Driven Out
The Forgotten War Against Chinese Americans

by Jean Pfaelzer

In Driven Out, Jean Pfaelzer has brought to life a chapter of our history that has been sanitized, the ethnic cleansing of Chinese Americans in California and the Pacific Northwest around the time of the California Gold Rush and the building of the Transcontinental Railroad.

Using newspaper stories, diaries, legal documents and photographs, Pfaelzer gives example after example of the vicious treatment shown the Chinese. The aim of the Americans was, foremost, to rid their communities of the Chinese and, ultimately, to force them out of the country, as well.

Several Chinatowns were destroyed and each followed a general pattern: intimidate the Chinese until they flee and, once they are gone, burn their homes to the ground.

The Chinese did fight back, but with only a modicum of success, because the government that should have been protecting them ultimately became as much of an enemy as its citizens.

As hard as it was for Chinese males, the women faced an evenmore difficult time, as they were blamed for many of the ills that beset society in California and the Pacific Northwest in the middle of the 19th century.

Even though the Chinese were blamed for economic and cultural shortcomings, these situations did not improve (but usually worsened) when the Chinese were driven out. Several people saw the importance of the Chinese to the culture, but their number was too small to accomplish very much.

An enlightening read.