Chinese immigration to New Zealand in the nineteenth century.

Abstract

Chinese immigrants came mainly from the seaboard Provinces at Fukien and Kwangtung. H.F. MacNair, The Chinese Abroad,. Contact with foreign traders at the ports of these Provinces, in particular those of Canton and Hong Kong, the constant economic pressure of famine, and the desire to better their conditions, were the main reasons which induced the emigrants to leave their native land. Most of the emigrants seem to have come from the small peasant class whose only capital was their ability to work and endure hardships. The Chinese were not colonists in the ordinary sense of the word. Neither patriotism, nor the thirst for adventure, neither the desire for overseas markets, nor the annexation of land for settlement motivated their emigration. It was a purely haphazard exodus varying from year to year with the reports of economic opportunities in the Pacific Countries, and with the intensity of the local famine. Their emigration has been the 'flight of refugees, whose hearts remained in China, rather than the advance of pioneers courting the opportunities and dangers of virgin country'. R.H. Tawney, Land and Labour in China, The Chinese emigrants were not interested in founding and governing political colonies. It was the economic opportunities, particularly those offered by the gold rushes in the Pacific Countries, that attracted the Chinese emigrants to them. They had no intention of waging war for possession of land, they had no interest in political domination; their genius as immigrants lay in peaceful penetration, and their method of exploitation was economic rather than political. Lacking the assertive form of western patriotism and content to endure passively rather than to take positive action, they were subject, in these Pacific countries, to more injuries and persecutions than were experienced by any other class of immigrants. Nevertheless they prospered, a fact which, as MacNair points out,'may be accepted as a vindication of their methods - and worthy of consideration by students of the Sermon on the Mount in relation to modern imperialism'. H. F. MacNair, op cit.