Chinese Migration To Australia During Gold Rush

Chinese Migration Flow to Australia during Gold Rush

Starting from 1851, a gold rush was launched in Australia, which was another major world-class gold rush after the California Gold Rush. The gold rush was one of the most significant events in Australian history, allowing Australia to follow in the footsteps of the United States into the golden age of capitalist development. As a result, Australia attracted a large number of workers from around the world, of which Chinese workers were an important part. The Chinese workforce has contributed greatly to the development of Australia and has contributed to the progress and development of Australian society. This article will focus on the gold rush in Australia and analyze the reasons, ways and

Among them, Chinese immigrants were a minority, and the Chinese were mainly employed on farms before they entered the gold mines. In the early 1840s, New South Wales was ready to recruit Chinese and Indians to Australia due to the lack of labor. In 1848, the ship called Nimpod first took the Chinese from Hong Kong and eventually reached Ascension Island. There were about 120 Chinese laborers on this ship. In the years that followed, Chinese continued to arrive in Australia. By the time of the Gold Rush, there were about 1,000 Chinese. After 1851, however, a large number of Chinese laborers arrived in Australia seeking the opportunity to make their fortune, with the highest number of them being over 60,000. It is therefore important to explore the dynamics of Chinese labor migration to Australia.

Apart from the most immediate lure of gold, Chinese migration to Australia is largely due to internal conditions in China. Firstly, the rapid development of China's southeastern coast at the time led to a rapid expansion of the population

Although the Chinese laborers mined what were generally discarded pits by Europeans, they were also often able to reap success because they were very hard-working. Not only were they able to survive in Australia, but they were also able to keep sending gold back to China, which caused resentment in the European mining industry. In addition, these Chinese laborers were generally poorly educated, had poor hygiene habits, and did not speak English. Their constant lack of contact with whites and their ascetic lifestyle, combined with the bad habits of some of them, these deepened the already existing racial discrimination. Some Chinese scholars would argue that the root cause of the low status of the Chinese in Australia was the failure of the Qing government. The Qing's repeated defeats in war resulted in its international status becoming increasingly low to the point where it simply could not provide shelter for its overseas nationals. From June 1854, Victoria and New South Wales were the first to introduce acts and regulations to expel Chinese laborers. For example, on June 30, 1861, at Lambing Flat in New South Wales, about 1,000 white people, with weapons in their hands and the banner "Expulsion of the Chinese", came to the Chinese Quarter. They rode on horseback with big sticks and braids in their hands and committed atrocities against