John Doe Chinaman: Race and Law in the American West, 1850-1924

FAIN: FEL-273203-21

Beth Lew-Williams
Princeton University (Princeton, NJ 08540-5228)

Research and writing leading to a book on Chinese immigrants and the law in the American West, 1850-1924.

This book project examines the regulation of race and alienage in the American West, with particular attention to the experiences of Chinese migrants. While previous scholarship has focused on how federal law “excluded” the Chinese from the nation and erected immigration controls at its borders, my book will draw attention to how local and state law “included” the Chinese within the political economy and forged a racial regime in the interior. Twin questions drive this project as well as my larger commitment to the study of inequality: How have racial and national boundaries produced power relations within American society? And how have power relations determined the bounds of race and citizenship? My search for answers begins with legal sources, because the state has played an outsize role in this dialectical process. My ultimate goal, however, is to produce social history that captures the meaning of state power in the lives of marginalized peoples, both past and present.