'Knights of the Flatiron': Gender, Morality, and the Chinese in St. John's, Newfoundland, 1895--1906

This study examines the attitudes and practices of people living in St. John's toward Chinese residents in the city between 1895, when the first Chinese man arrived in St. John's, and the passage of the Chinese Immigration Act in 1906. Drawing upon newspaper accounts and court records, it explores how the Chinese were portrayed as sexually corrupt, effeminate, and weak, and how they were contrasted with local-born Newfoundland men in an attempt to cast them as racialized others. Newfoundland was the last jurisdiction in North America to pass restrictive legislation against the Chinese, and its relationship with the Chinese was influenced by its rather tumultuous relationships with other `foreign' groups including the French, Canadians, and Americans. Relying on gender analysis to examine how the Chinese were simultaneously de-masculinized and cast as over-sexualized outsiders who would prey upon local-born white women, this dissertation argues that the portrayal of the Chinese as having a corrupted sense of morality convinced Newfoundland legislators of the necessity of a Chinese head tax when labour-based arguments failed to do so. Newfoundland, desperate to transform the colony through land-based development, had clear ideas about the types of settlers it wanted to participate in nation building. Imbued with notions of the `Orient' from reports from missionaries such as Rev. J.B. Thompson and from its relationship with Great Britain, Newfoundlanders initially viewed the Chinese with curiosity. Once attention had been focused on the Chinese after an attempt at a Chinese head tax failed in 1904 and allegations of unsanitary conditions in Chinese laundries were printed by the press, public sentiment towards the Chinese took a decidedly negative turn. Examining the major daily newspapers in St. John's from 1895 to 1907, this dissertation traces the shift in this sentiment and demonstrates that once the Chinese were set up as a moral threat it was possible to convince legislators that the Chinese were not only incapable of participating in economic rejuvenation but of becoming citizens and participating in Newfoundland's national project.