Brief History of the Chinese in Australia

1. Brief History of the Chinese in Australia

2. Coming to Australia • Chinese traders were visiting the north coast of Australia from 1750s, probably earlier. After the British settlement of Australia (1788) small numbers of Chinese men arrived as indentured labourers, convicts and free settlers. However the numbers of Chinese immigrants to Australia did not really become significant until the Victorian (1850s) and New South Wales (1860s) gold rushes.

3. Push/Pull factors • Pushed by environmental, economic and political difficulties in China and pulled by the lure of gold, many who arrived went into debt to pay their passage under a 'credit ticket‘ system (The credit-ticket system was a form of emigration in the mid to late nineteenth century, in which brokers advanced the cost of the passage to workers and retained control over their services until they repaid their debt in full). From the first Victorian gold rushes onwards the number of Chinese people in Australia quickly reached approximately 50,000.

4. Push Factors • Around the end of 1852, the bloody Taiping rebellion started and it soon devastated Southern and Central China. During this terrible period, more than 600 cities were destroyed in seventeen provinces. About 130 million Chinese people were slaughtered in the conflict or died from disease or starvation. Meanwhile in Victoria, a Chinese immigrant to Australia, Louis Ah Mouy, responded to the opportunity to strike it rich when gold was discovered in Yea. Louis wrote to his brother in Canton encouraging him to come to Australia and make their family’s fortune. Overpopulation was another problem and Chinese families found it impossible to achieve prosperity and security no matter how hard they were prepared to work. As loyalty to family was the strongest cultural value, they looked abroad for opportunities to earn and send monies home to their families rather than to leave their homeland permanently.

5. Activity • Research the Taiping Revolution. In your own words describe what this was. Include 2 short quotes to support what you are describing and be sure to reference your quotes.

6. Push Factors continued • Gold strike in Victoria • The news of the Victorian gold strike spread like wildfire encouraged by Chinese agents in partnership with the captains of the foreign ships. They promoted the news throughout the Chinese tea houses. In January 1853, the first two shiploads of Chinese gold seekers arrived in Victoria. The Australian gold strike was the opportunity that they had been waiting for and by 1854, 3,000 Chinese miners had arrived in Victoria heading straight to the goldfields at Ballarat, Bendigo and Mt Alexander.

7. Activity • Click on the link and write a summary (2 paragraphs) detailing what you consider to be the major ‘push’ factors for the Chinese in coming to Australia. Either email to your teacher or write in your book and show your teacher. • http://www.council.robe.sa.gov.au/webdata/resources/files/Trouble_in_China.pdf

8. The Chinese in Bendigo • Bendigo was better know to the Chinese as: Dai Gum San (Big Gold Mountain) and was home to 4,000 Chinese gold seekers by the mid 1850s.  • http://www.bendigochinese.org.au/about/history.html

9. The Chinese in Bendigo • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WO2JUIoC82E

10. Activity • http://131.172.8.230/FMPro?-db=lbs.fp5&-lay=web&-format=format/streets_find.htm&-Max=25&-findall • Click on the link above. Do a search of 4 streets in Melbourne. Count how many people there are overall in your 4 chosen streets and then prepare a report, including a pie chart, showing amount of Chinese people living or working in these streets at the time. Print of email to your teacher.

11. Bibliography • http://www.council.robe.sa.gov.au/webdata/resources/files/Trouble_in_China.pdf • http://www.chinesemuseum.com.au/history.html