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If one examines the vast bulk of literature on the subject of immigration it is astonishing that the term ‘assimilation’ appears with such regularity. The question when, how, and why immigrants actually became integrated into American society and culture, and what turned them into ‘Americans’ reveals its complexity if we consider the simple fact that between 1870 and 1910 the United States experienced the influx of more than 20 million immigrants. ¹ The ‘newcomers’, divided into a multitude of different ethnic, social, national, and religious groups were not simply abandoning the world they had left behind to become Americans nor did they assimilate to a static concept of ‘America’ which probably did not exist. In the way they adjusted to a new environment and developed distinctive patterns of defining their own identity they constantly modified and re-shaped the idea of America whose true essence was (and presumably still is) hard to define.

The purpose of this essay is to discuss and compare the experience of two immigrant groups between 1870 and 1914: the Chinese and the Italians. Soon it will become obvious that even these (national or ethnic) categories represent rather abstract generalizations of far more complex patterns.

The problem of identity and perception is crucial in examining the Chinese and Italian immigrant experience. How useful is it to refer to immigrants as ‘Italians’ or ‘Italian Americans’, ‘Chinese’ or ‘Chinese Americans’? How did they perceive themselves within the new environment and how did they come to be perceived by it? In which way did the experiences of both groups differ and how can we account for it? In order to emphasize the distinctive characteristics of the Chinese and Italian communities I shall try to stress differences rather that common features examining patterns of settlement, employment, the emergence and function of social, religious and economic institutions as well as the perception of the immigrants by ‘outsiders’. The nativist view on the immigrant communities is particularly important with regard to the Chinese as they were to become the first to be formally excluded from further immigration.

¹ See immigration statistics onKWWSZZZXFODFXNKLVWRU\FRXUVHXVDKDQGKWPO

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The most striking difference between Chinese and Italian immigration appears in time and numbers. Whereas the majority of Chinese immigrants entered the United States between 1850 and 1882, Italian immigration reached its peak at the turn of the century. Until the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 approximately 300,000 Chinese came to America and settled primarily in California and the western states, but in 1900 there were only 90,000 Chinese living in the US. ² Thus we face one of the major characteristics of Chinese immigration - the high number of returnees.

The total number of Chinese immigrants was easily outnumbered by the Italians, who were the most numerous group among the ‘New Immigrants’ arriving between 1890 and 1914. In the 1910s alone more than two million arrived. ³ But even among Italians the number of returnees was extremely high, averaging 38 per cent between 1907 and 1914. ⁴ . Many of the newcomers did not intend to stay in America. They were ‘sojourners’, migrating temporarily only to return after a certain amount of time. Thus many did not even feel the necessity to adopt American values and to leave the old world behind. ⁵ As with most of the immigrants they were not seeking the fulfilment of an American Dream but simply economic gain. Having arrived in America they soon became part of a community, settled in certain areas and developed their own way of living. As I mentioned, the vast majority of the Chinese were found in California and some other western states. They founded distinctive settlement areas the largest and most famous being San Francisco’s Chinatown. ‘Chinese America’ became an highly autonomous entity in the West, physically and culturally separated from its environment. The Chinese quarters remained exclusive areas characterized by their own distinctive patterns of infrastructure and organization - a point I shall return to later on. The isolation of Chinese immigrants surely contributed to the emergence of common prejudice among Americans which soon turned into open hostility. The existence of Chinese brothels, opium halls and gambling houses, the living conditions in mostly overcrowded Chinatowns,

² See Daniels, 9, 69 and Kung, 33.

³ Olson, 113.

⁴ Mark Wyman, 5RXQG7ULSWR$PHULFD7KH,PPLJUDQWV5HWXUQWR(XURSH, Ithaca/London: Cornell University Press, 1993, pp. 10-11.

⁵ On motives and types of returnees see Francesco Cerase, “Nostalgia or Disenchantment: Considerations on Return Migration”, in Silvano M. Tomasi/Madeline H. Engel (eds.), ^{7KH,WDOLDQ([SHULHQFHLQWKH8QLWHG6WDWHV,} New York: Center for Migration Studies, 1977, pp. 217-238. Cerase develops five different types of retunees but gives no suggestion how many originally intended to return.

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and the fact that the Chinese developed their own ‘state within the state’ ⁶ strengthened anti-Chinese feeling. The Chinese remained the most ‘alien’ group of immigrants partly because the dominant culture perceived them as such, partly because they separated themselves intentionally. As the majority of them came from rural areas of Kwangtung province in southeastern China one might assume that they were far less differentiated than other ethnic groups. The high number of returnees and the new immigrants replacing them maintained the community’s distinctive shape, as they were constantly ‘re-stocking’ the traditional element which represented highly ancient Chinese ways of social organization and leadership. Daniels stresses the fact that middle-aged and older men outnumbered the young within the Chinese community, thus contributing to its traditional character and resisting the process of ‘Americanization’. The unbalanced sex ratio, being an average of about nineteen males against one female in 1900, prevented the development of family ties within the community. Therefore the Chinese community might be described as a temporary ‘bachelor society’. ⁷ Several scholars have examined the ways in which Chinese integration was made impossible by anti-Chinese sentiment, legal measures against Chinese immigration, and segregation, thus stressing the American point of view. To paint a more convincing picture it would be appropriate to ask, to what extent the isolation was ‘home-made’, deriving out of the Chinese community itself, and whether ‘Chinese America’ was indeed as static as it appears to have been. On the top of the ladder of social organization were the so called Six Companies, associations that did not only provide facilities similar to the mutual aid societies of other immigrant groups but were directing the way of the Chinese immigrant from the day of his arrival on. The Six Companies were highly autonomous organizations within the microcosm of ‘Chinese America’. The provided labor, housing, welfare and arranged the transfer of the dead to be buried in the home country. Moreover, as they were representing the community they soon became the force with whom American employers were negotiating whenever they were in demand for Chinese labor. They protected their members from ‘legal’

⁶ The establishment of traditional rotating credit associations (Hui) in America might be viewed as an example of the autonomy of the Chinese community within American society. Hui’s were widely used as a way of acquiring capital for business purposes. Although many Chinese established businesses few were utilizing American banks. Whether this was due to the fact that they did not want to do so or whether they would have been rejected anyway would be a question worth investigating. On Hui’s see Ivan Light, “Ethnic Enterprise in America: Japanese, Chinese, and Blacks”, in Ronald Takaki (ed.), )URP 'LIIHUHQW 6KRUHV 3HUVSHFWLYHV RQ 5DFH DQG (WKQLFLW\ LQ $PHULFD, 2nd. ed., New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994, pp. 82-92, particularly pp. 84-85.

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