The Law: Agreement allowing the United States to regulate, limit, or suspend immigration of Chinese laborers to the United States Date: Signed on November 17, 1880
Significance: By placing restrictions on the number of Chinese workers permitted to immigrate to the United States, the Angell Treaty marked a turning point in the U. S.-
In 1880, James Burrill Angell, president of the University of Michigan, was nominated as minister to China by U. S. president Rutherford B. Hayes. An-gell was confirmed by the Senate on April 9, 1880. Angell’s first task was to negotiate changes to the Burlingame Treaty of 1868 that would reduce the number of Chinese immigrants moving into the western United States. Angell and fellow members of the treaty commission to China, John F. Swift and William Henry Trescot, traveled to Peking (now Beijing), China, in June, 1880, to seek an agreement.
Using the argument that Chinese laborers did not readily assimilate into American culture, Angell and his colleagues negotiated a treaty to regulate and limit the immigration of Chinese laborers to the United States but not to prohibit it outright. The resulting Angell Treaty was signed on November 17, 1880, and proclaimed U. S. law on October 5, 1881. This treaty ended free Chinese immigration to the United States and separated U. S. trade interests from the immigration issue. It also provided an avenue for anti-Chinese lobbyists to push for an exclusion law. Most of the protections that the treaty secured for Chinese immigrants were reversed by passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882.
Alvin K. Benson
Further Reading
Lee, Erika. At America’s Gates: ImmigrationDuring the Exclusion Era, 1882-1943. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007.
McClain, Charles J. In Search of Equality: The Chinese Struggle Against Discrimination in Nineteenth-Century America. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994.
See also: Anti-Chinese movement; Burlingame Treaty of 1868; Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882; Chinese Exclusion Cases; Chinese immigrants; Page Law of 1875; Taiwanese immigrants.
The English became both the majority and dominant group in what became the United States. For this reason, English language, English laws, and English customs became central to the national culture. Those who shared, or were willing and able to share, this culture were most easily assimilated. Within the United States, Anglo-conformity is said to form the basis of a single unifying culture that is important for any heterogeneous nation.
During the early formative years of the independent American nation, most new immigrants came from western Europe. Some nationalities were considered questionable in regards to how well they would be able to assimilate into American culture. For example, Germans were regarded as questionable because of their different language and different culture, while English-speaking Irish Protestants were generally acceptable. However, Irish Roman Catholics were regarded as questionable because of their religion and because of the longstanding antagonism between Ireland and England. Eventually, immigrants from both Germany and Ireland constituted a large part of the new anglocentric nation. Assimilation was accomplished through Anglo-conformity.
World History
