Free Labor, Free Trade, and Free Immigration: The Vision of Pacific Community after the Civil War

Simple item page
dc.contributor.advisorMcDaniel, W. Caleben_US
dc.contributor.advisorShimizu, Sayuri G.en_US
dc.creatorHa, Arangen_US
dc.date.accessioned2021-12-06T19:39:33Zen_US
dc.date.available2022-12-01T06:01:13Zen_US
dc.date.created2021-12en_US
dc.date.issued2021-12-03en_US
dc.date.submittedDecember 2021en_US
dc.date.updated2021-12-06T19:39:33Zen_US
dc.description.abstractMy dissertation explores the rise and fall of the vision of “Pacific community” in the decades following the Civil War. It approaches this narrative through the ideas and activities of the “antislavery internationalists” who envisioned connecting the American West and East Asia into a single economic zone. They believed that the transpacific networks of free immigration and free trade would ensure not only their country’s prosperity, but also the vitality of its free labor system in the post-emancipation era. By tracing various figures in the antislavery internationalist circle—Republicans, abolitionists, diplomats and missionaries to China, and intellectuals and journalists advocating free trade—my dissertation argues that free labor ideology, once a weapon used to attack slavery in the American South, was critical in constructing and then destructing the Pacific community. The first section of my dissertation examines the making of the vision of Pacific community, with a special focus on its dual origin in the Whig-Republican tradition of internal improvement and the cosmopolitan worldview of Anglo-American abolitionism. The second section highlights the grassroots challenges to the Pacific community. Analyzing rhetoric of “coolie slave labor” and Chinese “sex slave women,” this section shows that the abolitionist zeal provided rhetorical ammunition to anti-immigration nativists. The last section explores the collapse of the Pacific community, investigating how U.S. restrictions on Chinese immigration closed the Chinese door to American commercial activities in the country. The scholarship of this topic has exhibited periodic, thematic, and disciplinary divisions—between the Reconstruction era and the Gilded Age; the “Chinese question” and the “China question”; and immigration history’s focus on inward-looking nativism and diplomatic history’s emphasis on America’s imperialistic expansion toward the Pacific. Challenging this fragmentation in historiography, my dissertation rediscovers the complex relationships among a set of historical ironies in post-Civil War America: the power of antislavery ideology in the post-slavery era, the collapse of free trade idealism amid Open Door rhetoric, and the rise of Chinese exclusion during the transformation of the United States into a Pacific nation.en_US
dc.embargo.terms2022-12-01en_US
dc.format.mimetypeapplication/pdfen_US
dc.identifier.citationHa, Arang. "Free Labor, Free Trade, and Free Immigration: The Vision of Pacific Community after the Civil War." (2021) Diss., Rice University. <a href="https://hdl.handle.net/1911/111742">https://hdl.handle.net/1911/111742</a>.en_US
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/1911/111742en_US
dc.language.isoengen_US
dc.rightsCopyright is held by the author, unless otherwise indicated. Permission to reuse, publish, or reproduce the work beyond the bounds of fair use or other exemptions to copyright law must be obtained from the copyright holder.en_US
dc.subjectantislaveryen_US
dc.subjectRepublican Partyen_US
dc.subjectpost-Civil War eraen_US
dc.subjectfree tradeen_US
dc.subjectfree immigrationen_US
dc.subjectfree labor ideologyen_US
dc.subjectChinese immigrationen_US
dc.subjecttranspacific historyen_US
dc.subjecttransatlantic historyen_US
dc.titleFree Labor, Free Trade, and Free Immigration: The Vision of Pacific Community after the Civil Waren_US
dc.typeThesisen_US
dc.type.materialTexten_US
thesis.degree.departmentHistoryen_US
thesis.degree.disciplineHumanitiesen_US
thesis.degree.grantorRice Universityen_US
thesis.degree.levelDoctoralen_US
thesis.degree.majorU.S. Historyen_US
thesis.degree.nameDoctor of Philosophyen_US
Files
Original bundle
Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
Thumbnail Image
Name:
HA-DOCUMENT-2021.pdf
Size:
3.47 MB
Format:
Adobe Portable Document Format
Download
License bundle
Now showing 1 - 2 of 2
No Thumbnail Available
Name:
PROQUEST_LICENSE.txt
Size:
5.84 KB
Format:
Plain Text
Description:
Download
No Thumbnail Available
Name:
LICENSE.txt
Size:
2.6 KB
Format:
Plain Text
Description:
Download
Collections
Rice University Theses and Dissertations