Tongs And Organized Crimes In San Francisco Chinatown From The 1840s To The 1920s

This research focuses on tongs and their organized crimes in San Francisco Chinatown from 1840s to 1920s. In this essay, I try to find out the reasons why organized crimes and criminal enterprises survived time by a couple of method, namely, reviewing the particular historical context and looking deeply into traditional Chinese culture in American society.This paper is composed of six parts. The first part is introduction, which discusses the definition of organized crimes and tongs and gives an overview of the influence all over the world, especially in American Chinatowns. Starting from term definition, this part gives a brief introduction of the most infamous criminal enterprises. In particular, the first chapter elaborates overseas tongs and their illegal activities.Chapter one addresses the functions of tongs. Tongs were established for the purpose of helping each other. Former arrivals in tongs could offer a lot of helps and conveniences' to newcomers regarding aspects as entering the country and adapting them to new environment. Tongs were also responsible for keep social order. There are two layers of social order in Chinatown: legitimate and illegitimate. The legitimate social order regulate political, economic, and social behavior, while the illegitimate social order regulate the territorial rights for the operation of gambling places, and other illegal activities such as opium house, prostitutes house and human smuggling.The second part talks about the development of tongs and its criminal activities. Tongs started from scratch then developed into a well-structured system within which one interacted with another. Finally San Francisco Chinatown "tong war" was triggered by the conflicts of profits. This part also present a panorama of the illegal activities on which tongs lived. They are gambling house, brothels and opium dens.Chapter three argues the reasons why tongs survived time and accumulated power. This part tentatively argues the culture of triads and historic context result in the development of tongs and outburst of "tong wars". In the last part, I also present an overview of the whole thesis.Chapter fouT is about the impact of tong wars and San Francisco Chinatown crimes. This part is discussed from three angles: long-term misunderstanding towards the Chinese; economic impact; tongs' control over gangs.The last part is learning from history. The paper attempts to give both the American-Chinese and the U.S. government some advice distilled from history.