South Asians As Medical Scapegoats in British Columbia and the Pacific Coast States, 1900-1924
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South Asians as Medical Scapegoats in British Columbia and the Pacific Coast States, 1900-1924 by Isabel Wallace A thesis submitted to the Department of History In conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctorate of Philosophy in History Queen’s University Kingston, Ontario, Canada (September, 2013) Copyright © Isabel Wallace, 2013 Abstract This transnational study of the first-wave South Asian immigrant experience in British Columbia and the Pacific coast states shows how elected officials at all levels of government, bureaucrats, union leaders, physicians, members of the press, and the general public utilized purported public health concerns to justify South Asian exclusion and disenfranchisement. While all Asian groups living along the Pacific coast faced opposition to their immigration and settlement, India’s subordinate status within the British Empire, and a sustained western association of South Asians with disease, uniquely positioned North American discourse on South Asians at the intersection of colonial theory, Orientalism, and medicalized nativism in the first two decades of the twentieth century. ii Acknowledgements First of all, I would like to thank God for watching over me during this entire process. I would also like to thank my supervisors, Dr. Jeffrey Brison and Dr. Barrington Walker, for their valuable assistance during the thesis writing process, and Committee members Dr. Ishita Pande, Dr. Blaine Allan, Dr. Jane Errington, Dr. Margaret Little, and Dr. Patricia Roy. I would also like to thank Dr. Galen Roger Perras for kindly agreeing to read early drafts of the thesis, and for providing me with guidance with my archival research at Library and Archives Canada. After winning a University of Ottawa 2009 prize for “Excellence in Education,” Dr. Perras generously chose to use the award funds to bring myself and three other students on a research trip to the National Archives and Records Administration in College Park, Maryland. I would also like to thank the Senator Frank Carrel Foundation for providing me with funding at Queen’s University, and I would like to thank the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council for providing me with a doctoral award. I would like to thank the many individuals who agreed to be interviewed for this project, either in British Columbia, California, or in Ottawa. Many others generously welcomed me into their gurdwaras and their homes. I would also like to thank the Johal family of Vancouver and the India Cultural Centre of Canada. I would like to offer special thanks my wonderful husband, Joshua Laviolette, for supporting and encouraging me in countless ways. I would also like to thank my mother, Christine Wallace, for her support and for being my trusty research assistant in San Francisco. Finally, I would like to thank my invaluable “morale boosters,” Pumpkin and Chakotay Wallace. iii Statement of Originality I hereby certify that all of the work described within this thesis is the original work of the author. Any published (or unpublished) ideas and/or techniques from the work of others are fully acknowledged in accordance with the standard referencing practices. Isabel Wallace (September, 2013) iv Figure 1: “Medical Inspection at Seattle? ca. 1907.” RG 85 E9 51630 44C Exhibits, National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C. v Table of Contents Abstract............................................................................................................................................ii Acknowledgements.........................................................................................................................iii Statement of Originality.................................................................................................................iiv Illustration………………………………………………………………………………………….v Table of Contents…………………………………………………………………………………vi Chapter 1: Introduction………………………………………………………………...……….1-44 Part 1: British Columbia Chapter 2: “Leprosy and Plague Riot in their Blood”: 1904-07………………………………45-79 Chapter 3: Public Health and Executive Exclusion………………………………………….80-105 Chapter 4: Legislating and Enforcing Exclusion, 1908-1914 ……………………………..106-167 Chapter 5: Komagata Maru and Beyond: Hookworm and Public Health Protection ..........168-201 Part 2: The Pacific Coast States Chapter 6: South Asians and Public Health in the Pacific Coast States, 1906-1910……....202-246 Chapter 7: Hookworm, South Asians and Bacterial and Social Parasites………………….247-281 Chapter 8: “The Brown Man is a Calamity:” Legislative Exclusion.....................................282-305 Chapter 9: Conclusion………………………………………………..…………………….306-317 Bibliography………………………………………………………………………………..318-351 vi Chapter 1 Introduction A rumor rippled across Washington state in the fall of 1907. The Blaine Review first broke the story that the newly-arrived “Hindu” labourers working in local mills had been responsible for an outbreak of spinal meningitis the previous spring. Methodist Bishop James Mills Thoburn, who had recently returned home from India after nearly 30 years, asserted that “Hindoo immigration to the coast was responsible for a great deal of the plague, cerebro-spinal meningitis and other diseases that have been sweeping the country,” as South Asians were “leaving India in the hopes of escaping the plague, the germs of which they carry with them.” He warned that “great trouble would result” unless Americans “took some steps” to exclude the newcomers.1 While Thoburn’s assertions had no basis in truth, the connection he drew between South Asians and contagious disease offered local residents an attractive rationale for opposing South Asian immigration. From the initial South Asian migration to the continent in 1899 to 1917, when the United States legislated Indian exclusion, close to fifteen thousand Indian immigrants entered British Columbia (B.C.) and the U.S. Pacific coast states to work and to establish communities. Mistakenly referred to as “Hindus” or “Hindoos” by government officers, the press, and members of the general public, almost all were male Sikh labourers from the Punjab. The vast majority of South Asians settled in B.C. and California, though some settled in logging and agricultural zones throughout Washington state and near Portland, Oregon. As South Asians arrived on the coast in ever-increasing numbers, local labour leaders, politicians and community groups perceived the 1 Blaine Journal, September 13 1907. The Bellingham Herald picked up the story on September 14 1907; see Thoburn’s Bellingham speech in this paper’s September 27 1907 edition. 1 South Asians as labour competition and as threats to “white” (mainly western European settler) culture and society. Despite a near-continuous need for unskilled labour along the Pacific coast, and the general assiduousness of Indian workers, regional trade unions and politicians successfully brought about the prohibition of most South Asians from Canada in 1908 and the United States in 1917. Beginning in 1906 in B.C., and in 1907 in Washington state, Oregon and California, South Asians encountered escalating levels of hostility from local populations. The opponents of South Asian immigration, who considered the new arrivals to be “uncivilized” and “undesirable” members of a racial minority who were physically unsuited to the Pacific Northwestern climate, almost immediately adopted the argument that immigrants from India suffered from medical conditions and diseases that could be specifically attributed to their race. This idea was initially a subset of a larger argument that South Asians could not assimilate because they had a lower standard of living, followed caste prejudices, and spoke a different language. Quickly, however, the disease argument took on a life of its own and became the dominant current in the tide of opposition to the South Asian presence on the coast. In Canada, the timing of this opposition was critical. Since the arrival of first-wave South Asians in B.C. coincided with a massive public outcry of exclusionist sentiment over Japanese immigration (seen especially in the 1907 Vancouver riot), Wilfrid Laurier’s government effectively excluded South Asians in order to appease labour groups while avoiding the need for total Japanese exclusion.2 This thesis analyzes the many ways in which the issue of public health shaped official and popular responses to first-wave South Asian immigrants in Canada and the United States. It further examines the translation of these racially-based responses into the exclusion of South 2 While the 1908 Hayashi-Lemieux agreement with Japan limited the immigration of male Japanese laborers and domestic servants to 400 individuals per year, this quota did not include the immediate families of resident Japanese. The quota was reduced to 150 per year in 1928. 2 Asians from the continent, as, in Canada, legislative Indian exclusion in 1908 directly resulted from a vociferous two-year campaign in B.C. built upon the precept of South Asian racial “otherness,” while the same process in the Pacific coast states brought about American exclusion in 1917. At the heart of this thesis is the argument that while South Asians were widely categorized as “Asians” by policymakers, sociologists and racial theorists, their physical appearance, social customs, religion and especially their association with disease set them apart from (and in many cases below) other races on the evolving racial hierarchy of the Canadian and American west, making them become medical