 Aug. 1876, p 4, c 7-8; 22 Aug. 76, p. 4, cc. 5-6; 10 Nov. 1876, p. 4, cc. 3-4; 15 Dec. 1876, p. 4, cc. 5-6; 14 April 1877, p. 4, cols 4-5; 23 May 1877, p. 4, cols. 5-6 and p. 5 col. 1; 6 June 1877, p. 4, cc. 4-5; 8 June 1877, p. 4, cc. 5-6 & p. 5, c. 1; 15 June 1877, p. 4, cc. 5-6; 23 June 1877, p. 4, c. 3-4; 4 July 1877, p. 4, cc. 4-5; 25 Sept. 1877.
Manifesto of the protectionist Political Reform League.100 Once the labour and plebeian movements in Sydney had been aroused by the decision of the Australasian Steam Navigation Company to replace European with Chinese sailors, then the issue of Chinese colonisation in the north did become an issue for them; but only then. In this context, labour movement and plebeian
organisers simply repeated a wide range of objections to Chinese immigration which had already been developed and publicised by the establishment media.
The Brisbane Courier itself revealed both its own class position, and the class nature of the anti-Chinese movement, in May 1877:
the opposition to Chinese immigration here is not maintained by disorderly loafers or by discontented working men alone, but springs from the painful conviction forced upon thoughtful, liberal-minded, and leading men throughout the colony that an overpowering Asiatic
immigration, such as we are more than threatened with, would be destructive of our best interests…101
Queensland led the rest of Australia towards the White Australia policy, because whatever differences they had over “coloured labour”, conservatives and liberals in the ruling class agreed that they wanted their class and the British empire to both rule and colonise the territory.
100 See, for instance, SMH, 18 Oct. 1877, p. 5, c. 5; SMH 18 Oct., p. 5, c. 3. The only mention of Chinese immigration that I could find in the election campaign was a question at a meeting for the marginal candidate for West Sydney, AS Hamilton, SMH 16 Oct. 1877, p.3, cc. 4-5. For the PRL Manifesto, SMH 25 Jan. 1878, p. 3, c. 7. Seamen’s Union leader, Thomas White, who would lead in attacks on Chinese people during the seafarers’ strike of 1878-9, was one of its vice-presidents, as was Walter Cooper, a former SMH journalist who had written anti-Chinese exposé stories.
101 Editorial, Brisbane Courier, 8 May 1877.
Conclusion
While the British government had asserted its sovereignty over the whole of continental Australia in 1829, the Anglo-Australian ruling class felt little confidence in its actual control of the continent. The British population of
Australia in 1876 was still under two million, but most of those were in Victoria and New South Wales. The European population of Queensland was barely 160,000 in 1876, most of whom lived in the south-east corner. The vast expanses of northern Queensland, the Northern Territory and Western Australia were effectively unpopulated by Europeans.
Colonisation was a central strategic and economic priority for the
Anglo-Australian ruling class. Chinese immigration was seen as a threat to this. China had the numbers that could threaten European dominance of vast areas of the continent, and European and Chinese capitalists had developed the structures to facilitate large-scale emigration. Chinese migration into North Queensland and the Northern Territory was seen as a far more threatening problem due to the tiny numbers of European settlers in those regions. And this anxiety was most acute about the northern goldfields, which could either be a lever for British colonisation and economic development, or a magnet for the Chinese.
Strategic fear of Chinese immigration dominated in the Queensland ruling class after March 1877. The following year, Queensland’s conservative newspapers would campaign in support of the Seamen’s Union as it fought to stop its members being replaced by Chinese sailors in the famous strike of 1878,
discussed in chapter 8. All subsequent legislation regulating “coloured labour”
in Queensland was debated in the light of its supposed impact on British colonisation, as discussed in chapters 6 and 7.
This concern then grew during the 1880s, as China was believed to have
increased its military power and this rival source of colonisation came to have a more threatening strategic dimension. This expanded Chinese “threat” was intensified by the perceived disloyalty of the British government towards colonial interests, most spectacularly over its disavowal of the “annexation” of New Guinea by Sir Thomas McIlwraith in 1883, which was followed by the actual annexation of the northern half of New Guinea in 1884 by Germany. The idea that Britain could be trusted to look after Australian ruling class interests was also undermined by the belief that Britain had an alliance with China in opposition to Russian expansion eastwards.
Ruling class anxiety over China as a strategic threat reached its peak in 1887-88, and was sparked when the Chinese Emperor sent a delegation of
Commissioners to Australia to report on the treatment of Chinese people in the colonies. The Sydney Morning Herald and New South Wales Premier Sir Henry Parkes believed that the Commissioners were sent to pave the way for the establishment of a Chinese colony in Australia. Chinese government complaints were then taken up by the British government, reinforcing the impression in Australia that Britain was prepared to sacrifice local ruling class interests in pursuit of its global agenda. The strategic dimension to the crisis of 1887-88 will be discussed in chapters 9 and 10.