gold rush

Looking for the Gold Rush Town of Chinese Camp

"Sucheng Chan, a retired historian and the author of more than 15 books on Asian American history, notes that this region, called the Southern Mines, was home to almost half of the Chinese in California in 1860," but that history is poorly preserved for visitors today.

Bigler's Gambit: How the California Gold Fields Gave Rise to Global Anti-Chinese Politics

by Mae Ngai

The Chinese Question and Chinese exclusion policies that circumnavigated the Anglo-American world in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries grew in local soils, and shifted and evolved as it crossed the Pacific world and supported the consolidation of British and American power over global emigration and trade."

Racism Has Always Been Part of the Asian American Experience

by Mae Ngai

Anti-Asian racism draws from different historical origins than Jim Crow, but their histories are part of the same conflict: whether White Americans are entitled to rule over other people, domestically or globally. 

Historian Benjamin Madley says what whites did to Indians in the 19th century in California was genocide.

He estimates that between 9,000 and 16,000 Indians were killed by vigilantes, state militiamen and federal soldiers between 1846 and 1873, mainly a result of the Gold Rush.

The Incredible Role of Pure Golden Luck in the Acquisition of California

by Steve Boggan

What a few weeks difference may have made.

Why Americans First Ignored the Discovery of Gold in the West — And then Ran Screaming for It!

by Edward Dolnick

The fascinating story of the Gold Rush and how it challenged American assumptions about life, work and glory.