Course Outline for History 42
Asian American History: 18th Century to 1945

Effective: Fall 2022
SLO Rev: 10/17/2017
Catalog Description:

HIS 42 - Asian American History: 18th Century to 1945

3.00 Units

(See also ES 42 )
An exploration of Asian American history from the 18th century to WWII. A critical and comparative analysis of the impacts of race, racialization, white supremacy, orientalism, colonialism, imperialism, war, social inequity, and migration on the first wave of immigrants from China, Japan, Korea, India and the Philippines. Special emphasis will be placed on labor and immigration policies, citizenship, community, social and political resistance, solidarity, and on the intersection of race, ethnicity, immigration status, gender, and class. This course will ask students to examine how Asian American history transforms U.S. history. This course includes analysis of the U. S. Constitution, Supreme Court Rulings, and California State and local government issues related to the rights of Asian Americans. (May not receive credit if Ethnic Studies 42 has been completed successfully.)
2205.00 - History
Optional
Type Units Inside of Class Hours Outside of Class Hours Total Student Learning Hours
Lecture 3.00 54.00 108.00 162.00
Total 3.00 54.00 108.00 162.00
Measurable Objectives:
Upon completion of this course, the student should be able to:
  1. Critically analyze the intersection of race and racism as they relate to class, gender, sexuality, religion, spirituality, national origin, immigration status, ability, tribal citizenship, sovereignty, language, and/or age in Asian American communities and other communities of color;
  2. Critically review how struggle, resistance, racial and social justice, solidarity, and liberation, as experienced and enacted by Asian Americans and other communities of color are relevant to current and structural issues such as communal, national, international, and transnational politics as, for example, in immigration, reparations, settler-colonialism, multiculturalism, language policies.
  3. analyze and articulate the concepts of race and racism, the racialization process, eurocentrism, and white supremacy in addition to the competing forces of self-determination, liberation, anti-racism and decolonization and how these forces shape and explain the historical and cultural experiences of early Asian Americans in the United States;
  4. critique the Master Narrative of U.S. history and view major historical events from the perspective of Asian Americans;
  5. analyze the origins of the U.S. political system and United States Constitution including the efforts of Asian Americans to gain citizenship and civil rights;
  6. analyze the political perspective of the authors of the Constitution;
  7. discuss the definition of citizenship and how it has changed over time under the U.S. Constitution and federal and state laws;
  8. assess the impact of the U.S. Constitution on immigration and citizenship policies which excluded and shaped the early Asian American population;
  9. compare and contrast the relationship and features between the California Constitution, U.S. Constitution, and federal, state, and local court decisions that impacted Asian Americans;
  10. evaluate the historical experiences of Asian Americans, their interaction with federal, state and local governments and compare with other major racial/ethnic groups (African Americans, American Indians, European Americans, Latinx);
  11. identify the contributions of Asian immigrants to the development of U.S. society and institutions;
  12. analyze the impact of Orientalism on European and US imperialism, colonialism, wars and US militarism in Asia;
  13. examine push and pull reasons for overall immigration and settlement patterns, including transnational immigration;
  14. examine major federal, state, and local governments and their policies that impacted the civil rights of Asian Americans prior to 1945;
  15. compare and contrast labor, the development of unions, and workers movements involving Asian Americans;
  16. analyze the influence of Anti-Asian sentiment on immigration laws, school segregation, and local, state, and federal level laws involving Asian Americans;
  17. appraise the significance of Asian American Civil Rights Movements and/or other social movements that Asian Americans were a part of;
  18. identify the impact of international relations on domestic policies affecting Asian Americans, including the case of WWII and mass incarceration of Japanese Americans;
  19. examine a range of primary and secondary sources such as oral histories, court rulings, newspaper articles, memoirs, poems, political cartoons, and other visual media;
  20. analyze the impact of U.S. wars and militarism on women in Asia;
Course Content:

  1. Intersectionality of race and class

    1. Contract laborers from Asia, hierarchical pay and working conditions based on race and nationality
    2. Compare nationality-based strikes v. multiethnic labor movements 
    3. 1850 – 1920, over 300,000 contract laborers from Asia are recruited to work on Hawaiian sugar plantations; laborers segregated and subject to unequal, hierarchical pay and working conditions based on nationality and race; new contract-laborers from different countries hired to break nationality-based strikes
    4. 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act suspends immigration of Chinese laborers; multiple extensions of this law follows
    5. 1920 –multiethnic labor strike in Hawaii by 10,000 Japanese and Filipino plantation workers
    6. 1936 - American Federation of Labor grants charter to a Filipino - Mexican union of fieldworkers
    7. 19th century recruitment of Chinese workers to build the transcontinental railroad; Chinese workers strike for better working conditions and pay

  2. Intersectionality of race and gender

    1. 1875 Page Law – a federal law prohibiting the immigration of Chinese women for the purpose of prostitution, but impacted almost all Chinese women
    2. 1907-1920 Loophole in “Gentlemen’s Agreement” allowed wives and children to immigrate, so women from Japan, Okinawa, and Korea began immigrating to Hawaii as “Picture Brides” until 1920 when anti-Japanese sentiment influenced the Japanese government to stop issuing passports to “picture brides”
    3. 1922 Cable Act determines that an American female citizen who marry “an alien ineligible to citizenship” would lose her citizenship
    4. 1930, anti-Filipino riot in Watsonville, California; anti-Filipino violence based on the racialization of Filipinos as having an “enormous sex drive” focused on targeting white women
    5. 1932 – 1945 – Japanese Imperial Army builds “comfort stations” where they station 200,000 – 410,000 girls and women from occupied territories all over Asia, who were kidnapped and forced into sexual slavery

  3. Anti-racist struggles, resistance, solidarity and liberation movements

    1. 1859, Chinese exclusion from San Francisco public schools; 1885 Tape v. Hurley repeals exclusion
    2. 1886, Yick Wo v. Hopkins, Supreme Court decision overturns a San Francisco law aimed at restricting the number of Chinese laundries
    3. 1898, Wong Kim Ark v. U.S., Supreme Court ruling confirmed that 14th Amendment of the Constitution applies to all people born in the U.S. “regardless of race or color.”

    4. 1920 –multiethnic labor strike in Hawaii by 10,000 Japanese and Filipino plantation workers

    5. 1936 - American Federation of Labor grants charter to a Filipino - Mexican union of fieldworkers

  4. Decolonization Movement

    1. 1899 – 1902, Philippine-American War, where Filipino nationalists attempted to fight American imperialist rule and sought independence rather than a change in colonial rulers (from Spanish to U.S.)
    2. 1907, Koreans begin immigration to the U.S. from Hawaii, establishing ethnic organizations to fight off Japanese colonialism

    3. 1934 - Tydings - McDuffie Act spells out procedure for eventual Philippine independence and reduces Filipino immigration to 50 persons a year

  5. Impact of orientalism, imperialism and colonialism

    1. 1763 – first recorded settlement of Filipinos in the U.S. (Louisiana) in order to escape Spanish galleons
    2. 1842 – 1852, British-Chinese Opium Wars and the signing of the Treaty of Nanjing, where China is forced to open its ports to foreign commerce and cede Hong Kong
    3. 1898 Spanish-American War and the Treaty of Paris which resulted in the growth of U.S. imperialism, “acquiring” territories in the Pacific and Caribbean, including the Philippines, Guam, Samoa, Cuba, and Puerto Rico
    4. 1898, Hawaii is illegally annexed by the United States

  6. Concepts of race; impact of racialization, and racist, anti-Asian, and white supremacist policies

    1. 1790 Naturalization Act restricts naturalization to only free whites
    2. 1848-49 Gold Rush and first Chinese immigrants begin arriving in California; 1850 California Foreign Miners’ Tax enforced mostly against Chinese miners
    3. 1854, People vs. Hall, California Supreme Court ruling which determined a Chinese person cannot testify in court against a white man
    4. Dozens of documented anti-Chinese violence and forced expulsions from towns across the west in the mid-1880s, including a fire killing 13 people in San Francisco Chinatown in 1885 and many expulsion efforts across towns in Southern and Central California in 1893.
    5. 1886, Yick Wo v. Hopkins, Supreme Court decision overturns a San Francisco law aimed at restricting the number of Chinese laundries
    6. 1900s – establishment of urban Chinatowns, ethnic enclaves, due to being pushed out of small towns; Chinatowns as refuge for a bachelor society; establishment of ethnic-labor markets and service industry market due to exclusion from other employment opportunities; racialization of Chinatowns as “ghettos,” “unhealthy,” “undesirable” spaces, yet at the same time a “mysterious” and “exotic” tourist center
    7. 1905 - Section 60 of California's Civil Code amended to forbid marriage between whites and "Mongolians"
    8. The 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fires destroy all municipal records, giving Chinese immigrants an opportunity to claim U.S. citizenship and begin to petition to bring over wives and children – the start of Chinese immigrants coming as “Paper sons”
    9. 1907, "Gentlemen's Agreement" between the U.S. and Japan, whereby Japan stops issuing passports to laborers desiring to emigrate to the U.S.
    10. Early 1900s – Nihonmachi or Little Tokyo sections begin spreading, establishing Japanese American neighborhoods and businesses since Japanese Americans are excluded from other employment opportunities
    11. 1910, Angel Island Immigration Station opens to process and deport Asian immigrants
    12. California Alien Land Law of 1913 – prohibits “aliens ineligible to citizenship” from buying land – Asian immigrants find loopholes to begin buying land
    13. 1917 Immigration Law (Asiatic Barred Zone Act) barred immigration from a geographic Asia-Pacific "barred zone" (including India)
    14. 1922, Takao Ozawa v. U.S., Supreme Court upholds 1790 naturalization act, claiming Japanese are ineligible for naturalization because Ozawa wasn’t white or what is “popularly known as the Caucasian race”
    15. 1923, U.S. v. Bhagat Singh Thind Supreme Court decision declares Asian Indians ineligible for naturalized citizenship based on the familiar or common understanding that “Hindus” were not white
    16. 1927, Lum v. Rice, US Supreme Court case which upheld racial segregation  - claimed that the exclusion on the account of race of a Chinese American child did not violate the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution on the authority that Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) deemed that separate was equal for Asians as it was for Blacks
    17. 1924 Immigration Act denies entry to virtually all Asians.
    18. 1930, anti-Filipino riot in Watsonville, California; anti-Filipino violence based on the racialization of Filipinos as having an “enormous sex drive” focused on targeting white women
    19. December 7, 1941- Japanese military attack Pearl Harbor, Hawaii and the United States enters World War II; 2,000 Japanese community leaders along Pacific Coast states and Hawaii are rounded up and interned in Department of Justice camps
    20. 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signs Executive Order 9066, enabling the establishment of "internment camps" for 120,000 Japanese Americans and others deemed "enemy aliens" regardless of citizenship; Japanese Americans relocated to 10 camps across 7 states, including Arkansas, Colorado, Arizona, California, Utah, Wyoming, Idaho
    21. 1943, Congress repeals all Chinese exclusion laws, grants right of naturalization and a very small immigration quota to Chinese (105 per year)
    22. 1944, Tule Lake Internment Camp placed under martial law; draft resistance at Heart Mountain Relocation Center; “no-no boys” at several camps resisted loyalty questionnaires used to segregate those considered “disloyal” to the U.S.
    23. 1944, Korematsu v. U.S., U.S. Supreme Court upholds the conviction of Fred Korematsu for violating Executive Order 9066 and ruled that the relocation order was constitutional
    24. 1945, August 6 - atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan, and August 9, on Nagasaki, ushering in the nuclear age; August 14, 1945 - Japan surrenders, ending World War II
Methods of Instruction:
  1. Case Study
  2. Lecture/Discussion
  3. Class and group discussions
  4. Textbook reading assignments
  5. Written assignments
  6. Presentation of audio-visual materials
  7. Distance Education
Assignments and Methods of Evaluating Student Progress:
  1. Oral History Interview: interview, transcribe, and analyze the narrative of an Asian American in the context of Asian American history.
  2. Essay on First Wave Immigration Comparison: Compare and contrast the immigration pattern, labor, and racialization of Chinese and Japanese Americans in the 1800s in relation to the U.S. Constitution and important historical court cases.
  3. Essay on Ethnic Enclaves and Anti-Asian Discrimination: Identify the key factors in the formation of Asian American communities before World War II.
  1. Papers
  2. Exams/Tests
  3. Final Examination or Project
  4. Class Participation
Upon the completion of this course, the student should be able to:
  1. Synthesize factual information and historical evidence from a variety of sources and identify the connections between them.
  2. Demonstrate a body of knowledge about and critical understanding of historical eras, their key events and ideas, and the process of change over time.
  3. Analyze the causes and consequences of political, economic and social change.
  4. Compare and contrast the struggles and contributions of Asian Americans in the formation of the United States and California, with other major groups like European Americans, African Americans, Native Americans, Pacific Islanders, and Chicanx/Latinx.
Textbooks (Typical):
  1. Lee, S.S.H. (2014). A New History of Asian America Routledge.
  2. Schlund-Vials, C.J., K.S. Wong, and J.O.Chang, ed. (2017). Asian America: A Primary Source Reader Yale University Press.
  3. Lee, E. (2016). The Making of Asian America: A History Simon & Schuster.
  4. Kawakami, B.F. (2016). Picture bride stories University of Hawa’i’ Press.
  5. Hune, S. and Nomura, G.M., ed. (2020). Our Voices, Our Histories: Asian American and Pacific Islander Women. NYU Press.
  6. Yung, J. (2018). The Chinese Exclusion Act and Angel Island: A Brief History with Documents. Bedford/St. Martin’s Macmillan Learning.
  7. Lew-Williams, B. (2021). The Chinese Must Go: Violence, Exclusion, and the Making of the Alien in America. Harvard University Press.
  • As determined by instructor
Abbreviated Class Schedule Description:
An exploration of Asian American history from the 18th century to WWII. A critical and comparative analysis of the impacts of race, racialization, white supremacy, orientalism, colonialism, imperialism, war, social inequity, and migration on the first wave of immigrants from China, Japan, Korea, India and the Philippines (May not receive credit if Ethnic Studies 42 has been completed successfully.) (May not receive credit if Ethnic Studies 42 has been completed successfully.)
Discipline:
Ethnic Studies*