Race, Labor, and the Transnational Implications of Whiteness: Anti-Asiatic Riots, the British Empire, and the United States, 1907

This paper will explore the transnational implications of labor-inspired anti-Asian violence in Bellingham, Washington, and Vancouver, British Columbia, in 1907. Never simply a matter of domestic policy, concerns about Japanese, Indian, and Chinese immigrant labor in North America necessarily fostered international tensions across both the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. These events further embroiled Great Britain, the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, China, and India in a burgeoning transnational struggle to preserve whiteness around the Pacific Rim.

Specifically, 1907 witnessed new proscriptions and protests against “Asiatic” immigrants in the western United States and Canada. Attacks on Indian immigrants in Bellingham by American lumber mill workers highlighted the imperial and international complications of the 1907 riots and confirmed the denial of Indian citizenship in the United States. Indians immigrants were rendered effectively stateless upon entering the United States, since Anglo-American treaties only guaranteed the rights of British citizens, not their imperial dependencies. In British Columbia, Canadian labor unions made strident claims to whiteness at the expense of Japanese, Chinese, and Indian immigrant labor, which further entangled Great Britain in this transnational racial conflict. Collusion between those labor leaders responsible for anti-Asiatic agitation in the United States and their Canadian colleagues reinforced the international complexity of that year’s disturbances. Ever mindful of the potential international and imperial repercussions of verbal and physical assaults on Japanese, Chinese, and Indian immigrants, Great Britain monitored developments in North America with an eye toward their global implications.