Golden Shadows on a White Land
Introduction SHADOWS Remembering Anglo-Chinese families During the second half of the nineteenth century, hundreds of white women formed intimate relationships with Chinese men in New South Wales and Victoria. These relationships took place in Sydney, Melbourne and the bush, in towns, mining camps, and on rural properties. Some were fleeting encounters, others enduring and stable, but from both were born children whose faces reflected the differing heritage of their parents. These women, their Chinese partners and their Anglo-Chinese children farmed, mined, and ran stores and other businesses. Some were rich and lived in grand homes and owned large amounts of property, some only barely managed to scrape together an existence. Some had long, happy and prosperous lives together, while others faced tragedy, violence and poverty. Until recently, little has been known about them. They are historical subjects whose lives have remained in the shadows and on the margins. This thesis aims to throw light on those shadows by presenting the first in-depth study of intimate relationships between white women and Chinese men in the southern colonies of Australia, and of the families they formed together. Its particular focus is the colony of New South Wales (NSW), between the gold-rush years of the 1850s and the early years of the twentieth century. It explores the experiences of these mixed race families, in both southern Australia and southern China, from a variety of perspectives, examining representation and discourse as well as lived experience, across time and place. Beginning in the southern colonies of Australia in the 1850s, it travels through city and bush, into family homes and through public discourse, to finish in China in the early decades of the twentieth century.
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