Gordon H. Chang

A history of the Chinese workers who built the Western railway, told by reconstructing their world from existing evidence. Of the tens of thousands of letters they sent home, none have been found by historians, but Chang consults other contemporaneous accounts from Chinese workers in the US, stories passed down in families, and even what can be gleaned from records left by suspicious and often confused white people. Among other things, he argues (somewhat optimistically) that the workers’ strike often considered to have been a total failure was actually a success, given that wages began to rise pretty substantially thereafter.… (mais)

Most Americans learn in school that there were Chinese workers on the transcontinental railroad project, but that’s usually where it stops. Chang, professor of humanities and of history at Stanford, the director of the Center for East Asian Studies and co-director of the Chinese Railroad Workers in North America project, has gone to primary sources to shine a light on the lives of the some 20,000 workers who came from China to work on the tracks.

When the Transcontinental Railroad project was put together, a competition arose between the Union Pacific railroad working from the east and the Central Pacific railroad working from the west. They started in 1864 and finished in 1869. Union Pacific had it fairly easy; they covered a lot of fairly flat states. Central Pacific, on the other hand, started at Sacramento and went right up into the Sierra Nevada Mountains. There were no machines to do any of the work; it was all done with shovels and picks, moving rocks and soil in buckets. Differences in elevations had to be smoothed into easy slopes, sharp curves had to be made wider. Once the rail beds were done, ties and steel rails had to be laid. They went right on up through the Donner Pass, working night and day, summer and winter. It was dangerous and horribly hard work. They were paid submarket wages and were treated badly by the whites, especially by the settlers they worked around- settlers afraid the Chinese would want to stay there once the railroad was down.

Not all the Chinese in the project were railroad workers; some were vendors, while some made livings farming and providing familiar foods to the RR workers. While there were very few Chinese women involved in the project, what there were tended to be enslaved as sex workers.

Sadly, no first-hand account has ever been found. Chang has had to resort to ship manifests, immigration lists, business records of the Chinese community, old newspapers, family stories, and oral histories. He’s put together a solid history that, while dry, is good and fairly easy to read. There were sections that I found slow and boring, but most held my interest well. Four stars.… (mais)

This was a very informative book, although clearly difficult for the author to write based on first-hand accounts of the Chinese experience on building the transcontinental railroad, since there are few first-hand accounts that have been preserved. The author presents much of his material from inference based on similar experiences of Chinese in other situations. Nonetheless, there is nothing apparent that would indicate that these inferences cannot be assumed to be correct.

The book clearly presents the case for how vastly important (and for the Central Pacific, highly critical) the individuals from China were to the construction of the railroad. Since the CP’s work force was overwhelmingly Chinese, the RR would either have not been built at all, or the trackage that the CP was able to complete versus the Union Pacific would have been significantly less, and in all likelihood, the transcontinental RR would have taken much, much longer to complete.

The information provided greatly adds to the understanding of the human sacrifice that was necessary for the TCRR to be built. Many deaths and much suffering by the Chinese are discussed, and the author makes it evident how terrifying some of the work was. Work continued 24/7, though the mountains, requiring vast use of explosives. But the discussion of the work necessary to keep the building going, especially the tales of the winter storms in the Sierras and how it was necessary to not only avoid being swept away by avalanches, but to actually have to tunnel thorough huge levels of snowfall to get to the work sites from the residential camps, is harrowing.

The only critique of the book I have is the presentation of the photographs. Granted, you cannot increase the size of the photos in the book without losing clarity – however, it would have been very helpful had the author used some method to point out where in the pictures were the items/people he was trying to point out. In other words, it would have been helpful to perhaps use a line with text next to the picture (although this might not have been permitted by the owners of the photographs). Otherwise, it was very difficult to see some very small details. Doing this would have added to the understanding of the book’s discussions.… (mais)

U.S. public statements during the 1950's and 60's give the impression that policy makers saw international communism as a monolithic forced centered in Moscow. Gordon Chang argues very pursuasively that policy discussions focused on the conflicts between communist countries and how to exploit that. At first the United States hoped to pry China away from Moscow, but by the early 1960's, it was trying to pry Moscow from Beijing.

Titoism was the general term for the hope that communist leaders were nationalist first and would not suborndinate their national interests to Moscow. Only the most ardent right wing American politicians believed that Beijing would unconditionally take orders from Moscow. Most other policy makers believed that a split between the two was possible and likely. The debate was largely over how to encourage and exploit the potential split. Some wanted to embrace Beijing to entice it away from the Soviets. Others wanted to reject Beijing. Their rationale was that driving it into Soviet arms would exacerbate Soviet shortcomings and force Beijing to ultimately reject Beijing.

The policy of isolation won out, forcing the CCP to go to Moscow for aid. Chang is clear that the U.S. policy was not decisive, but he is unclear on how much of an influence it was. This vagueness is hardly shocking, since Chinese archives remain closed and internal debates are not available for analysis. It leads to speculation about the effectiveness of U.S. policies. Ultimately it produced the results that Washington desired. Chang's suggestion is that the White House and State Department understood their limited influence in the Sino-Soviet relationship and merely tried to add fuel to a smoldering fire.

Change does a good job of discussing the positions of various policy advocates. He discusses the different perceptions that led to each position and potentatial policies. Most interesting is the gradual shift from seeing the Soviets as the main enemy to seeing the Chinese as the greater threat. This reflected the Soviets abandonment of inevitable war with the West, while the Chinese continued to advocate it. Ultimately, Chang suggests, the Soviet shift towards detente not only brought it closer to the United States, but also alienated from the still revolutionary PRC.

Chang implies, but does not overtly state, that the United States position in the power triangle fundamentally shifted by the mid-1960's. Both the PRC and USSR saw each other as the main threat, making the U.S. a card to be played by each side. Washington was able to exploit that new position to improve relations with each side, thereby increasing its overall security.

Chang's work is an important analysis of U.S policy toward Sino-Soviet relations. By focusing on tri-lateral relations, Chang shows a more complex and realistic policy-making process. He is short on connections between policy and its effects and some of his details are questionable, but his argument is persuasive and provides an valuable perspective on Sino-Soviet-American relations.… (mais)